OSCAR NIEMEYER, 1967-1981, French Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, FRANCE PARTY PIECE Oscar Niemeyer’s stunning headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris was commissioned in the late 1960s – a time when the Communists enjoyed great popularity in France.

A Communist himself, Niemeyer waived his fee for the building. Visitors enter the building down a small flight of steps into the main foyer space. This strange, undulating landscape, intended to suggest a hillside, leads to the main conference hall whose white domed roof rises up out of the forecourt. Above ground, Niemeyer built six floors of offices in a gently waving plan, with a curtain-walled façade designed in conjunction with engineer Jean Prouvé. Views down from the roof terrace suggest the shape of a hammer and sickle in the landscape of the forecourt.

Niemeyer’s building and original furnishings have survived largely intact. The Communist Party no longer occupies all the office floors, and has converted the top floor café for office use. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/NIEMEYER/OBJECTS/1967-1981,%20French%20Communist%20Party%20Headquarters,%20Paris,%20FRANCE.html

Expressionist Buildings 1. 1898-1914, Chapel of the Colonia Güell, Crypt of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, SPAIN Antoni Gaudi 2. 1913-1914, Studio building (Glass House), Dornach, SWITZERLAND, Rudolf Steiner 3. 1913-1920, First Goetheanum, Dornach, SWITZERLAND, Rudolf Steiner 4. 1917-1920, Hembrugstraat, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, M. de Klerk 5. 1923, Chile House, Hamburg, GERMANY, Fritz Höger 6. 1924, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, GERMANY, Erich Mendelsohn 7. 1925-1926, Rheinhalle, Düsseldorf, GERMANY, Wilhelm Kreis http://architecture-history.org/schools/EXPRESSIONISM.html#G

LE CORBUSIER Le Corbusier (né Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) was born in Switzerland, although he studied and worked primarily in France. In 1905, when still in his teens, Le Corbusier was commissioned by one of the trustees at the school where he studied—La Chaux-deFonds—to design the Villa Fallet. Charles l’Eplattenier, a painter and mentor to the young Le Corbusier, arranged for him to be helped by a local architect, René Chappalaz. The house was constructed of freestone, rendered and decorated with stylized fir-cone patterns, with the steep roofs and all-round balcony traditional in the region.

In 1907 the fee for this commission enabled Jeanneret, in the company of fellow student Léon Perrin, to travel to Italy, where they visited 16 major northern Italian cities, including Siena, Florence, and Venice. In Tuscany, Jeanneret visited the Carthusian monastery of Ema, an experience that had a profound effect on him. In late 1907, still in the company of Perrin, he visited Budapest and then Vienna, where he met Josef Hoffmann and other members of the Wiener Werkstätte. Two more houses for La Chauxde-Fonds were commissioned: the Jaquemet and Stotzer houses. He worked on their design during a stay in Vienna of four and a half months in 1908, again receiving help from Chappalaz. Both these houses are of wood and stone, in the regional style. Follow the link to read his biography, see his projects and download books about him. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/LE%20CORBUSIER/biography.html

1928-1930, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France LE CORBUSIER Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) had been living in Paris since 1916, collaborating with Amédée Ozenfant in the production of the review L ‘Esprit nouveau, constructing several private homes, including the La Roche-Jeanneret houses (which would later become the Fondation Le Corbusier), and proposing ambitious projects for mass housing. By 1925, he succeeded in securing official backing for the construction of an experimental housing enclave at Pessac, near Bordeaux—an enterprise that seemed to presage a revolution in the building industry by bringing to construction the benefits of mass production that had made the automobile industry. He now began to receive commissions for luxury villas from families with interests in industry or with American connections. Among these were the designs made for Mongermon, one of the directors of the Voisin car and airplane industries, and in 1926 a villa at Garches for Michael and Sarah Stein. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/LE%20CORBUSIER/OBJECTS/1931,%20Villa%20Savoye,%20Poissy,%20France.html

