American Architecture: Origins, History, Characteristics

Modernist Architecture
in America (c.1925-60)

A late feature of modern
art in general, Modernist Architecture was the attempt to create
new designs for the “modern man”. It rejected all traditional
styles based on older prototypes, and proposed a new type of functional
design which used modern materials and construction techniques, to create
a new aesthetic and sense of space. Unlike in Europe, where Modernism
emerged during the first decade of the 20th-century, modernist American
architecture only appeared in the mid-to-late 1920s, because America relied
much more heavily on historical models than Europe, whose avant-garde
art movement was altogether stronger. (See, for instance, the impact
of the Armory Show of
European modernism.) In addition, given the importance of urban development
in the economic recovery of the United States, and the growth of numerous
markets within America, it is hardly surprising that most modernist developments
during the 1930s involved large commercial buildings, notably skyscrapers.
In keeping with its anti-historical attitude, Modernist architecture favoured
simplified forms, and only the sort of essential ornamentation that reflected
the theme and structure of the building. Important architects in the history
and development of the modernist movement in America, included a number
of refugees from Europe, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969),
Walter Gropius (1883-1969) the
former director of the Bauhaus
Design School, and Louis Kahn (1901-74). Other important
modernists included: Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra
(1892-1970), Eero Saarinen (1910-61), Louis Skidmore (1897-1962),
Nathaniel Owings (1903-84), John Merrill (1896-1975), Philip
Johnson, I.M.Pei and Robert Venturi.

International
Style

The International
style of modern architecture was a particular (purist) style of modernism,
which appeared in Europe during the 1920s. It received its name from the
“International Exhibition of Modern Architecture” (1932),
curated by the architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock
(1903-1987) and the architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005), which
was held at the Museum
of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. A book was published simultaneously
with the MOMA exhibit. The aim of Hitchcock and Johnson was to identify
and promote a style that encapsulated modern architecture. To achieve
this, they had carefully vetted all the structures showcased in the exhibition,
to ensure that only those designs that met certain criteria were included.
Nearly all were European buildings, designed by the likes of Jacobus Oud,
Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953),
and Alvar Aalto (1898-1976). Only two were American buildings – the Film
Guild Cinema, New York City (1929), designed by Frederick John Kiesler
(1890-1965); and Lovell House, LA (1929), by Richard Neutra.

The criteria used by Hitchcock and Johnson
to identify their archetypal style included the following three design
rules: (1) the expression of volume rather than mass; (2) the importance
of balance rather than preconceived symmetry; (3) the elimination of applied
ornament. All the buildings in the exhibition observed these design rules,
and were therefore presented to the show’s American audience as examples
of the “International Style”.

The most commonly used materials used
by International style architects were glass for the facade, steel for
exterior support, and concrete for interior supports and floors. Furthermore,
floor plans were deliberately functional and logical.

Although modernist architecture never became
very popular for single-dwelling residential buildings in the United States
– despite the 1930s efforts of Hood, Lescaze, Edward Stone and Neutra
– it rapidly became the dominant style for skyscrapers, and for
institutional and commercial buildings. (See, for instance, the Second
Chicago School of architecture, led by the brilliant German-born
Mies van der Rohe, one of
the greatest architects to practise
in America. Later, it even supplanted the traditional historical styles
in schools and churches; see, for example, Eliel Saarinen’s Christ Lutheran
Church (1949-50) in Minneapolis. Moreover, in schools of architecture
it was the only acceptable design platform until the early 1980s.

