Chicago School of

Architecture
 Overview

It refers to a period
of Architecture
which saw
exploration into
vertical expansion.
A Typical steel skeleton construction
It started in
pioneered by William Le Barron Chicago hence the
Jenney
name

, the Flatiron Building is fronted with limestone
and terra-cotta and designed in the Beaux-Arts
style, featuring French and Italian Renaissance
influences.
Early Features
Designed by Chicago
architect Daniel Burnham
built in 1902 it was
Chicago’s Architectural gift
to New York .Built around a
skeleton of steel allowed it
to fill the wedge-shaped
property located at the
intersection of Fifth Avenue
and Broadway. Shaped like a
perfect right triangle, it
measures only six feet
across the narrow end. Built
around a skeleton of steel At
22 stories and 307 feet, the
Flatiron was never the city's
tallest building, but always
one of its most dramatic-
looking,
Monadnock Bldg.

 Designed by Burnam
and Root, it was the
last tall building with
external load bearing
walls.
 One of the first
multistoried hotels
and followed a very
simple and efficient
design in both plan
and section.
 Monadnock Bldg.

 All embellishments
are avoided instead
bay windows break
down the facade
elegantly.
Marshal Field Wholesale Store

 Designed by
HH Richardson
it shows his
Beaux Arts
Training.
Modeled after
the
Romanesque
style whose
bulkiness is
enlivened by
use of arches.
Reliance Building

 Steel frame
exposed and used
as a decorative
element for the first
time in the
Reliance building.
 Louis Sullivan

 The most famous

of the Chicago
school he was
trained in both
American ( MIT)
and European
( Beaux Arts Paris)
traditions of
building
capital

 Divided his building

in 3 parts like a
classical column
shaft
into capital shaft
and base

base
 The Adler
Auditorium
Carson Pirie Scott Store

 Horizontality
emphasized by use
of windows and
white terracotta
cladding
Prairie Style--Winslow House

 Low-pitched roof
 Overhanging eaves
 Horizontal lines
 Central chimney
 Open floor plan
 Clerestory
Windows
Robie House--Chicago
Robie House--
plan
Baloon Frame Construction
 Balloon framing is a method
of wood construction – also known
as "Chicago construction" in the
19th century – used primarily in
areas rich
in softwood forests:  Canada,
the United States up until the mid-
1950s. It uses long continuous
framing members (studs) that run
from the sill plate to the top plate,
with intermediate floor structures
let into and nailed to them. Here
the heights of window sills, headers
and next floor height would be
marked out on the studs with
a story pole.
 Although lumber was plentiful in
19th-century America, skilled
labor was not. The advent of
cheap machine-made nails,
along with water-powered
sawmills in the early 19th
century made balloon framing
highly attractive, because it did
not require highly skilled
carpenters, as joints
like mortises and
tenons required by post-and- Using nails and hammer instead of joints
The System of Construction being very
beam construction.
simple For the first time, any farmer could
build his own buildings without a time-
consuming learning curve.
It has been said that balloon framing populated the western United States and the
western provinces of Canada. Without it, western boomtowns certainly could not
have blossomed overnight. It is also a fair certainty that, by radically reducing
construction costs, balloon framing improved the shelter options of poorer North
American population who often ventured westwards in quest for a better life.