MOMA, 1932, AND THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE IN AMERICA

Two forms of architectural discourse which popularized the International Style in America

The International Style Formal manifestations

	emerged in Europe and the United States during the 1920s;
	The term was first used by Philip Johnson in connection with a 1932 architectural exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City;
	Architects working in the International style gave new emphasis to the expression of structure, the lightening of mass, and the enclosure of dynamic spaces;
	Important examples in Europe include the Bauhaus at Dessau, Germany, by Walter Gropius (1925ﾐ26) and the Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France, by Le Corbusier (1929ﾐ30);
	In America: (George) Howe & (William) Lescaze�s (Swiss-born) Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in Pennsylvania; Richard Neutra (Austrian-born) in L.A.; Bowman Brothers; Raymond Hood;
	Frank Lloyd Wright, a �pioneer ancestor� but not strictly speaking of the International Style; considered one of the style�s �most important sources� (both to Americans and Europeans, Oud, Gropius, Mies)

For further reading�

	PRIMARY SOURCES
	Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1932)
	Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style (1995) *a re-publication of 1932 publication with the inclusion of an article written by Hitchcock for Architectural Record (August 1951) entitled �The International Style Twenty Years After�
	Exhibition catalogue: Modern Architecture International Exhibition (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932)
	Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (1936) *first American (Eng) edition
	SECONDARY SOURCES
	Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and The Museum of Modern Art (1992)
	Deborah Pokinski, The Development of the American Modern Style (1982)

Museum of Modern Art, housed in the Heckscher Building, 730 Fifth Avenue, NYC The Heckscher Building (now Crown) was designed by Warren and Wetmore, the same architects who designed Grand Central Terminal.

�Modern Architecture – International Exhibition� @ The Museum of Modern Art, February 10 – March 23, 1932 The players: Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Philip Johnson, and Martha Barr (in Cortona, Italy in 1932) + Henry-Russell Hitchcock (in 1937)

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Intentions

	�American architecture finds itself in a chaos of conflicting and very often unintelligent building.  An introduction to an integrated and decidedly rational mode of building is sorely needed.  The stimulation and direction which an exhibition of this type can give to contemporary architectural thought is incalculable.  As an example, America has for a long time sought a definite and practicable program for housing our minimum wage earners, especially the factory workers.  How welcome would be a display of solutions to this problem arrived at by American and European experts!�
	(Appendix 2, Exhibition proposal by Philip Johnson (February 10, 1931), in Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and The Museum of Modern Art, p.218)

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Intentions

	�The hope of developing really comprehensive and intelligent criticism in both architect and public depends upon furnishing them with a knowledge of contemporary accomplishments in the field. Their sadly imperfect and limited vision is caused by the very lack of those examples which the exhibition will supply.�
	(Appendix 2, by Philip Johnson, in Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and The Museum of Modern Art, p.217)

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Installation view of Le Corbusier�s exhibit

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Plan at the Heckscher Building, 730 Fifth Avenue, NYC (Reconstruction by T. Riley)

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 An exhibition in 3 parts

Slide 12

Slide 13

Section 1: Modern Architects

Section 2: The Extent of Modern Architecture

	Projects by various architects from around the world influenced by the work of the European avant-garde during the 1920s;
	Organized by country (as distinct from Section 1) to demonstrate the global character of �the style�;
	40 projects by 37 architects from 15 countries;
	Emphasis was on global, not European or American perspective;
	Each project was represented by a single photograph (no plans, no drawings);
	Eg. Eric Mendelsohn; Otto Haesler; Ernst May; Andr� Lur�at; Nicolaiev & Firsenko;

Section 3: Housing

	To address what social historian Lewis Mumford had referred to as �the need for a new domestic environment�
	3 main themes:
	Slum improvement;
	Block development;
	Slum superslum;
	More didactic than the previous sections, with text panels

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Fine-arts paradigm (�German Painting and Sculpture� exhibition, 12 March - 26 April, 1931) + View of �Modern Architecture� installation with a chamfered corner; labels; low-level model; plans

Mies at the German Building exhibition, Berlin, 1931 Die Wohnung unserer Zeit (The Dwelling of our Time) In right foreground: Mie�s Exhibition House; view from opposite direction (foreground: Hugo H�ring�s house)

Mies at the German Building exhibition, Berlin, 1931 Die Wohnung unserer Zeit (The Dwelling of our Time) Mies�s Exhibition house, exterior and interior views: an example of open-plan design, continuous and interwoven

Philip Johnson�s review of Die Wohnung unserer Zeit (German Building Exhibition, Berlin, 1931)

	The art of exhibiting is a branch of architecture and should be practiced as such.  Mies has designed the entire hall, containing houses and apartments by the various architects, as itself one piece of architecture.  The result is a clear arrangement inviting inspection, instead of the usual long central hall, with exhibits placed side by side.

Mies and Lilly Reich at the Deutsche Linoleum Werke exhibit, Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) Werkbund exhibition, Stuttgart, 1927 Reveals how space can be defined by more than architectural elements: through the use of materials (linoleum covered large space, shaping it through changes in colour)

Mies with Fritz Sch�ler, Electric Utilities Pavilion, International Exposition, Barcelona, 1929 Interior covered with large-scale photographs depicting various aspects of the German power industry; gave illusion of 3D panorama, opening the space toward an imaginary horizon (novel wall treatment, rather than typical plaster cladding) * some photos even wrapped around corners to dissolve perception of a limited space large-scale images emulated a real view and transformed the boundaries of architecture

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Section 3: Housing (Model of Rothenberg Housing Development by Otto Haesler in Kassel, Germany, 1930)

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Catalogue

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Catalogue: monographic

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Travelling exhibition: Itinerary

Exhibition 15: Modern Architecture - International Exhibition @ The Museum of Modern Art 10 February - 23 March 1932 Travelling exhibition: Cleveland Museum of Art, 27 October - 5 December, 1932 View of Raymond Hood�s skyscraper at right

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., and Philip Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922.  First edition (New York City: Norton, 1932)

Critical reading of Hitchcock and Johnson

	How do they define the International Style?
	How do they illustrate the International Style?
	Critique of their work

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.19-20)  a universal style?

