FOREWORD — 1932 Modern Architecture
by Alfred H.Barr
- What are these qualities?
- Choose one building we have discussed so far in class and assess it by Barr’s criteria, i.e. does it have the above qualities? If not, do you still consider it “modern”?
SUMMARY:
The new methods in construction methods and materials made it possible for architects to experiment more with a structure and its design evolving and defining International Style. The seven qualities of International style that Barr states are volume, regularity, flexibility, technical perfection, proportion, composition, and lack of ornamentation. As an example, Tugendhat House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe constructed in 1930, I believe is a great example of International Style and its seven principles. The house was built using cruciform columns which allow to open space and use floor-to-ceiling windows thus increasing the volume. The columns repeated regularly enable flexibility of the inside walls which Rohe places in a circular shape on the ground floor for the dining area as well as around the staircase. Various lavish materials such as onyx and rare tropical woods were used throughout the home. The simplicity of the design limits any kind of ornamentation decorating the space with its’ functional elements in repetition. The Tugendhat House is placed on the hill and keeping the proportions of its elements it flows from the street down to the open view of the garden. Perfect composition is created by all the elements of the house, their balance, and the relationship between them also making this Tugendhat House one of the excellent examples of International Style in architecture.
Expositions and exhibitions have perhaps changed the character of American architecture of the last forty years more than any other factor. The Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893 established that refined archaeological taste for antique colonnades which almost immediately became the official style for American public buildings. This Classical Revival was later accompanied by the revival of “good taste” in Colonial houses, Gothic college dormitories, Spanish country clubs, and a dozen other varieties of evidence that our architects knew their history. Unfortunately, this flood of revivalism not only brought to an end the robust bad taste of our late-nineteenth-century building but very nearly stifled the one genuinely important tradition in modern American architecture, the thread which passed from Richardson to Sullivan, from Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright. By 1922, thirty years after the Chicago Exposition, the American public was entirely persuaded that, however secondary to the European arts American painting or sculpture or music might be, in architecture, we led the world. This feeling seems to have been based partially upon the ability of our architects to imitate past European styles more tastefully even than the Euro peans themselves, and partially upon our technical proficiency whether in central heating, bathroom furniture or the rapid erection of skyscrapers. It was the skyscraper especially that confirmed our pride, for we had not yet come to realise that it was the engineer, perhaps more than the architect, who made our skyscrapers imposing.
Strangely enough it was in the field of skyscraper design that our complacency was to receive a severe jolt. In 1922 the competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower brought forth scores of projects from all over the world. Almost without exception the American designs were Renaissance or Roman or Gothic; most of the European projects proved equally derivative though several were genuinely modern and several others transitional or half-modern. A Gothic design by the New York architect Raymond Hood was given first prize by the Tribune. Saarinen, a Finnish architect, won the second prize. His project which was enthusiastically acclaimed by American architects was an agreeable eclectic compromise achieved by applying novel ornament upon an emphatically vertical fagade which rose from a Neo-Classic ground story. By common consent a foreign architect had surpassed Americans in solving a peculiarly American problem. Saarinen’s triumph might have been all the more embarassing had it been generally realised that his principles of design derived primarily from the neglected Foreword Sullivan, and that his new ornament was less original than that of Frank Lloyd Wright, since 1910 one of the chief inspirations of modern European architecture.
The exhibition which included Saarinen’s project traveled throughout the country and did much to shake the confidence of American architects in the sufficiency of historical styles for modern purposes. The Paris Exposition of exposition Decorative Arts in 1925 was even more disturbing. The United States was not represented in the Exposition because its exhibits were not sufficiently modern. We are still suffering from this backwardness — both commercially and architecturally. Only recently has the deluge of “modernistic” decoration from Vienna, Paris, Stockholm and Amsterdam begun to diminish, but not before our more advanced architects, already stimulated by Saarinen’s success, had accepted the modernistic mode with enthusiasm and ornamented their buildings with zig- “modernzags and chevrons instead of Gothic crockets and Classical modelings. The mod- istic” ernistic style has become merely another way of decorating surfaces.
