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61-588: The Norton Building is a post-World War II office building in the International Style , located in Seattle , Washington, United States. Built on a sloping lot with the foundation of a large granite base, the building rises 17 stories above the city. It is notable as one of the first post-World War II private office buildings in the city and among the first in the country to use pre-stressed concrete construction. Furthermore, its Modernism contrasts with

122-653: A World Heritage Site , describing it as "a masterpiece of modern city planning, architecture and art, created by the Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and a group of distinguished avant-garde artists". In June 2007 UNESCO proclaimed Ciudad Universitaria of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), in Mexico City , a World Heritage Site due to its relevance and contribution in terms of international style movement. It

183-488: A book-length critique of the International Style. Architectural historian Vincent Scully regarded Venturi's book as 'probably the most important writing on the making of architecture since Le Corbusier's Vers une Architecture . It helped to define postmodernism . Best-selling American author Tom Wolfe wrote a book-length critique, From Bauhaus to Our House , portraying the style as elitist. One of

244-461: A common struggle between old and new. These architects were not considered part of the International Style because they practiced in an "individualistic manner" and seen as the last representatives of Romanticism . The International Style can be traced to buildings designed by a small group of modernists, the major figures of which include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , Jacobus Oud , Le Corbusier , Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson . The founder of

305-541: A complex reconstruction of the city which was inspired by functionalism and the Garden city movement . Tomas Bata Memorial is the most valuable monument of the Zlín functionalism . It is a modern paraphrase of the constructions of high gothic style period: the supporting system and colourful stained glass and the reinforced concrete skeleton and glass. With the rise of Nazism, a number of key European modern architects fled to

366-499: A conglomeration of three glass skyscrapers in downtown Ottawa, where the plans of the property developer Robert Campeau in the mid-1960s and early 1970s—in the words of historian Robert W. Collier, were "forceful and abrasive[;] he was not well-loved at City Hall"—had no regard for existing city plans, and "built with contempt for the existing city and for city responsibilities in the key areas of transportation and land use". Architects attempted to put new twists into such towers, such as

427-431: A major building boom and few restrictions on massive building projects. International Style skyscrapers came to dominate many of Canada's major cities, especially Ottawa , Montreal , Vancouver , Calgary , Edmonton , Hamilton , and Toronto . While these glass boxes were at first unique and interesting, the idea was soon repeated to the point of ubiquity. A typical example is the development of so-called Place de Ville ,

488-580: A model of a mid-rise housing development for Evanston , Illinois, by Chicago architect brothers Monroe Bengt Bowman and Irving Bowman , as well as a model and photos of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building in Dessau. In the largest exhibition space, Room C, were works by Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, J. J. P. Oud and Frank Lloyd Wright (including a project for a house on the Mesa in Denver, 1932). Room B

549-587: A more organic and sensual International Style. He designed the political landmarks (headquarters of the three state powers) of the new, planned capital Brasilia . The masterplan for the city was proposed by Lúcio Costa . [REDACTED] Jakarta , Indonesia In 1930, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote: "Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling-places too complementary to Machinery." In Elizabeth Gordon 's well-known 1953 essay, "The Threat to

610-638: A new journal called L'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the use of modern industrial techniques and strategies to create a higher standard of living on all socio-economic levels. In 1927, one of the first and most defining manifestations of the International Style was the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart , overseen by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was enormously popular, with thousands of daily visitors. The exhibition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition ran from February 9 to March 23, 1932, at

671-622: A number of colleges and universities, but primarily at Smith College , where he was also Director of the Smith College Museum of Art from 1949 to 1955. In 1968, he moved to New York City , where he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University . He also taught at Wesleyan University , MIT , Yale University , Harvard University , and the University of Cambridge . While teaching at Wesleyan University in

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732-538: A prototypical modern architect. After World War II, the International Style matured; Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (later renamed HOK ) and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) perfected the corporate practice, and it became the dominant approach for decades in the US and Canada. Beginning with the initial technical and formal inventions of 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago, its most famous examples include

793-727: A series of spirited, cantankerous exchanges with the museum." The gradual rise of the Nazi regime in Weimar Germany in the 1930s, and the Nazis' rejection of modern architecture, meant that an entire generation of avant-gardist architects, many of them Jews, were forced out of continental Europe. Some, such as Mendelsohn, found shelter in England, while a considerable number of the Jewish architects made their way to Palestine , and others to

