Concrete

By the early 20th century, concrete buildings were becoming as prevalent as steel structures. From its use in sinuous art nouveau forms, such as Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, to more angular structures, such as the Bahá’í House of Worship (opposite, 1912) in Illinois, designed by Louis Bourgeois (1856–1930), concrete could create curving, arched and sculptural designs, a notable example being Mendelsohn’s expressionist Einstein Tower.

Le Corbusier was the first architect to make wide use of poured and reinforced concrete, after working in Paris with Auguste Perret (1874–1954), a pioneer in reinforced concrete construction, and later with Behrens. From his early unbuilt designs for Maison Dom-ino (1914–15), to the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, France (1954), Le Corbusier was fascinated by concrete’s adaptability, and by its sculptural and structural potential for relatively little cost. Reinforced concrete became a favourite of many modern architects, including Oscar Niemeyer, Paul Rudolph (1918–97), Tadao Ando and Santiago Calatrava.

International style

Among the radical 20th-century ideas that spread from Europe to the United States was the international style, named at a 1932 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was called Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, and the architecture on display reflected the strong influence of the Bauhaus. The curators – architect/critic Philip Johnson and historian/critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock – wrote the accompanying catalogue, The International Style: Architecture since 1922, including work by Gropius, Rietveld, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Hitchcock and Johnson identified three main principles of the international style: the expression of volume rather than mass, the emphasis on balance rather than symmetry and the abandonment of applied ornament. It was simple, honest and functional, utilizing steel, glass, reinforced concrete and chrome, with open interior spaces, white stucco walls, rectilinear forms, flat roofs and horizontal ribbon windows. In other words, it distilled the essence of European modernism or functionalism.

Villa Savoy interior, Le Corbusier 1928–31

Philip Johnson

Remembered in his obituary as ‘the elder statesman and enfant terrible of American architecture’, Philip Johnson (1906–2005) spent his early years championing modernism and its exponents, particularly Mies van der Rohe and Gropius; he would later work with Mies, notably on the Seagram Building (1958). Another key influence on Johnson was Le Corbusier. In 1930, Johnson founded the Department of Architecture and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where the 1932 exhibition he put on with Hitchcock introduced America to the international style. After graduating in architecture, he designed for his own use the Glass House (1949) in New Canaan; an archetype in the international style, its spare rectangle of glass and steel encloses an airily open interior. Johnson later explored other styles, and his partnership with John Burgee (b.1933) from 1967 to 1991 sired a string of postmodernist landmarks including the trapezoid towers of Pennzoil Place (1976) in Houston, the broken-pedimented AT&T building (1984) in New York, and the aptly nicknamed Lipstick Building (1986), also New York.

One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Johnson, 1981–4

Seagram Building

In 1958, Mies van der Rohe built a 38-storey steel and glass tower in Manhattan for the Seagram distillery head office, setting new standards for modern skyscrapers. Abandoning all exterior decoration, the building is in the international style; a glossy monolith rising 157 metres (515 ft) above the granite plaza below. Often quoted as saying ‘God is in the details’, Mies zealously concentrated on the smallest elements of the structure, which combines a steel frame, a core of steel and reinforced concrete, and a glass skin. The frame had to be covered with fireproofing to satisfy the building code, so Mies – keen to have a structure on show – added 1,500 tonnes of non-structural bronze I-beams, which are visible through the amber-tinted glass. Mies had evolved a completely rational approach, designing ‘universal’ spaces enclosed in rectangular blocks, and evoking classical elements – the division into base, shaft and capital; the use of bronze – to create a sense of timeless serenity. The double-height travertine lobby and grand restaurant are designed by Philip Johnson.

Richard Neutra

Austrian-born Richard Neutra (1892–1970) began his career in Switzerland and Germany before moving to the United States in 1923. There, he worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, and then with Rudolf Schindler (1887–1953) in California. Early international style buildings in the Los Angeles area include the Lovell House (opposite, 1929), consisting of a series of overlapping planes, and (with his son, Dion) the Neutra Research House (1932), a glass house with roof garden.