RICHARD MEIER 1984-1997, The Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA
In 1982, the Getty Trust decided to build a facility to house its administrative offices and the staff of its six cultural programs. It purchased a 110-acre site at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles, California, and invited 80 architects to submit their responses to a program calling for soundly constructed buildings to serve and enhance the Getty's institutions in a scheme "appropriate to the site and responsive to its uniqueness." In addition, the Getty Trust emphasized the need to meet these objectives in a manner that would bring aesthetic pleasure to the building's occupants, visitors, and neighboring community. After interviewing the finalists, the selection committee chose the American architect Richard Meier (1934-) to formulate the design. The rugged topography of the promontory and a strict conditional-use permit enacted by a powerful neighborhood coalition placed unusual constraints on the architect, especially the restriction limiting the height of the buildings to 65 feet above the 896-foot hilltop. To meet this restriction and reduce the scale and monumentality of the project, Meier located approximately half the built work below ground with passageways connecting many of the facilities at a level of 876 feet. Above ground, he planned a campus of low buildings instead of one dominant structure and added a five-acre propylaeum (vestibule or entrance) to furnish parking and provide access to the acropolis via an electric tram. Follow the link to read the full story, view pictures, and download books. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/MEIER/OBJ/1984-1997,%20The%20Getty%20Center,%20Los%20Angeles,%20USA.html

INDIA Twentieth-century architecture in India is a product of diverse regional practices and historical precedents, the country's colonial legacy, and the policies adopted by the independent state. Individual aspirations, as well as visions of the collective—nation, class, and religious affiliation—have also left their imprints on this matrix. The proliferation of stylistic labels in recent discussions of 20th-century architecture in India—Indo-Deco, Anglo-Indian modern, neovernacular, and Bania-Gothic—some invoked more humorously than others, indicate not only the multiple agencies at work but also the problem of description. More specifically, this is a conceptual problem of situating Indian architecture in the matrix of global culture and the century-long effort to tease out what is "Indian." Please click on the link to access the complete story.
http://architecture-history.org/schools/INDIA.html

ERICH MENDELSOHN 1924, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, GERMANY True to modernism’s precepts, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany, designed and built by Erich Mendelsohn from 1919 to 1921, is one of the most unique expressions of avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century. Born in 1887, Mendelsohn was drawn to architecture at a young age. Like so many artists and architects at the fin-de-siècle, he believed that a new era was dawning, and that new forms of architecture were necessary for the modern epoch. In 1913 Mendelsohn met the astrophysicist Erwin Finlay Freundlich; the two men discovered shared interests and developed an enduring friendship. Freundlich introduced Mendelsohn to the then- unpublished radical theory of relativity by Albert Einstein, ideas that would profoundly influence European intellectual thought, as well as the visual arts, for years to come. Freundlich; was interested in making observations that would confirm Einstein’s new theory, and Mendelsohn sought to adapt Einsteinian principals to built forms endowed with expressive plasticity. Unfortunately, both mens’ plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. In 1917, Mendelsohn was sent to the Western front. Please click on the link to access the complete story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/MENDELSOHN/OBJECTS/1919-1921,%20Einstein%20Tower,Teltower%20Vorstadt,%20Germany.html

ARNE JACOBSEN, 1959-1964, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, UK
GREAT DANE Founded in 1962, St Catherine’s is Oxford’s youngest and largest college. It caused a stir when it appointed Arne Jacobsen, a Dane, to design its buildings rather than a British architect, but the decision was a success. Nikolaus Pevsner referred to it as the perfect piece of architecture while Reyner Banham approvingly called it the best motel in Oxford.

Built on a marshy site on the outskirts of the city centre, the college consists of two parallel, three-storey residential blocks with covered arcades plus four separate blocks containing common rooms, dining hall, library and lecture rooms running north to south between them. There is also a master’s house on the other side of a river, and a separate music room.

In 1993, the college was one of the first post-war buildings to be given Grade I listed status. Please click on the link to access the complete story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/JACOBSEN/OBJ/1959-1964,%20St.%20Catherine's%20College,%20Oxford,%20UK.html

INTERNATIONAL STYLE


The phrase 'International Style' was one among many terms used in the 1920s to denote modern architecture. Introduced by an American to characterize a particular kind of European architecture, the term became generally applied in later decades to a broad range of contemporary buildings.