854-481: A unity of approach and general principles: lightweight structures, skeletal frames, new materials, a modular system, an open plan, and the use of simple geometric shapes. The problem of the International Style is that it is not obvious what type of material the term should be applied to: at the same time, there are key monuments of the 20th century (Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye ; Wright's Fallingwater House ) and mass-produced architectural products of their time. Here it

915-423: Is a crime, truth to materials , form follows function ; and Le Corbusier 's description: "A house is a machine to live in". International style is sometimes understood as a general term associated with such architectural phenomena as Brutalist architecture , constructivism , functionalism , and rationalism . Phenomena similar in nature also existed in other artistic fields, for example in graphics, such as

976-470: Is appropriate to talk about the use of recognizable formal techniques and the creation of a standard architectural product, rather than iconic objects. Hitchcock and Johnson's 1932 MoMA exhibition catalog identified three principles of the style: volume of internal space (as opposed to mass and solidity), flexibility and regularity (liberation from classical symmetry). and the expulsion of applied ornamentation ('artificial accents'). Common characteristics of

1037-593: Is sometimes called rationalist architecture and the modern movement , although the former is mostly used in English to refer specifically to either Italian rationalism or the style that developed in 1920s Europe more broadly. In continental Europe , this and related styles are variably called Functionalism , Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"), De Stijl ("The Style"), and Rationalism , all of which are contemporaneous movements and styles that share similar principles, origins, and proponents. Rooted in

1098-571: The Puget Sound Business Journal , and Pacific Northern Airlines . The building's 17th floor was also home to the member-only Harbor Club, which peaked at 1,000 members in the 1990s and closed on December 31, 2015. The building has sweeping views of the city and Puget Sound region. This article about a building or structure in the U.S. state of Washington is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . International Style (architecture) The International Style

1159-587: The Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius , along with prominent Bauhaus instructor, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, became known for steel frame structures employing glass curtain walls.  One of the world's earliest modern buildings where this can be seen is a shoe factory designed by Gropius in 1911 in Alfeld , Germany, called the Fagus Works building. The first building built entirely on Bauhaus design principles

1220-640: The International Typographic Style and Swiss Style . The Getty Research Institute defines it as "the style of architecture that emerged in The Netherlands, France, and Germany after World War I and spread throughout the world, becoming the dominant architectural style until the 1970s. The style is characterized by an emphasis on volume over mass, the use of lightweight, mass-produced, industrial materials, rejection of all ornament and colour, repetitive modular forms, and

1281-590: The Toronto City Hall by Finnish architect Viljo Revell . By the late 1970s a backlash was under way against modernism—prominent anti-modernists such as Jane Jacobs and George Baird were partly based in Toronto. The typical International Style or "corporate architecture" high-rise usually consists of the following: In 2000 UNESCO proclaimed University City of Caracas in Caracas , Venezuela , as

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1342-980: The United Nations headquarters , the Lever House , the Seagram Building in New York City , and the campus of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as well as the Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto . Further examples can be found in mid-century institutional buildings throughout North America and the "corporate architecture" spread from there, especially to Europe. In Canada , this period coincided with

1403-494: The modernism movement , the International Style is closely related to " Modern architecture " and likewise reflects several intersecting developments in culture, politics, and technology in the early 20th century. After being brought to the United States by European architects in the 1930s, it quickly became an "unofficial" North American style, particularly after World War II. The International Style reached its height in

1464-408: The 1930s, Hitchcock curated an exhibition of Berenice Abbott 's photographs of urban vernacular American architecture. Over the course of Hitchcock's career, he wrote more than a dozen books on architecture. His Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) is an exhaustive study of more than 150 years of architecture that was widely used as a textbook in architectural history courses from

1525-487: The 1932 exhibition and book, Hitchcock had concerned himself with the themes of modern architecture in his 1929 book Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration . According to Terence Riley : "Ironically the (exhibition) catalogue, and to some extent, the book The International Style , published at the same time of the exhibition, have supplanted the actual historical event." The following architects and buildings were selected by Hitchcock and Johnson for display at

