Chapter 15: The Twentieth Century and Modernism

1. Buildings across Time, 4th Edition
Chapter Fifteen: The Twentieth Century
and Modernism
Introduction
In the wake of the horrors of World War I, many young architects shared a general
disillusionment, a sense that European culture had failed and would have to be replaced by
a transformed society; they believed that architecture could and should become an
instrument of this transformation.
They believed that rational designs could best be produced through mechanization,
yielding efficient, somehow machine-made buildings.
In 1932, architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and his protégé Philip Johnson
produced a thin volume entitled The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. Here they
announced that European Modernism was a new style and dubbed it “international” since
it had already been transplanted from Europe to America (and would be exported
elsewhere).

2. Buildings across Time, 4th Edition
Chapter Fifteen: The Twentieth Century
and Modernism
Introduction
After World War I, the dominant issue in war-ravaged countries became the desperate
need for housing. As Modernists competed with traditionalists, the most extreme among
them argued that modern work was more efficient and cost-effective, which in some cases
it was. However, their efforts to make modem architecture appear, if not in fact be,
machine-producible and to render it functional and expressive of that functionality led, in
the eyes of many, to a minimalist architecture often short on character, symbolism, and
even "livability."
Early Modernists were often militant; they sought to annihilate by any means available
their revivalist enemies, including the entire Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Ironically, this modern architecture, with its often Socialist roots, was later appropriated by
corporate America, most dramatically for the glass-and-steel towers that became
companies' headquarters and projected their capitalist images.

3. Adolf Loos
Steiner House
Loos: Steiner House,
Vienna, Austria, 1910.
Orthogonal massing,
punched-out windows, a
pipe-rail balustrade, and
an absolute lack of
ornament announce the
nature of Loos’ radical
architectural proposals.

4. Adolf Loos
Moller House
Loos: Moller House, Vienna, 1930. Gone
is the symmetry of the Steiner House.
Even more dramatically used are the
simple window frames and the linear
railings.
Louis Sullivan, in his essay "Ornament
in Architecture" (1892) had written: "it
would be greatly for our esthetic good if
we should refrain entirely from the use
of ornament for a period of years, in
order that our thought might
concentrate acutely upon the
production of buildings well formed and
comely in the nude." Adolf Loos
strongly agreed, and when he returned
to Vienna, he began to speak out
against the inclusion of ornament on
buildings.

5. Adolf Loos
Moller House
In his work "Ornament and Crime“
(1913), Loos took Sullivan's suggestion
to abandon ornament in architecture a
step further, proposing that the
tendency to decorate surfaces was a
sign of primitive culture or infancy. In
advanced societies or in adults, he said,
the urge toward ornamental design was
a sign of dependency or criminality.
Loos: Longitudinal section through the
Moller Hose, Vienna. In this section,
Loos has begun to manipulate the floor
heights and to cantilever floor plates.
Rather than being stacked, the floors are
spatial units displaced horizontally
across one another.

6. Adolf Loos
American Bar
Loos, American Bar (1908): By extolling the virtues of architecture without ornament, Loos
turned his focus to the rich natural character of his building materials, rather than applied
decoration, to emphasize aspects of the design.

7. Frank Lloyd Wright
Winslow House
Wright: Winslow House,
River Forest, IL 1893. Frank
Lloyd Wright’s early years
of independent practice
were characterized by
explorations of many styles
of architecture, eventually
developing his own unique
style known as the Prairie
Style.
The Winslow House shares
some Prairie Style
characteristics, such as a
plan organized around a
central hearth, the
dominance of horizontal
lines on the exterior, and a
hip roof with deep
overhangs.

8. Frank Lloyd Wright
Winslow House
Plan of the Winslow House. Wright
often spoke of “breaking the box.”
That process had begun here, where
the front rooms are self-contained
and axially connected, while the
side and rear rooms project as a
porte-cochere and as semi-circular
and semi-polygonal bays, and the
terraces are defined by platforms
and projecting walls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=gmjw_c_T-EM&t=86s

9. Frank Lloyd Wright
Willits House
Wright: Perspective rendering of the Willits House, Highland Park, 1901. In this home, the
center is solidly anchored by a great hearth, and the rooms project out aggressively into
space, covered by long, low, hovering roofs. This distinctive perspective drawing technique
was developed by Wright’s renderer, architect-delineator Marion Mahoney.

10. Frank Lloyd Wright
Robie House
Wright: Robie House, Chicago,
1909. Wright developed the Prairie
house out of his search for an
appropriate regional expression for
American homes, especially in the
Midwest. Taking his cue from the
gently rolling land of the prairie, he
designed houses that sat close to
the ground and seemed to be tied
organically to the landscape.
The central fireplace mass gave
warmth to the heart of the home,
both functionally and symbolically.
Wright's Prairie houses are said to
"break the box" because neither
the external form nor the internal
spaces are contained in tight
rectangular units.