Developments During
the 1940s and 1950s

The Second World War was one of the most
destabilizing events of the 20th century, with important consequences
also in the field of architecture. The conditions that had caused the
birth of modern architecture had lost force, and architects found themselves
forced to seek new solutions while at the same time heeding the importance
of the architectural revolution of the 1920s. This concerned most of all
the famous European architects, who reworked their language to avoid sterile
imitation, but did so without betraying the principles they had matured
in the prewar years, or their pre-eminent status in the industry. Gropius
founded The Architects Collaborative, the members of which designed
the modernistic Harvard Graduate Center (1949-50), while Mies van der
Rohe became head of the architecture department at the Illinois Institute
of Technology at Chicago in 1938 and designed its new campus. True, the
works Gropius was responsible for in the United States, primarily schools
and single-family homes, do not share the expressive intensity of his
prewar designs in Germany, but Mies van der Rohe found Chicago – birthplace
of the skyscraper and the steel framework – highly congenial to his style.

Corporate Modernism

On the banks of Lake Michigan, Mies van
der Rohe designed his first steel-and-glass skyscrapers. With the collaboration
of Philip Johnson, Mies designed one of the most influential buildings
of the postwar period, New York’s Seagram Building (1954-58), an
impressive skyscraper whose sharp glass-and-steel silhouette became a
highly imitated prototype. The thirty-eight-floor building on Park Avenue
was designed for the Canadian multinational Seagram & Sons. Hailed
as a masterpiece of corporate modernism, its curtain wall of bronze and
glass forms a dense grid that accentuates the building’s stark verticality.
It is embellished by the grey-amber tint of the window glass and the green
travertine dressing of the columns at the base. Mies van der Rohe’s style
of simple minimalism and
use of steel and glass were repeated by other architects, like Philip
Johnson, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames (1907-78),
whose language went through progressive evolutions.

The Seagram Building epitomized the use
of modern architecture by large corporate concerns, and their search for
distinctive emblems of prestige during the postwar period. The Connecticut
General Life Insurance Company commissioned Skidmore,
Owings, and Merrill, one of the biggest firms of modern architects,
to design their new Hartford headquarters (1955-57). Lever Brothers had
already hired the firm to design Lever House (1952), whose park-like
plaza, glass-curtain walls, and thin aluminum mullions had Mies van der
Rohe’s name all over them. The austere, geometric aesthetic of the General
Motors Technical Center (1948-56) in Michigan, was another building that
followed Miesian principles, as was the UN Headquarters Building
(1947-52), designed by Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and
others. Other examples of 1950s modernism include: the tower for the Aluminum
Company of America at Pittsburgh (1954), designed by Harrison and Abramovitz;
and the Inland Steel Building at Chicago (1955-57), designed by Skidmore,
Owings, and Merrill. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the few to reject the
rectilinear geometry of these office buildings: see, by contrast, the
faceted design of his concrete and copper Price Tower (1955), Bartlesville,
Oklahoma.

Decorative Formalism

During the early 1950s, in a move away
from ‘functionalism‘ towards ‘formalism‘, modern architects
became increasingly interested in the decorative qualities of different
building materials and exposed structural systems. In simple terms, they
began using the formal attributes of buildings for decorative, even expressive,
purposes. An interesting example of this new aesthetic was Frank Lloyd
Wright’s design for the Guggenheim
Museum in New York (1943-59), a building organized around a spiral
ramp that constitutes the arrangement of the museum’s display as well
as the generative element of its overall design. Other American architects
also used curvilinear structural geometry, as exemplified by the sports
arena at Raleigh (1952-53), designed by Matthew Nowicki (1910-49),
where two parabolic arches, held up by columns, and a stretched-skin roof
enclose a massive space devoid of interior supports. Eero Saarinen’s TWA
terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport (1956-62), was another
dynamic example of a monumental, single-form building, whose geometric
shapes and silhouettes reflected a new formal expressiveness, whose zenith
was undoubtedly the Sydney Opera House (1959-73), designed by Jorn
Utzon. The more muted formalist style of Minoru Yamasaki (1912-86)
is illustrated by his 1,360 foot Twin Towers of the World Trade
Center, buildings 1 and 2, designed in 1965-66. Another example of formalist
decoration was the John Hancock Center (1967-70), designed by Skidmore,
Owings and Merrill, which made a feature of the building’s X-shaped support
braces, designed by Fazlur Khan (1929-82),
probably the greatest skyscraper design-engineer of the 20th century.
This trend of structural expressionism, dynamic monumentalism – call it
what you will – remains a presence in modern architecture: witness the
sleek rectangular patterns of SOM’s Time Warner Center (2003-7), New York.