1586-465: The 1950s and 1960s, when it was widely adopted worldwide for its practicality and as a symbol of industry, progress, and modernity. The style remained the prevailing design philosophy for urban development and reconstruction into the 1970s, especially in the Western world . The International Style was one of the first architectural movements to receive critical renown and global popularity. Regarded as

1647-580: The 1960s to the 1980s, and is still a useful reference today. In the early 1930s, at the request of Alfred Barr , the director of the Museum of Modern Art , Hitchcock collaborated with Philip Johnson and Lewis Mumford on the museum's exhibition "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" (1932). The exhibition introduced the European International Style of architecture to an American audience. Hitchcock and Johnson co-authored

1708-649: The Bauhaus, who also pioneered the use of plywood and tubular steel in furniture design, and who after leaving the Bauhaus would later teach alongside Gropius at Harvard, is as well an important contributor to Modernism and the International Style. Prior to use of the term 'International Style', some American architects—such as Louis Sullivan , Frank Lloyd Wright , and Irving Gill —exemplified qualities of simplification, honesty and clarity. Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth Portfolio had been exhibited in Europe and influenced

1769-527: The International Style in the 1930s. Many Jewish architects who had studied at the German Bauhaus school designed significant buildings here. A large proportion of the buildings built in the International Style can be found in the area planned by Patrick Geddes , north of Tel Aviv's main historical commercial center. In 1994, UNESCO proclaimed the White City a World Heritage Site , describing

1830-450: The International Style include: a radical simplification of form, a rejection of superfluous ornamentation, bold repetition and embracement of sleek glass, steel and efficient concrete as preferred materials. Accents were found to be suitably derived from natural design irregularities, such as the position of doors and fire escapes, stair towers, ventilators and even electric signs. Further, the transparency of buildings, construction (called

1891-467: The International Style went to the Soviet Union in 1930 to undertake huge, ambitious, idealistic urban planning projects, building entire cities from scratch. In 1936, when Stalin ordered them out of the country, many of these architects became stateless and sought refuge elsewhere; for example, Ernst May moved to Kenya. The White City of Tel Aviv is a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in

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1952-593: The International Style were endorsed, while other styles were classed less significant. In 1922, the competition for the Tribune Tower and its famous second-place entry by Eliel Saarinen gave some indication of what was to come, though these works would not have been accepted by Hitchcock and Johnson as representing the "International Style". Similarly, Johnson, writing about Joseph Urban's recently completed New School for Social Research in New York, stated: "In

2013-408: The International Style. But later he evolved to a more traditional local architecture. Other notable Mexican architects of the International Style or modern period are Carlos Obregón Santacilia , Augusto H. Alvarez , Mario Pani , Federico Mariscal  [ es ] , Vladimir Kaspé , Enrique del Moral , Juan Sordo Madaleno , Max Cetto , among many others. In Brazil Oscar Niemeyer proposed

2074-521: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in the Heckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York. Beyond a foyer and office, the exhibition was divided into six rooms: the "Modern Architects" section began in the entrance room, featuring a model of William Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsyth Street Housing Development in New York. From there visitors moved to the centrally placed Room A, featuring

2135-521: The Nature of Materials (1942) continued to emphasize the American roots of Modern architecture, in this case by focusing on the career of Frank Lloyd Wright . In 1948, Hitchcock wrote an essay for the exhibition catalogue Painting toward architecture: The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art . Hitchcock focused primarily on the formal aspects of design and he regarded the individual architect as

2196-659: The New School we have an anomaly of a building supposed to be in a style of architecture based on the development of the plan from function and facade from plan but which is a formally and pretentiously conceived as a Renaissance palace. Urban's admiration for the New Style is more complete than his understanding." California architect Rudolph Schindler 's work was not a part of the exhibit, though Schindler had pleaded with Hitchcock and Johnson to be included. Then, "[f]or more than 20 years, Schindler had intermittently launched

2257-602: The Next America", she criticized the style as non-practical, citing many instances where "glass houses" are too hot in summer and too cold in winter, empty, take away private space, lack beauty and generally are not livable. Moreover, she accused this style's proponents of taking away a sense of beauty from people and thus covertly pushing for a totalitarian society. In 1966, architect Robert Venturi published Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture , essentially