	�Today a single new style has come into existence�
	This contemporary style, which exists throughout the world, is unified and inclusive, not fragmentary and contradictory like so much of the production of the first generation of modern architects�
	In the handling of the problems of structure it is related to the Gothic, in the handling of the problems of design it is more akin to the Classical.
	The unconscious and halting architectural developments of the nineteenth century, the confused and contradictory experimentation of the beginning of the twentieth, have been succeeded by a directed evolution.  There is now a single body of discipline, fixed enough to integrate contemporary style as a reality and yet elastic enough to permit individual interpretation and to encourage general growth.�

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.28) When did this new period emerge? Early 1920s

	�There are certain times when a new period truly begins despite all the preparation that may be traced behind the event.  Such a time came immediately after the War (ie. WWI), when the international style came into being in France, in Holland, and in Germany.  Indeed, if we follow the projects of the War years made by the Austrian Loos and the Italian Sant� Elia, it may appear that the new style was preparing on an even broader front�
	It is particularly in the early work of three men, Walter Gropius in Germany, Oud in Holland, and Le Corbusier in France, that the various steps in the inception of the new style must be sought.  These three with Mies van der Rohe in Germany remain the great leaders of modern architecture.�

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.20) The new principles of architecture

	�There is, first, a new conception of architecture as volume rather than as mass.  Secondly, regularity rather than axial symmetry serves as the chief means of ordering design.  These two principles, with a third proscribing arbitrary applied decoration, mark the productions of the international style.�

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 Walter Gropius, Bauhaus School Workshops, Dessau, Germany, 1926

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 J.J.P. Oud, Workers� Houses, Hook of Holland, 1924-1927

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, 1930 (W. of Paris)

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 Mies van der Rohe, German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition, Spain, 1929 (Inner pool)

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 Howe & Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, 1931 and Hood & Fouilhoux, McGraw-Hill Building, New York City, 1931

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.66-67) On American skyscrapers and verticality

	�The verticality of the skyscrapers of the American functionalists is obtained by reducing the window area and increasing the weight of the screen wall.  It also contradicts the storeyed character of the construction and destroys the human scale of the design.  In the early evening, when the lights come on, the solid towerlike quality of the skyscraper disappears.  Then, at least, it is seen as one volume divided up into horizontal storeys.  Only on rear elevations, or on facades where the architect has been severely restricted by economy, is the underlying horizontality of the American commercial building visible in the daytime.
	This artificial impression of solidity, this applied verticality, undoubtedly increases the visual congestion of the modern city.  The continual appeal of vertical lines tires the eyes.  Even the most commercial buildings of the nineteenth century provided the reposing horizontal of an approximately even cornice line.
	The verticality of the skyscraper is meaningless and anarchical.  Yet because the skyscraper is an American development and the international style has developed in Europe, some nationalist critics would protect our functionalist architects from the invasion of a horizontal aesthetic�
	Horizontality is not in itself, however, a principle of the international style�.The principle of regularity tends to increase the effect of general horizontality at the expense of the vertical elements which play but a subordinate part in most buildings.�

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.237-238) Architects represented in book

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.239-240) Architects by national origin

From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.105-113)

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, �The International Style Twenty Years After,� Architectural Record (August 1951) from From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1995 edition), p.260

	�Doubtless the principles educed twenty years ago were too negative, and now we are ready, probably too ready, to extend the sanctions of genius very widely once more.  If my tentative prognosis be correct, that we stand now at another change of phase in modern architecture between a �high� and a �late� period, we must expect many vagaries in reaction against the too literal interpretation of the International Style.�

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, �The International Style Twenty Years After,� Architectural Record (August 1951) from From Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1995 edition), pp.260-261

	�If the next 25 years are less disturbed by depressions and wars than the last have been, I suspect that our architecture will grow more diverse in kind.  But I doubt if we will, for the next generation or more, lose contact altogether with the International Style, if that be interpreted as broadly as it was meant to be in 1932.
	The International Style was not presented, in the 1932 book which gave first currency to the phrase, as a closed system; nor was it intended to be the whole of modern architecture, past, present, and future.  Perhaps it has become convenient now to use the phrase chiefly to condemn the literal and unimaginative application of the design clich�s of 25 years ago; if that is really the case, the term had better be forgotten.  The �traditional architecture,� which still bulked so large in 1932, is all but dead by now.  The living architecture of the twentieth century may well be called merely �modern�.�

The Bauhaus in Dessau Germany (1925-26)

Walter Gropius (Germany, 1883 - U.S., 1969)

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1936 (First American edition) Gropius had previously published Internationale Architektur in Germany in 1925

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1936 Introduction: a personal treatise; breach with past

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1936 The Bauhaus: Not a style

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1936 Pedagogy

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1936 The Bauhaus, Dessau: A corner of the Workshop�s Wing

Walter Gropius, Fagus Factory (Fagus Werk or Fagus Fabrik), in Alfeld on the Leine, 1911-1913 (with Adolf Meyer) Shoe factory

Gropius House in Lincoln, MA, 1937-�38 Gropius�s first commission in the U.S. (now owned by Historic New England and open to public)

Gropius House in Lincoln, MA, 1937-�38 Gropius�s first commission in the U.S. (now owned by Historic New England and open to public)

Walter Gropius, Harvard Graduate Center, Cambridge, MA, 1950 Concrete with brick exterior