Through a series of private commissions, Neutra earned rapid acclaim for his unusual attention to the needs of his clients, and a flexible approach to the tenets of modernism. Many of his buildings also gained fame through the images of photographer Julius Schulman (1910–2009), whose portfolio immortalized the Californian mid-century lifestyle. In 1949, Neutra formed a partnership with Robert E. Alexander (1935–93), which enabled him to design larger commercial and institutional buildings such as the now-demolished Cyclorama at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Alvar Aalto

Finnish architect, artist and designer Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) created buildings, furniture, textiles and glassware. His early career paralled the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the 20th century, and his style developed from a form of classicism, through modernism in the 1930s, to a more organic, Nordic-inspired style from the 1940s. The Alvar Aalto Museum that he designed in his home city of Jyväskylä (1973) exemplifies his ‘white period’, as his later style is often known. His first public buildings – the Jyväskylä Workers’ Club (1925), the Jyväskylä Defence Corps building (1926) and the Seinäjoki Defence Corps building (1924–9) – fuse neoclassicism with elements of modernism. His Viipuri Library (1927–35) in Vyborg, Russia, comprises two offset white rectangles, with an interior of natural materials, warm colours and undulating lines. His Säynätsalo Town Hall (opposite, 1951) is an innovative, organic, brick-built series of buildings, with ‘butterfly trusses’ supporting the main hall roof, arranged around a glazed central courtyard.

Louis Kahn

Noted for his expressive use of concrete and brick, Louis I. Kahn (1901–74) was one of the leading American architects of the 20th century. First opening his practice in 1935, he took a professorship at Yale in 1947. In 1950–1, inspired by a term as architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome, he began to mix the solid forms and stable materials of antiquity with modern innovations; the results can be seen in, for instance, the barrel-vaulted ceilings of the Kimbell Art Museum, Texas (opposite, 1966–72). The campus of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego (1962–3) is arguably his masterpiece: a complex of buildings in pinkish concrete (mixed to an old Roman recipe), separated by a stream of water coursing through a serene plaza, it was designated an historic landmark in 1991. Major projects on the Indian subcontinent included the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh in Dhaka (1962–83), a remarkable geometric design that maximizes natural light in all parts of the building including the vast parliament chamber.

Segregated planning

By the 1920s, car ownership was soaring, radically altering the dynamic of towns and cities. The garden cities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had integrated green open spaces, but insufficient provision for private vehicles; as cars proliferated, new city planners began zoning to meet motorists’ needs. In 1929, the model town of Radburn in New Jersey followed England’s garden cities, but was established specifically ‘as a town for the motor age’. As shown opposite, it had paths, underpasses and bridges that segregated pedestrians from the traffic flow. This isolation continued with residential areas laid out in ‘super blocks’, incorporating networks of cul-de-sacs that provided peace and privacy. Because Radburn was built during the Depression, the ideas took a while to spread; but some were adopted early on by the CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture), a group that applied social and urban planning issues to modern architecture. Segregated planning took off more widely around the world during the 1950s and 1960s.

Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) became a pioneer of modernist architecture, introducing it to his home country of Brazil from the 1940s onwards, and was the first modernist from a country beyond Europe or North America to achieve global fame. Niemeyer often used large expanses of glass and curvilinear forms, but in contrast with the Germanic ‘glass box’ of modernism, his buildings were expressive and sinuous. His designs for the new capital city, Brasília, were noted for their free-flowing lines (opposite). Niemeyer’s early works show Le Corbusier’s influence, but he gradually formulated his own style, and specialized in light, rounded forms that create a sense of harmony and elegance. He explored the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete in skyscrapers, exhibition centres, residential areas, theatres, offices, universities and hospitals; the Itamaraty Palace (1962–70) in Brasília, for instance, features rough concrete arches that appear to float on the surrounding pool, and a seemingly unsupported cascade of spiralling stairs in the atrium.

