{"id":42145,"date":"2022-04-15T21:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T18:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/architecturallife.com\/?p=42145"},"modified":"2022-04-15T21:00:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T18:00:39","slug":"the-international-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sribno.com\/architecturallife\/the-international-style\/","title":{"rendered":"The International Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Style was the name chosen to describe the modernist architecture of the 1920s and early 30s, when the work of architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier was exhibited in New York in 1932. Their architecture of free planning and their aesthetic of functionalism became highly influential and seemed to sum up the ideals of modern architects in the decades before and after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

By the end of the 1920s the most adventurous architects had evolved a way of building that became symbolic of what was progressive and new in 20th-century design. Modern communications meant that this way of building was international\u2014buildings in California could look similar to those in Europe or Australia. It is not surprising that this architecture became known as the International Style.<\/p>\n

The MoMA exhibition<\/h3>\n

The most famous early use of the term \u201cInternational Style\u201d was in 1932, when the writer Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson curated the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture at New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The book they produced to accompany the exhibition was called The International Style.<\/p>\n

Hitchcock and Johnson\u2019s exhibition contained many of the key buildings of the 1920s: villas in France designed by Le Corbusier, the German Bauhaus designed by Walter Gropius, houses in Holland by J.J.P. Oud and buildings by Erich Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. In some ways these structures were very diverse\u2014Oud\u2019s workers\u2019 houses, for example, looked very different from a large department store by Mendelsohn. But seen together, several key features emerged.<\/p>\n

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Five points of a new architecture<\/h4>\n

Le Corbusier outlined five key points that were characteristic of the new architecture as he saw it, exemplified in his Villa Savoye (below). <\/em><\/p>\n