In his book "Modern Architecture, Romanticism, and Reintegration" (1929), Henry-Russell Hitchcock argued that 'the international style of Le Corbusier, Oud, Gropius, Lurcat, Rietveld, and Mies van der Rohe was a separate strain of modern architecture. Hitchcock had first written about the international style the year before in the magazine "Hound and Horn," but the more widely circulated book thoroughly discussed the architecture, placing it in a line of historical development. Basing his analysis on formal characteristics, Hitchcock claimed that a moderately modern architecture of the 'New Tradition,' as he designated it, was distinguished by a historical continuity with earlier work, simplified mass, emphasis on surface texture, and reduced and abstracted ornament. On the other hand, the 'New Pioneers' - for him, the European practitioners of the International Style, influenced by the aesthetic vision of Cubist and Neo-Plasticist painting - deleted all reference to past architecture, emphasized volume and plane rather than mass, and avoided ornament, employing the machine as an 'art-tool.' The latest advances in engineering that made this work possible lent it a 'technical beauty,' although advanced technology was not of primary importance in these structures. Please click on the link to access the complete story, view more pictures, and download books about the architectural style for free. http://architecture-history.org/schools/INTERNATIONAL%20STYLE.html

Here are some books to download and read about the International Style. http://architecture-history.org/schools/INTERNATIONAL%20STYLE.html#M Barr, Alfred Hamilton, Modern architecture. International exhibition, New York, Feb. 10 to March 23, 1932, Museum of Modern Art,1932

Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard University Press, 1959

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, The International Style, W.W. Norton, 1997

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, Ams Pr Inc, 1972

Johnson, Philip, Built to live in, Museum of Modern Art, 1931

Khan, Hasan-Uddin, International Style Modernist Architecture from 1925 to 1965, Taschen, 2001

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Pioneers of Modern Design, From William Morris to Walter Gropius, Penguin Books, 1977

Follow the link to see images depicting the NARKOMFIN HOUSE after renovation, prior to restoration, and during its initial construction. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/GINZBURG/OBJECTS/1928,%20NARKOMFIN%20HOUSE,%20MOSCOW,%20RUSSIA.html#p

EERO SAARINEN 1962, Dulles International Airport,
Chantilly, USA
This airport, located 28 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., was conceived as the international gateway to the nation’s capi tal. President Eisenhower made the final site selection in 1958, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) commissioned Eero Saarinen and Associates to build the first American airport designed specifically to handle jet airplanes. In a quirk of timing, this symbol of international welcome was named for Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, the bellicose point man for America’s Cold War policies before his death in 1959. The airport design was innovative on several counts, including its automobile traffic pattern (with separate levels for arrivals, departures, and parking) and its controversial “mobile lounges,” which detach from the main terminal building to ferry passengers out to airplanes parked next to the runways. In 1962 these odd-looking vehicles were considered a breakthrough in airport efficiency and passenger comfort. The model was never copied at any other airport, although the mobile lounges do remain in use at Dulles Airport, supplemented by a few fixed gates added to the airport in the mid-1990s. Modifications to the airport were far more visible in 1997, as work commenced to extend the main terminal building 300 feet at either end, doubling its original length. Undisturbed by these alterations, the pagoda- inspired air traffic control tower (initially planned to include an observation deck) continues to oversee the airport, providing a strong vertical accent to balance the emphatic horizontality of the site and the enlarged terminal building. Please follow the link to read the full story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/SAARINEN/OBJECTS/1962,%20Dulles%20International%20Airport,%20Chantilly,%20USA.html

LOUIS I. KAHN, 1901-1974
he works of Louis I. Kahn were among the greatest influences on world architecture during the second half of the 20th century. Trained in the classical tradition of the Beaux-Arts by Paul Philippe Cret at the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn nevertheless embraced the Modern movement in his early practical experience with various housing authorities and in partnership with Oscar Stonorov and George Howe. Kahn was slow in developing as an architect, and the works of the first 50 years of his life, mostly derived from International Style precedents, did not receive significant notice. Follow the link to read his biography, see his projects and download books about him.
http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/KAHN%202/biography.html