As a result of these forty years of successive and simultaneous architectural confusion fashions the avenues of our greatest cities, our architectural magazines and annual exhibitions are monuments to the capriciousness and uncertainty of our architecture.
The present exhibition is an assertion that the confusion of the past forty exhibition years, or rather of the past century, may shortly come to an end. Ten years ago of modern the Chicago Tribune competition brought forth almost as many different styles architecas there were projects. Since then the ideas of a number of progressive architects have converged to form a genuinely new style which is rapidly spreading throughout the world. Both in appearance and structure this style is peculiar to intern athe twentieth century and is as fundamentally original as the Greek or Byzantine tional or Gothic. In the following pages Mr. Hitchcock and Mr. Johnson have out- style 1 lined its history and its extent. Because of its simultaneous development in several different countries and because of its world-wide distribution it has been called the International Style.
The aesthetic principles of the International Style are based primarily upon the nature of modern materials and structure and upon modern requirements in planning. Slender steel posts and beams, and concrete reinforced by steel have made possible structures of skeleton-like strength and lightness. The external surfacing materials are of painted stucco or tile, or, in more expensive buildings, of aluminum or thin slabs of marble or granite and of glass both opaque and transparent. Planning, liberated from the necessity for symmetry so frequently required by tradition is, in the new style, flexibly dependent upon convenience.
These technical and utilitarian factors in the hands of designers who understand inherent aesthetic possibilities have resulted in an architecture comparable in integrity and even in beauty to the styles of the past. But just as the modern architect has had to adjust himself to modern problems of design and structure so the modern public in order to appreciate his achievements must make parallel adjustments to what seems new and strange.
[PRINCIPLES]
[1.VOLUME]
First of all, the modern architect working in the new style conceives of his building not as a structure of brick or masonry with thick columns and supporting walls resting heavily upon the earth but rather as a skeleton enclosed by a thin light shell. He thinks in terms of volume — of space enclosed by planes or surfaces — as opposed to mass and solidity. This principle of volume leads him to make his walls seem thin flat surfaces by eliminating moldings and by making his windows and doors flush with the surface.
[2. REGULARITY]
[3. FLEXIBILITY]
Two other principles which are both utilitarian and aesthetic may be called regularity and flexibility. The architects of the Classical and Renaissance, and often of the Medieval periods, designed their facades and plans in terms of bilateral symmetry, that is of balanced masses on either side of a central axis. They also usually divided their facades horizontally in three parts : the bottom or base, the wall or middle section and the top or cornice. In the International Style these arbitrary conventions of symmetry and triple division are abandoned for a method of design which accepts, first, both vertical and horizontal repetition and, second, flexible asymmetry, for both are natural concomitants of modern building. The modern architect feels it unnecessary to add an elaborate ground floor and an elaborate crowning decoration to his skyscraper, or a gabled porch in the center and at either end of his school or library. He permits the horizontal floors of his skyscraper and the rows of windows in his school to repeat themselves boldly without artificial accents or terminations. And the resulting regularity, which may in itself be very handsome, is given accent by a door or ventilator, electric sign, stair tower, chimney, or fire escape, placed asymmetrically as utility often demands, and the principle of flexibility permits. The Bauhaus at Dessau (p. 67) in the present exhibition is a clear illustration of these principles of design.
[TECHNOCAL PERFECTION in use of materials]
[PROPORTIONS of the units]
[COMPOSITION as a relationship bw the units and the whole design]
[LACK OF ORNAMENTATION]
A fourth comprehensive principle is both positive and negative: positive quality or beauty in the International Style depends UPON technically perfect use of materials whether metal, wood, glass or concrete; UPON the fineness of proportions in units such as doors and windows and in the relationships between these units and the whole design. The negative or obverse aspect of this principle is the elimination of any kind of ornament or artificial pattern. This lack of ornament is one of the most difficult elements of the style for the layman to accept. Intrinsically there is no reason why ornament should not be used, but modern ornament, usually crass in design and machine-manufactured, would seem to mar rather than adorn the clean perfection of surface and proportion.
