Modern architecture (International Style)
A house as a machine for living: no ornament, function first, concrete, glass and the free plan
How to recognise it
- Smooth white or glass walls, no decoration
- Flat roof, often a terrace
- Ribbon windows across the facade
- Building lifted on slender columns
- Continuous glass curtain wall
Why it emerged
Reinforced concrete and steel frames freed walls from carrying loads, and postwar housing shortages demanded fast, cheap building. Bauhaus architects and Le Corbusier saw standardisation as a route to a fairer society; after 1945 the style became the idiom of corporations and new nations.
Examples
Villa Savoye1928–1931 · Le Corbusier, Pierre JeanneretLe Corbusier's Five Points in one house: pilotis, free plan, ribbon windows, roof garden
Barcelona Pavilion1929 · Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lilly ReichFree-standing onyx and glass walls under a flat roof created 'flowing space'; rebuilt in 1986
Seagram Building1954–1958 · Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip JohnsonA bronze-and-glass tower set back behind a plaza: the template for the corporate skyscraper
Palace of Assembly, Chandigarhc. 1952–1962 · Le CorbusierA raw-concrete parliament for Punjab's new capital: modernism as the face of independent India
Cathedral of Brasília1958–1970 · Oscar NiemeyerSixteen curved concrete columns rise like raised hands in Brazil's new modernist capital
Barcelona Pavilion1929 · Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lilly ReichFree-standing onyx and glass walls under a flat roof created 'flowing space'; rebuilt in 1986Seagram Building1954–1958 · Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip JohnsonA bronze-and-glass tower set back behind a plaza: the template for the corporate skyscraperPalace of Assembly, Chandigarhc. 1952–1962 · Le CorbusierA raw-concrete parliament for Punjab's new capital: modernism as the face of independent IndiaCathedral of Brasília1958–1970 · Oscar NiemeyerSixteen curved concrete columns rise like raised hands in Brazil's new modernist capitalMore in this style
- 1959–1973 Sydney Opera House — Jørn Utzon
How it spread
- 1919 Weimar
- 1925 Dessau
- 1933 Tel Aviv
- 1937 Cambridge, Massachusetts
- 1938 Chicago
- 1954 New York
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers) Eastern Europe & Russia
- Expressionism Europe
- Cubism Europe
- Russian avant-garde Eastern Europe & Russia
- Harlem Renaissance Americas
- Constructivism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Art Deco Europe
- Mexican muralism Americas
- Surrealism Europe
- Socialist realism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Abstract expressionism Americas
- Pop art Americas
- Postmodernism Whole world
- Western Desert dot painting Oceania