Further Reading on Louis I. Kahn: Follow the link to download and explore these and numerous other books about the architect.
Brownlee, David B. , De Long, and David G., L, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture: Condensed, New York: Rizzoli, and Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991;condensed edition, New York: Universe, 1997

Buttiker, Urs , Louis I. Kahn: Light and Space / Licht Und Raum (bilingual English-German edition),Basel and Boston: Birkhauser, 1993

Gast, Klaus-Peter, Louis I. Kahn: The Idea of Order, Basel and Boston: Birkhäuser, 1998

Giurgola, Romaldo and Jaimini Mehta, Louis I. Kahn. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1975

Goldhagen, Sarah Williams, Louis Kahn's situated modernism, New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 2001

Hochstim, Jan, The Paintings and Sketches of Louis I. Kahn, New York: Rizzoli, 1991

Latour, Alessandra (editor), Louis I. Kahn: Writings, Lectures, Interviews, New York: Rizzoli, 1991

McCarter, Robert, Louis I Kahn, London: Phaidon Press, 2005

Ronner, Heinz and Jhaveri, Sharad, Louis I. Kahn: Complete Work 1935-1974, Basel: Birkhauser and Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977; 2nd revised and enlarged edition, Basel and Boston: Birkhauser, 1987

Scully, Vincent Joseph , Louis I. Kahn, New York: G. Braziller, 1962

Warman, Richard (editor), What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, New York, Rizzoli, 1986 http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/KAHN%202/BOOKS.html

BRAZIL The 20th-century architecture of Brazil became widely famous for its originality and formal freedom in contrast to more codified paradigms of modernism. Celebrated abroad as a step ahead of functionalism and rationalism, Brazilian modernism acquired international significance in the 1950s, and the effects of it can still be found in contemporary architecture. However, to grasp the full scope of Brazilian 20th-century architecture, it is necessary to understand the radical transformations in its economy and society that led to an accelerated process of urbanization. From 17 million inhabitants in 1900, 70 percent of whom were living in rural areas, Brazil closed the century with almost 170 million, with more than 60 percent living in urban areas.

Brazilians entered the 20th century under the influence of positivism and sanitary engineering as two events of 1897 indicate: the planned city of Belo Horizonte was inaugurated to replace the 18th-century Ouro Preto as the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, and Canudos, a fast-growing spontaneous settlement guided by messianic leader Antonio Conselheiro in Bahia, was destroyed by the Brazilian army. Both the plan of Belo Horizonte by engineer Aarão Reis and the Canudos war campaign reveal positivist views of sanitation and circulation in vogue at that time. Follow the link to read the full story and view some examples of Brazilian architecture. http://architecture-history.org/schools/BRAZIL.html

Further Reading on BRAZIL: Follow the link to download and explore these and numerous other books about the country. http://architecture-history.org/schools/BRAZIL.html#M Brazil Contemporary: Architecture, Art, Visual Culture and Design, NAI Publishers, 2009
Center 16: Latitudes, Architecture in the Americas, Center for American Architecture and Design, 2012

Lonely Planet Brazil, Lonely Planet, 2023

Bayon, Damián, The Changing Shape of Latin American Architecture: Conversations with Ten Leading Architects, John Wiley and Sons, 1979

Bullrich, Francisco, New directions in Latin American architecture, G. Braziller, 1969

Castedo, Leopoldo, A history of Latin American art and architecture, from pre-Columbian times to the present, Praeger, 1969

Lemos, Carlos Alberto Cerqueira, The Art of Brazil, Harper & Row, 1983

Mindlin, Henrique E., Modern Architecture in Brazil, New York: Reinhold, and London: Architectural Press, 1956

Sullivan, Edward J. , Brazil: Body and Soul (Guggenheim Museum Publications), Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001