An interesting recipient of the Gold Medal
of the American Institute of architects, in 1971, was the Estonian-born
Louis Isidore Kahn (1901-74). Kahn’s career followed a different
course from many of those cited above. His training had taken place before
the international style had taken root in the United States. He studied
at the University of Pennsylvania, where he acquired the elements of classical
definition following the academic tradition of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts:
symmetries, axiality, proper proportions, the hierarchy of parts. Contact
with ancient Egyptian architecture,
as well as the values of Greek and Roman designwork, had led him to fashion
a personal language that used modern materials and technologies to explore
and present geometric forms, often monumental, that are related to history.
His most important works from the 1950s and 1960s period, include: the
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (1951-53); the Richards Medical
Research Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
(1957-65); the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, in California
(1959-65); and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (1966-72), which some
see as his masterpiece of these years.

Postmodernist
Architecture (1970s-present)

The 1960s witnessed the beginnings of a
general dissatisfaction with consequences of 20th
century architecture (notably) in the United States, where its
shortcomings were outlined in two influential publications: The Death
and Life of Great American Cities (1961), by Jane Jacobs; and Complexity
and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), by Robert Venturi. While
Jacobs criticized the souless Utopianism of the Modern movement, Venturi
bemoaned the fact that because Modern structures lack any trace of historical
elements, they also lack the meaningful irony and complexity with which
architecture is usually enriched.

One particularly unpopular and souless
form of experimental modern architecture was known as Brutalism
(from the French “beton brut”, meaning raw concrete), a term
coined by British designers Alison and Peter Smithson to describe the
geometric concrete structures, often erected in areas of social decay,
by Utopian architects such as Le Corbusier
(1887-1965). The basic idea behind Brutalist architecture was to
encourage functional patterns of living, by eliminating all ornament and
other visual distractions. The idea failed. Infamous examples of Brutalist
design in North America include: Yale Art and Architecture Building (1958-63),
designed by Paul Rudolph (1918-97); and Habitat ’67, Montreal (1966-67)
by Moshe Safdie.

What is Postmodernist Architecture?

Jacobs and Venturi were catalysts for a
wave of opposition to Modernism, but they didn’t invent “Postmodernism“.
(see also: Postmodernist Art.) The
term was actually coined by the American theorist Charles Jenks
in his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977), which
describes the architectural tendencies that sprang up in the 60s in opposition
to the dominant dictates of rationalist modernism.

The point was, modern architecture had
excluded traditional historic forms as well as decorative elements from
its repertory. Postmodernism wanted to “rehumanize” architecture
by using a mixture of styles, including features taken from classical
designs as well as those from popular culture. Playful irony, plus occasional
surprises, even shocks, have all been an essential part of the postmodernist
approach to building design. After all, basic features of architecture,
like columns, arches, and tympana, often lose their original meaning when
used out of context – say, as decorative elements. Postmodernist architecture
was following in the footsteps of Pop
Art, whose adherents – such as Andy
Warhol (1928-87), Roy
Lichtenstein (1923-97) and Claes
Oldenburg (b.1929) – were already rejuvenating the world of contemporary
art through their use of more meaningful popular imagery.

One should note however, that a large number
of postmodernist architects began their careers as modernists,
and thus many features of Modernism were carried over into postmodernism,
notably in the work of architects such as Robert Venturi, Michael
Graves, Frank O. Gehry and Richard Meier. (Please see
also: Postmodernist artists.)

