CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE AND THE WESTERN SUCCESSION

REVIVALIST ARCHITECTURE
Neoclassicism
➢ Revival of using Greek and Roman orders as decorative motifs during the 18th,
19th until the 21st century.
➢ Simple, strongly geometric composition.
➢ Shallow reliefs on facades.

Romanticism
● Turning to styles of the past to draw playful forms that addressed the
emotions. It allowed architects to tailor historical styles according to
the particulars of building type and location.

Gothic Revival
● Revived the spirit and forms of Gothic architecture.
● Remaining the accepted style for churches in the U.S. into the 20th
century.

Beaux-ArtsEclecticism
● Symmetrical plans and eclectic use of architectural features.
● Often gives a massive, elaborate, and ostentatious effect.

École des Beaux-Arts

● School of Fine Arts established in 1819 by the French government.
The school taught a way of organizing a building into a balanced
hierarchy of spatial elements and planning principles.
● It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also
incorporated Gothic and Renaissance elements, and used modern
materials, such as iron and glass.

City Beautiful Movement

● Daniel Burnham, proponent.
● An approach to urban planning characterized by monumentally
placed buildings, grand promenades, spacious plazas, and
classical sculpture.

ModernArchitecture
➢ Revival of using Greek and Roman orders as decorative motifs during the 18th,
19th until the 21st century.

● Industrial Age
○ Industrial revolution, vast economic and social upheavals,
stemming from mechanization and mass production, required
new building types for industry, commerce, and transportation.

1
 ○ Material innovations: cast iron, steel, reinforced concrete,
and cheaper manufacturing of glass.
● Skyscrapers
○ An American invention.
○ The invention of elevators and more sophisticated heating,
plumbing, and electric lighting systems made the higher
spaces as accessible and comfortable as the lower ones.

● Louis Sullivan
○ “Form (ever) follows function.”
○ His greatest contribution to the skyscraper was the organizing of its identical,
stacked floors to express a strong visual identity. (Three levels: base, shaft,
and top floor)
○ Used nature-inspired or “organic” decorations to humanize his imposing
structure.
● Frank Lloyd Wright
○ Believed that buildings should be spread out horizontally.
○ Prairie house, homes with overhanging roof lines and flowing rooms.
○ Broadacre City, a visionary plan meant to bring urban life to the country; a
low-density settlement with small establishments and an acre of land for each
person.

Organic Architecture
➢ Promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world.
➢ Materials, motifs, and basic ordering principles based on nature.

● Art Deco
○ Also called Style Moderne.
○ First appeared in France before the WWI
○ Based on geometric motifs, streamlined and curvilinear
forms, sharply defined outlines.
○ Uses bold colors and synthetic materials (plastics).
● Art Nouveau
○ “New Art;” based on the return to craftsmanship and the
integration of art, design, and architecture.
○ an international style of art, architecture and applied art,
especially the decorative arts, that was most popular between
1890 and 1910.
○ Characterized by fluid, undulating motifs, often derived from
natural forms.
● Germany: Jugendstil
● Spain: Modernismo
● Italy: Stile Liberty
● Austria: Sezession
● France: Le Modern Style

2
ART NOUVEAU ARCHITECTS
★ Victor Horta in Brussels
★ Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona
★ Raimondo D’Aronco in Constantinople and Turin
★ Joseph Hoffman in Vienna
★ Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow

● Antoni Gaudi
○ Combined Moorish and Gothic elements with naturalistic forms, their textured,
undulating shapes recall waves, sea coral, and fish bones.

Modern “-isms”
➢ And Other Architectural Styles
Expressionism
● A European movement that generated jagged and dynamic forms in
both painting and architecture.
De Stijl
● “The Style”
● Use of black and white with the primary colors, rectangular forms, and
asymmetry (inspired by a Mondrian painting).
Constructivism
● Expression of construction was to be the basis for all building design.
● was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union
in the 1920s and early 1930s.
● Emphasizes on functional machine parts.

Organic Architecture
➢ A building should be functional, harmonizes with its natural environment, and forms
an integrated whole.
➢ Shapes are often of irregular contours and resemble forms found in nature.

Bauhaus
● Bau (building), haus (house)
● A school in Germany founded by Walter Gropius
● Synthesis of technology, craft, and design aesthetics.
● Emphasis on functional design (“form follows function”).
International Style
● Functional architecture devoid of regional characteristics.
● Simple geometric forms, large untextured surfaces (often white), large
areas of glass, and general use of steel or reinforced concrete
construction.

● Le Corbusier
○ Charles Edouard Jeanneret
○ “The house is a machine for living in.”

3
Five Points of International Style
➔ Pilotis, structural system of stilts that lifted the building off the ground to allow people
and traffic to pass underneath;
➔ Free plan, rooms enclosed by non-load-bearing partitions;
➔ Curtain walls;
➔ Ribbon windows;and
➔ Roof gardens.

● Mies van der Rohe

○ “Less is more.”
○ Best known for developing boxy, steel-and-glass architecture for nearly every
purpose - from houses to skyscrapers.

Postmodernism
● A renewed appreciation for the rich traditions of architecture past.
● Architects began enlivening facades with color, pattern, and
ornaments.