Explore photographs of the Seagram Building captured by Ezra Stoller. Follow the link to download his book, "The Seagram Building (Building Block)" by Ezra Stoller. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/MIES%20VAN%20DER%20ROHE/objects/1958,%20The%20Seagram%20Building,%20New%20York,%20New%20York.html

CARLO SCARPA 1969-1972, Brion-Vega Cemetery and Brion Tomb,
San Vito d'Altivole, Italy The complexity of this work makes it advisable to consult the bibliography; here we shall merely give a factual description. The Brion tomb covers an area of about 200 square meters, forming an L-shaped site on two sides of the old San Vito cemetery. The obligation to purchase this large area compelled the client and the architect to change their original concept. Instead of building a small tomb, they decided on a work that would go beyond being a burial place for a single individual.

Along the axis marked by the main alley of the old cemetery stands the "propylaeum," whose elevation, rhythmically punctuated horizontally and vertically by the geometry of its line of embrasures, is screened by the curving boughs of a weeping willow. Within the rectangular structure, the blank walls of unfaced concrete, patterned by the rough boards of the formwork, are punctuated by smooth white stucco rectangles. Three steps located to the left of the axis interpose themselves between terraces of double height, leading down to a covered passage running at right angles to the entrance. This is the pathway to the tomb, on the left, and the pavilion, on the right. On the end wall, there is a pair of interlocking circles articulated in mosaic tiles arranged so that the order (pink on the left, blue on the right) remains the same within and without each circle, each bearing both colors. The dim light, screened vista, and use of symbolic forms shape and inflect this interior experience, while the absence of any obvious direction to follow foreshadows the ambiguity of a space marked by multiple perspectives. Outside the portico, different spaces are arranged without any of them being the goal, yet each relates to the others. To the left, at the sunniest point, the crossing of the two arms of the site, the tombs of the Brions, husband and wife, are placed within the circular space covered by the "arcosolium." Click the link to read the complete story and see more pictures. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/SCARPA/OBJECTS/1969-1972,%20Brion-Vega%20Cemetery%20and%20Brion%20Tomb,%20San%20Vito%20d'Altivole,%20Italy.html

BANHAM, REYNER 1922–88
Architectural historian and critic, England
Reyner Banham was an iconoclastic British architectural historian and design critic
whose irreverent writings spanned an enormous range of topics and audiences— everything from traditional architectural history to discipline-bending academic studies, from advocacy criticism for his avant-gardist contemporaries to journalistic popular culture reviews. Trained first as an aeronautical engineer and only later as an architectural historian under Nikolaus Pevsner at the Courtauld Institute in London, Banham was fascinated by questions of technology and technological expression. Acting something like modernism’s guilty conscience, he challenged mid-20th-century architecture to realize its earlier unfulfilled promises of functionalism and machine aesthetics. Simultaneously, he celebrated the actual technological achievements realized by the popular cultures of the industrialized world. He turned a sharp eye toward the potato crisp, cult films, surfboards, California air shows, and London Raves and found in them the promises and achievements of a culture living at the speed of the machine. Click the link to download his books for free. http://architecture-history.org/library/library%20AUTHOR.html#Banham

CARLO SCARPA
For much of his career a figure isolated and detached from the mainstream, Carlo Scarpa was recognized only after his death as one of the great architects of the 20th century. His work does not fit easily into standard genealogical accounts of modernist architecture. It is characterized by a virtuosity of light, color, and texture; an extraordinary refinement of detail; and complex manipulations of materials and geometry.

Scarpa obtained a diploma as a teacher of architectural drawing from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1926, when he also began teaching at the Architectural Institute of Venice University. Before beginning his career as an architect, he gained an exceptional understanding of materials working as artistic director of Venini, one of the most prominent manufacturers of Venetian glass, from 1933 to 1947. He was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, but the sumptuous visual density of his work is rooted more in the traditions of Venetian craftsmanship and Viennese ornamentation, typified by Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte. Scarpa taught at the IUAV from 1926 until his death, becoming director in 1972. Follow the link to read his biography, see his projects and download books about him. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/SCARPA/biography.html