MODERN ARCHITECTURE

ABHIJIT NATU, LECTURE ON 6.7.2011

Formation of International
Style
 Influence of Dutch artists, sculptors and
architects who took part in the de Stijl
movement.
 De Stijl - new plasticism, constructivism
 Influenced by cubist paintings
Cubism

 Style of painting and sculpture developed in early

20th century
 Emphasis on formal structure, reduction of natural
forms to their geometrical equivalents
 Organization of planes of a represented object
independently of representational requirements
 Unlike single point view in classical western
painting, cubism allowed simultaneity of different
view points in painting.
 Famous artists – Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger.
Picasso
Picasso

Picasso – Three Musicians

 Picasso’s main
revolutionary contribution
to Cubism was his
depiction of bodies. He did
not draw human bodies in
their usual closed forms;
instead he gave them free-
flowing shapes that could
move into large spaces
where the “figure
dissolves.”
De stilj
 The Style (de stilj : Dutch)

 The movement proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction through

which they could express a Utopian idea of harmony and order.

 The harmony and order was established through a reduction of elements

to pure geometric forms and primary colors. Die Stijl was also the name of
a publication discussing the groups theories which was published by van
Doesburg.

 The publication Die Stijl represents the most significant work of graphic
design from the movement, but the ideas of reduction of form and color
are major influences on the development of graphic design as well.

 Famous artists : von Doesberg, Gerrit Reitveld, and Piet Mondrian

De stilj

Peit Mondrian Chair by Reitveld

De stilj

Von Doesberg Doesberg house

The Bauhaus
 The Bauhaus was a school whose approach to design and the
combination of fine art and arts and crafts proved to be a
major influence on the development of graphic design as well
as much of 20th century modern art.

 Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the

school moved to Dessau in 1924 and then was forced to close
its doors, under pressure from the Nazi political party, in 1933.

 The school favored simplified forms, rationality, functionality

and the idea that mass production could live in harmony with
the artistic spirit of individuality.
Bauhaus
Walter Gropius

 Student of Behrens
 Was impressed by FL Wright’s continuously
horizontal planes
 But wished to avoid his deeply spatial
plasticity of mass and desired in a very
European way, to bound and close the
building’s profile.
Gropius

Joined all planes firmly into boxes and

Fagus Shoe Factory by Gropius (1910)
interlocked their separate volumes into
asymmetrical composition like continuous
but mechanical movement of a set of
gears
Machined sharpness and angularity
Meis van de Rohe