2318-544: The US. However, American anti-Communist politics after the war and Philip Johnson's influential rejection of functionalism have tended to mask the fact that many of the important architects, including contributors to the original Weissenhof project, fled to the Soviet Union . This group also tended to be far more concerned with functionalism and its social agenda. Bruno Taut , Mart Stam , the second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer , Ernst May and other important figures of

2379-566: The US. When Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer fled Germany they both arrived at the Harvard Graduate School of Design , in an excellent position to extend their influence and promote the Bauhaus as the primary source of architectural modernism. When Mies fled in 1938, he first fled to England, but on emigrating to the US he went to Chicago, founded the Second School of Chicago at IIT and solidified his reputation as

2440-412: The book The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, published simultaneously with the exhibit. Four years later Hitchcock's book, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times (1936) brought the career of American architect Henry Hobson Richardson out of obscurity while also arguing that the distant roots of European Modernism were actually to be found in the United States. Hitchcock's In

2501-474: The building’s form, as opposed to a solid mass"; (2) "Regularity in the facade, as opposed to building symmetry"; and (3) "No applied ornament". International style is an ambiguous term; the unity and integrity of this direction is deceptive. Its formal features were revealed differently in different countries. Despite the unconditional commonality, the international style has never been a single phenomenon. However, International Style architecture demonstrates

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2562-610: The characteristics of modernist architecture . Henry-Russell Hitchcock Jr. was born in Boston , Massachusetts , on June 3, 1903, the son of Dr. Henry Russell Hitchcock, a physician and graduate of the Harvard Medical School , class of 1890, and his wife, Alice Davis. The hyphenation of the son's given names was probably an affectation. He was educated at Middlesex School and Harvard University , receiving his A.B. in 1924 and his M.A. in 1927. Hitchcock taught at

2623-732: The chief determinant in architectural history. Hitchcock's work tended to diminish the role of broader social forces. He has sometimes been criticized for this "great man" or "genealogical" approach. Hitchcock was a founding member of the Victorian Society in Great Britain and an early president of the Victorian Society in America . One of that Society's book awards is the Henry-Russell Hitchcock Award. The Alice Davis Hitchcock Award , awarded by both

2684-624: The city as "a synthesis of outstanding significance of the various trends of the Modern Movement in architecture and town planning in the early part of the 20th century". In 1996, Tel Aviv's White City was listed as a World Monuments Fund endangered site. The residential area of Södra Ängby in western Stockholm , Sweden, blended an international or functionalist style with garden city ideals. Encompassing more than 500 buildings, most of them designed by Edvin Engström, it remains

2745-400: The exhibition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition : The exhibition excluded other contemporary styles that were exploring the boundaries of architecture at the time, including: Art Deco ; German Expressionism, for instance the works of Hermann Finsterlin ; and the organicist movement, popularized in the work of Antoni Gaudí . As a result of the 1932 exhibition, the principles of

2806-424: The high point of modernist architecture, it is sometimes described as the "architecture of the modern movement" and credited with "single-handedly transforming the skylines of every major city in the world with its simple cubic forms". The International Style's emphasis on transcending historical and cultural influences, while favoring utility and mass-production methods, made it uniquely versatile in its application;

2867-486: The honest expression of structure), and acceptance of industrialized mass-production techniques contributed to the international style's design philosophy. Finally, the machine aesthetic , and logical design decisions leading to support building function were used by the International architect to create buildings reaching beyond historicism . The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in three slogans: ornament

2928-563: The largest coherent functionalist or "International Style" villa area in Sweden and possibly the world, still well-preserved more than a half-century after its construction in 1933–40 and protected as a national cultural heritage . Zlín is a city in the Czech Republic which was in the 1930s completely reconstructed on principles of functionalism. In that time the city was a headquarters of Bata Shoes company and Tomáš Baťa initiated

2989-414: The museum's first architectural exhibition. The three of them toured Europe together in 1929 and had also discussed Hitchcock's book about modern art. By December 1930, the first written proposal for an exhibition of the "new architecture" was set down, yet the first draft of the book was not complete until some months later. The 1932 exhibition led to two publications by Hitchcock and Johnson: Previous to