Postmodern Architects

● Alvar Aalto
○ “Nature, not the machine, should serve as the model for architecture.”
○ Finnish architect; one of the first modernists to fuse technology with craft.
○ Humanized modernism with curved walls and roofs and wood-finished
interiors. He was also sensitive to the contours of the land and to a building’s
orientation to daylight.
● Eero Saarinen
○ Used advances in structural systems to create sculpturally expressive
buildings.
○ His buildings followed a unique design direction according to the particulars of
their site and purpose.
● Louis Kahn
○ “Architectural form should reflect a building’s social purpose.”
○ His work is often compared to ancient monuments.
○ Composed of circles, squares, and triangles, his designs were constructed of
rough concrete and brick to convey a massive primal quality.
○ Daylight played an important role in his buildings.
● Robert Venturi
○ “Less is a bore.”
○ Suggested that architects should embrace ambiguity, decoration, and “messy
vitality” in their buildings.
○ His vision was an architecture of “both-and” rather than “either-or.” This led to
the development of a more pluralistic attitude towards architecture that still
prevails today.
● Philip Johnson
○ Once an advocate of the International Style, became one of postmodernism’s
biggest promoters.

4
 ● James Stirling
○ Proponent of New Brutalism and high-tech.
○ He sculpted his buildings to convey solidity.
● Michael Graves
○ Incorporated decorative, historical references within his abstract designs.
○ His architecture often has a childlike, cartoonish quality, shown to
exaggerated effect.

THE NEW YORK FIVE

Leading the modern revival group:
★ Peter Eisenman
★ Michael Graves
★ Charles Gwathmey
★ John Hejduk
★ Richard Meier

POSTMODERN STYLES

Brutalism
● Inspired by the béton brut (raw concrete) used by Le Corbusier in his
later buildings.
● Used to describe massive modern architecture built of reinforced
concrete, with the concrete’s rough, abrasive surfaces left exposed.
High Tech
● Using the technology of building in a highly expressive way.
● Pioneered by Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano.
Deconstructivism
● Using bent, angled and exploded forms to represent the uncertainty
of our times.
● Draw upon the literary theories of Jacques Derrida, who holds that
“there is no fixed truth but only multiple interpretations.”

Green Architecture
➢ Sustainable design, considering land use, transportation issues, energy efficiency,
indoor ecology and waste reduction when designing buildings.
➢ Sustainability, to ensure that our actions and decisions today do not inhibit the
opportunities of future generations.

Other architects and their WORKS

More innovations:
➔ Curtain wall ➔ Flat slab by Robert Maillart
➔ Steel and plate-glass ➔ Laminated timber
➔ Folded slab by Eugene Freyssinet ➔ Functionalism in design

5
 ● CHARLES-EDOUARD JEANNERET (LE CORBUSIER)
Notre Dame du Haut, France
Villa Savoye, France
○ Five Points of New Architecture
■ Framework structurally independent of walls
■ Free-standing façade - the free facade,the corollary of the free plan in
the vertical plane
■ Roof garden - restoring, the area of ground covered by the house
■ Open planning - the free plan, achieved through the separation of the
load-bearing columns from the walls subdividing the space
■ Cube form elevated on stilts or columns - pilotises elevating the mass
off the ground
● MARCEL BREUER
○ Architect and designer
○ Best known for the design of tubular steel Wassily Chair
○ Studied at the Bauhaus - become director of the school's furniture department
in 1924
UNESCO Secretariat Building, Paris
Whitney Museum of Art
● EERO SAARINEN
TWA Terminal, JFK Airport
○ Undulating shape was meant to evoke the excitement of high speed flight
○ Even interior details: lounges, chairs, signs, and telephone booths
harmonized with the curving “gull winged” shell
Dulles Airport
Gateway Arch, Missouri
● OSCAR NIEMEYER
○ Worked with city planner Lucio Costa to conceive and build Brasilia, Brazil's
capital in a record time of just four years
○ Functionality and the use of pre-stressed concrete dominate his designs
Parliament Building, Brasilia
Cathedral, Brasilia
● ERICH MENDELSOHN
Einstein Tower, Potsdam
● FRANK LLOYDWRIGHT
○ organic architecture
Falling Water, Pennsylvania
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City
Johnson Wax Building
● BUCKMINSTER FULLER
○ Created the Dymaxion House, the first “machine for living” - a portable
home inside from metal alloys and plastics
Geodesic Dome
● WALTER GROPIUS
○ Created prototype of modern architecture: free-standing glass sheath
suspended on a structural framework - aka curtain wall
○ First used this on Hallidie Building, San Francisco in 1918

6
 ○ Established Bauhaus, a school or training intended to relate art and
architecture to technology and the practical needs of modern life
Bauhaus School, Germany
● FREI OTTO
○ The seminal figure in the development of tensile architecture
○ Veered away from the simple geometric solutions and built organic free forms
that could respond to complex planning and structural requirements
● IEOH MING PEI
Entrance to Louvre Museum, Paris
Bank of China, Hongkong
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum, Ohio
● LOUIS ISADORE KAHN
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, California
Kimbell Art Museum, Texas
National Parliament House, Bangladesh
● MICHAEL GRAVES
Portland Building, Oregon
Disney World Dolphin Resort
● MOSHE SAFDIE
Habitat 67, Montreal
● NORMAN FOSTER
HSBC Building, Hongkong
London City Hall
30 St. Mary Axe,London