History of Postmodernist
Architectural Design

Postmodernism in America is generally reckoned
to have begun in 1972, with the demolition of a series of 14-story slab
blocks that had been erected less than 20 years earlier from designs by
Minoru Yamasaki as part of the award-winning Pruitt–Igoe housing
project in St. Louis, Missouri (1955). In reality, it was a stark, modernist
concrete structure that became a magnet for problems. Although numerous
housing blocks had already been demolished in Europe, it was in St. Louis
that the American postmodernist era began.

During the 1970s, Robert Venturi
and his partners Denise Scott Brown (b.1931) and John Rauch
(b.1930) reintroduced historical reference, wit and humanity into the
designs of numerous buildings, including: Vanna Venturi House, Pennsylvania
(1961-64); the Guild House Retirement Home, Philadelphia (1961-66); the
Tucker House, Katonah, New York (1975); Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin
College (1976); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1996).
Michael Graves (b.1934) – one of the famous “New York Five“,
along with Peter Eisenman (b.1932), Charles Gwathmey (1938-2009),
John Hejduk (1929-2000) and Richard Meier (b.1934) – designed
the Portland Public Service Building in Oregon (1980-82), and Humana Tower,
Louisville, Kentucky (1986), both of which combine the mass of a regular
skyscraper with historical motifs. Similar to the Piazza d’Italia, New
Orleans (1975-80), and Alumni Center, University of California at Irvine
(1983-85), designed by Charles Moore, these confident, upbeat structures
are designed to reassure the public that their cultural identity is no
longer under attack from anti-historical modern architecture.

During the 1970s and 1980s, following the
example of Pop art, several American architects adopted a populist style
which occasionally featured classical elements. They included Philip
Johnson and John Burgee, who designed the AT&T Building,
New York City (1978-84), complete with a Chippendale skyline; and Robert
Stern, who used a classical Jeffersonian design for his Observatory
Hill Dining Hall at the University of Virginia (1982-84), but Spanish
Colonial features for his Prospect Point Office Building, La Jolla, California
(1983-85).

The career of the celebrated Chinese-American
architect I.M.Pei spans almost the entire range of modern architecture,
including the International Style, Functionalism, Decorative Formalism
and Postmodernism. His innovative use of modern materials to re-express
historical themes reached a highpoint in his iconic glass pyramid
(1983-88) which forms an entrance atrium at the Louvre
Museum in Paris, and a low point in the unfortunate John Hancock Building,
Boston (1967-76). Pei’s other American projects include the Mesa Laboratory
of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder (1961-67); the
East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (1968-78); the
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston (1965-79); and
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland (1987-95).

Deconstructivism
(1980s)

“Deconstructivism”
is a particular style of postmodernist architecture that was developed
in Europe and the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. It can be
defined as a design attitude involving a pronounced deformation of Euclidean
geometry that accords little weight to the traditional principles of proportion.
Recurrent characteristics of deconstructivism are precariousness, disharmony,
and irregularity. Conventional attributes of architecture are deconstructed
to create apparently incoherent forms that often challenge the laws of
gravity. The concept was first unveiled in 1988 at a show called “Deconstructive
Architecture“, organized by Philip Johnson, which was held
at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition showcased the work
of seven postmodernist architects, who were identified as the leading
advocates of the new style, including: Frank O. Gehry, Daniel
Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid,
Bernard Tschumi and the Co-op Himmelblau group.

The real pioneer of deconstructivism, however,
was Frank O. Gehry (b.1929), who
performed the first experiments in deconstructivist designwork in California
at the end of the 1970s. These involved a series of buildings in which
he combined unusual materials in apparently unstable and precarious structures.
Later designs by Gehry include: the California Aerospace Museum, Los Angeles
(1982-84); the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles (1988-2003); Weisman
Museum, Minneapolis (1990-93); the Guggenheim
Museum, Bilbao (1991-97); the amazing Nationale Nederlanden Building,
Prague (1992-97), also known as “Fred and Ginger”; and the Experience
Music Project, Seattle (1999-2000).