Sydney Opera House

In 1956, the government of New South Wales announced an international competition to design a new opera house for Sydney. The site was to be a promontory with views to the sea and the Harbour Bridge. The winning design, from a little-known Danish architect, Jørn Utzon (1918–2008), featured overlapping white roofs that covered the building’s two main halls, seeming to emerge from the water and resembling the sails of giant yachts; Utzon claimed he was inspired by the act of peeling an orange. But when the design led to structural problems, Utzon replaced his elliptical shells with a new concept based on sections of a sphere. The Opera House, though controversial among the public, became an icon of Sydney and is today one of the world’s most recognizable buildings. Its glass walls are secured by vertical steel mullions, and chevron-patterned ceramic tiles cover the sculptural roofs. Inside, high vaulted ceilings are covered in curving plywood panels, and canopies of glass held by steel ribs cover the foyers and bars – inspired, according to Utzon, by birds’ wings.

Eero Saarinen

The son of an influential Finnish architect, Eero Saarinen (1910–61) worked for most of his life in the United States. After spending the Second World War designing for the military, he took over the family firm in Michigan, creating buildings that blended his father’s Art Deco style with his own modernist ideas. The result was a simple but rich sculptural approach offering more visual drama than the austerity of the international style.

Among several prestigious buildings, Saarinen designed the TWA Flight Centre (1956–62) at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, the Kresge Auditorium at MIT in Massachusetts (opposite, 1953–5) and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in Missouri (1947–66, including the iconic Gateway Arch). Many feature his characteristic thin-shelled concrete curves, steel, large amounts of glass and minimal interior supports. Alongside his architectural work, Saarinen became equally renowned as a designer of modernist furniture.

I.M. Pei

Ieoh Ming Pei (b.1917) moved to the United States from China in his teens, studying design at Harvard under Gropius and eventually establishing his own firm in 1955. His modernist designs used expressive geometric forms that incorporated large expanses of glass, and often recall cubist art.

Pei’s landmark buildings include the J. F. Kennedy Library in Boston (1965–79), a nine-storey glass and concrete structure; the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (1968–78), comprising overlapping triangular forms that complement the existing neoclassical building; and the monumental reflective-glass Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong (1982–8). He also executed the West Wing and renovation of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1981 and 1986). Perhaps his most famous and controversial commission, however, was a new entrance to the Louvre in Paris (opposite, 1983–89), a bold glass and steel pyramid above a subterranean lobby that provides a spectacular stylistic contrast with the palatial museum itself.

Metabolism

Metabolism was the most influential architectural movement to emerge from postwar Japan. In a nation undergoing rapid economic revival, yet still subject to natural disasters, Metabolism’s practitioners envisioned it as a way to design cities and buildings in organic and repeatable ways, essentially in imitation of nature.

Those involved included Kiyonori Kikutake (1928–2011), Kisho Kurokawa (1934–2007) and Fumihiko Maki (b.1928); it was at the suggestion of their mentor, noted architect Kenzo Tange (1913–2005), that they founded Metabolism at the 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference. They created visionary designs of floating cities, spiralling structures, and flexible buildings that could be expanded in modular ways. Many were too ambitious ever to be built; but their approach is illustrated in Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower (opposite, 1970–2) in Tokyo; designed for both residential and office use, it comprises 140 identical concrete and steel capsules bolted to two armature towers.

Structural expressionism

Structural expressionism was a reaction to the minimalist aesthetic embodied by the plain, sleek forms of modernism. Emerging in the 1970s in Europe and North America, its aim was to allow structural elements to dictate the aesthetic of a building, and by extension to use original approaches to obtaining structural stability. Structural expressionist buildings incorporated the latest technological innovations and interchangeable, prefabricated parts for flexibility in design and economy in construction. Some feature their structural elements on the outside as well as the inside – for example, with exposed steel frames cladding concrete walls. Main practitioners of the style include Colombian-American Bruce Graham (1925–2010) and Bangladeshi Fazlur Rahman Khan (1929–82). Under the watch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrell, both men worked on a pair of iconic Chicago skyscrapers: the John Hancock Building (1968, opposite), clad in a ‘trussed tube’ of x-braces, and the Onterie Center (1986), braced diagonally with concrete panels.