3050-602: The neighboring Exchange Building which is in the Art Deco style. The Norton Building was constructed on the site of the Haller Building , which was built in 1889 and was demolished in 1957. The new tower opened on October 30, 1959. The Norton Building was designated as a city landmark by the Seattle City Council in 2009. The Norton Building has housed multiple tenants including LMN Architects ,

3111-440: The style today are simply "another species of revivalist ", noting the irony. The negative reaction to internationalist modernism has been linked to public antipathy to overall development. Henry-Russell Hitchcock Henry-Russell Hitchcock (June 3, 1903 – February 19, 1987) was an American architectural historian , and for many years a professor at Smith College and New York University . His writings helped to define

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3172-462: The style was ubiquitous in a wide range of purposes, ranging from social housing and governmental buildings to corporate parks and skyscrapers . Nevertheless, these same qualities provoked negative reactions against the style as monotonous, austere, and incongruent with existing landscapes; these critiques are conveyed through various movements such as postmodernism , new classical architecture , and deconstructivism . Postmodern architecture

3233-498: The supposed strengths of the International Style has been said to be that the design solutions were indifferent to location, site, and climate; the solutions were supposed to be universally applicable; the style made no reference to local history or national vernacular. This was soon identified as one of the style's primary weaknesses. In 2006, Hugh Pearman , the British architectural critic of The Times , observed that those using

3294-824: The use of flat surfaces, typically alternating with areas of glass." Some researchers consider the International Style as one of the attempts to create an ideal and utilitarian form. Around the start of the 20th century, a number of architects around the world began developing new architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents with new social demands and technological possibilities. The work of Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde in Brussels , Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona , Otto Wagner in Vienna and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow , among many others, can be seen as

3355-457: The work of European modernists, and his travels there probably influenced his own work, although he refused to be categorized with them. His buildings of the 1920s and 1930s clearly showed a change in the style of the architect, but in a different direction than the International Style. In Europe the modern movement in architecture had been called Functionalism or Neue Sachlichkeit ( New Objectivity ), L'Esprit Nouveau , or simply Modernism and

3416-547: The works of Europeans of the 1920s. Among these works was shown Alvar Aalto's Turun Sanomat newspaper offices building in Turku , Finland. After a six-week run in New York City, the exhibition then toured the US – the first such "traveling-exhibition" of architecture in the US – for six years. MoMA director Alfred H. Barr hired architectural historian and critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson to curate

3477-623: Was a section titled "Housing", presenting "the need for a new domestic environment" as it had been identified by historian and critic Lewis Mumford . In Room D were works by Raymond Hood (including "Apartment Tower in the Country" and the McGraw-Hill Building ) and Richard Neutra. In Room E was a section titled "The extent of modern architecture", added at the last minute, which included the works of thirty-seven modern architects from fifteen countries who were said to be influenced by

3538-480: Was designed in the late 1940s and built in the mid-1950s based upon a masterplan created by architect Enrique del Moral . His original idea was enriched by other students, teachers, and diverse professionals of several disciplines. The university houses murals by Diego Rivera , Juan O'Gorman and others. The university also features Olympic Stadium (1968). In his first years of practice, Pritzker Prize winner and Mexican architect Luis Barragán designed buildings in

3599-417: Was developed in the 1960s in reaction to the International Style, becoming dominant in the 1980s and 1990s. The term "International Style" was first used in 1932 by the historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson to describe a movement among European architects in the 1920s that was distinguished by three key design principles: (1) "Architecture as volume – thin planes or surfaces create

3660-759: Was the concrete and steel Haus am Horn , built in 1923 in Weimar , Germany, designed by Georg Muche . The Gropius-designed Bauhaus school building in Dessau , built 1925–26 and the Harvard Graduate Center (Cambridge, Massachusetts; 1949–50) also known as the Gropius Complex, exhibit clean lines and a "concern for uncluttered interior spaces". Marcel Breuer , a recognized leader in Béton Brut (Brutalist) architecture and notable alumnus of

3721-655: Was very much concerned with the coming together of a new architectural form and social reform, creating a more open and transparent society. The "International Style", as defined by Hitchcock and Johnson, had developed in 1920s Western Europe, shaped by the activities of the Dutch De Stijl movement, Le Corbusier , and the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus . Le Corbusier had embraced Taylorist and Fordist strategies adopted from American industrial models in order to reorganize society. He contributed to

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