These principles are not as dogmatic as they must necessarily seem in so brief a discussion: on the contrary they have been derived from the evolution and intrinsic character of the architecture itself. A study of these principles in rela tion to most of the models and photographs in the present exhibition will enable the visitor to understand what is meant by the International Style and how it differs from the modernistic or half-modern decorative style, which with the persistence of the revived styles of the past, has added so much to the confusion of contemporary architecture.
In this exhibition the International Style is illustrated by the work of its leading exponents in Europe and in America. One very great architect, however, is included who is not intimately related to the Style although his early work was one of the Style’s most important sources. Mr. Hitchcock explains how fundamental was Frank Lloyd Wright’s influence upon the important Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud. The Germans, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, also seem to have studied his work at some time in their careers. But Wright while he does not precisely disown these architectural nephews remains, what he has always been, a passionately independent genius whose career is a history of original discovery and contradiction. While he is much older than the other architects in the exhibition his role is not merely that of “pioneer ancestor.” As the embodiment of the romantic principle of individualism, his work, complex and abundant, remains a challenge to the classical austerity of the style of his best younger contemporaries.
Another exception, Raymond Hood, is included because, of all the megalopolitan architects, he seems the most straightforward as well as the most open to new ideas. It is true that his work in retrospect appears somewhat inconsistent, but he must be credited with having designed the finest skyscraper in the vertical style and, a year later, the finest New York skyscraper with a horizontal emphasis (which suggests the definite influence of the International Style). Time will shortly reveal whether his inclusion in the exhibition is a prophecy that a brilliant future awaits our commercial architecture or whether as in the past fifty years our best building will be designed by non-conformists and rebels.
[4 FOUNDERS]
The four founders of the International Style are Gropius, Le Corbusier, Oud and Mies van der Rohe. It happens that one is a Parisian of Swiss birth, another a Dutchman, the other two Germans; but it would be very difficult to find in their work any national characteristics. For Le Corbusier is perhaps the greatest theorist, the most erudite and the boldest experimenter, Gropius the most sociologically minded, Mies van der Rohe the most luxurious and elegant, while Oud of Rotterdam possesses the most sensitive and disciplined taste. These four masters prove not only the internationalism of the Style but also, as Mr. Hitchcock makes clear, the wide personal variations possible within what may seem at first glance a restricted range of possibilities.
Among American architects are five others whose work is given special emphasis in the exhibition. The new skyscraper by Howe & Lescaze in Philadelphia is a monument to the persistence and artistic integrity of a firm which has only recently, after years of discouragement, persuaded clients, real estate brokers, and renting agents that the International Style may not be a commercial liability. Whether conservative New York will take Howe 6s? Lescaze’s housing project as seriously as it deserves remains to be seen.
Principally because of his writing the Austrian-born Neutra is, among Ameri can architects, second only to Wright in his international reputation. His executed buildings permit him to rank as the leading modern architect of the West Coast. The Bowman Brothers of Chicago have as yet built very little but their thorough study of steel construction in relation to architecture, both technically and legally, may revolutionize certain phases of American architecture within the next few years. Their concern with structural probity and frankness has led them very naturally to work in the International Style.
Many difficult architectural problems are touched upon in the exhibition — the private house, the school, apartment houses, both urban and suburban, the church, the factory, the department store, the club and (alumni please note) the college dormitory. But more urgently than any of these is the problem of lowrent housing. Lewis Mumford’s article is an admirable and challenging exposition of this subject, more vital in these days of superfluous population than 1 ever before. The aerial photographs of “slums and super-slums’ ‘ are instructive criticisms of contemporary city planning — or lack of planning. But of even more positive value is the model of a housing development (p. 199), by the German Haesler, one of the foremost European experts. In this project the economy, adaptability, and beauty of the International Style are as clearly demonstrated as in the more costly kinds of building shown elsewhere in the exhibition. A. H. B., Jr.