11. Frank Lloyd Wright
Robie House
Horizontality was created by the
long lines of the walls and
balconies, but especially by the
great roof of the second floor,
which cantilevers daringly at either
end of the house. Welded steel
beams made this structural bravura
possible,
Bricks for the house, as for other
Prairie houses, were custom-made
in St. Louis. Shaped like long, thin
Roman bricks, they were laid with
wide horizontal mortar joints that
were sharply raked to cast a
horizontal shadow.

12. Frank Lloyd Wright
Larkin Building
Wright: Larkin Building, Buffalo, 1904. For
the Larkin Company, Wright designed a
vertical six-story building with a full-height
sky-lit atrium at the center. He placed banks
of filing cabinets in partitions or against the
exterior walls with windows above them.
The custom-designed metal furniture used
throughout included chairs connected to
the desks, so that, after office hours, the
back would fold down on the seat and the
entire chair would swing out of the way of
the cleaning crew's mops.
Entirely ventilation-controlled, with filtered
air intake and extract ducts in the stair
towers, it was planned for modular
furnishings and flexibility, while provisions
made for employee recreation anticipated
the corporate health clubs of the present
day.

13. Frank Lloyd Wright
Larkin Building

14. Frank Lloyd Wright
Larkin Building
https://youtu.be/GvCIXNrYVVg

15. Frank Lloyd Wright
Unity Temple
Wright: Unity Temple, Oak Park, 1906.
Plan of Unity Temple, Oak Park. The
two major elements of the church,
the worship space and the unity
house, containing classrooms and a
kitchen, are connected by a common
entry vestibule, neatly solving at once
the problems of entrance and
separation of the noise of Sunday-
school classes from adult worship.
The worship space is an articulated
cube with two levels of balconies on
three walls facing the pulpit on the
fourth.

16. Frank Lloyd Wright
Unity Temple
Equally remarkable is the exterior,
which is constructed entirely of
poured-in-place concrete.
Unity Temple was Wright's first
essay in concrete, and it was also
one of the first attempts anywhere
to design straightforwardly with
that material, instead of covering it
or disguising the surface to
resemble stone.
For the worship space Wright
designed discrete geometric
ornament in the formwork of the
piers between the high windows,
and he gave the same treatment to
the smaller and lower unity house.

17. Frank Lloyd Wright
Imperial Hotel
Wright: Imperial Hotel, Tokyo,
1916-22. From 1909 to about
1934, the only major commission
Wright received was for the
Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916-
22), remembered now chiefly for
its ingenious foundations and
cantilevered structural system.
The very muddy subsoil
conditions of the hotel site
prompted Wright to float the
foundations instead of digging
further for bedrock. The whole of
Japan is, of course, prone to
earthquake hazard, so Wright
sought to balance the building in
sections on central concrete pile
clusters with a cantilevered
concrete slab on top, much as a
waiter balances a tray on raised
fingertips.

18. Frank Lloyd Wright
Imperial Hotel
Beyond decoration, the structural
system worked as intended in the
severe earthquake of 1923, one
of the few triumphs Wright could
record that year. Over sub-
sequent decades, differential
settlement, exacerbated by a
lowering of the water table under
the area, caused large cracks in
the building. It was demolished in
the late 1960s to make room for
a high-rise.

19. H.P. Berlage
Amsterdam Stock Exchange
Berlage, Amsterdam Stock
Exchange, Amsterdam
(1897-1903). Berlage is best
known for this building, a
brick and stone bearing-wall
structure of medieval
inspiration, but one with a
sky-lit iron-truss roof over
the trading floor.
The material that had once
been considered appropriate
only for such structures as
greenhouses and train sheds
had by now become
acceptable in institutional
buildings.

20. German Expressionism
Glass Pavilion
After World War I, German
Expressionist artists and
architects reacted
passionately to the grinding
horrors of trench warfare, as
society attempted to come to
terms with the guilt, angst,
and estrangement of the
postwar period.
German Expressionism was
illustrated dramatically at the
1914 German Werkbund
Exhibition in Cologne. Here,
Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion
gave physical reality to the
idea that crystalline
architecture would somehow
ease the repressive opacity of
modern culture.

21. German Expressionism
Glass Pavilion
Taut so thoroughly exploited
the possibilities of glass that
the building became a kind of
walk-in prism. Glass walls,
glass treads and risers, and
glass panels in the dome all
filtered and reflected light and
color to produce a space
intended at once to display
glass as a product of industrial
production and to nourish the
human spirit.

22. German Expressionism
Goetheanum II
Steiner: Goetheanum II,
Dornach, Germany, 1928.
Rudolph Steiner developed a
curriculum for what he called
a “spiritual high school.”
Though not a trained architect,
he designed a building in
which he could put his
educational philosophy into
practice. Unfortunately, the
first wooden Goetheanum was
destroyed by fire. Steiner then
produced this second concrete
version as a fireproof
replacement.

23. German Expressionism
Einstein Tower
Mendehlson: Einstein Tower,
Potsdam, 1920-21.
Actually quite modest in size,
the Einstein Tower possesses a
monumentality befitting its
function as a laboratory named
for one of the twentieth
century’s foremost scientists.
Intended to be made of
concrete, it was constructed of
stucco over brick for reasons of
economy.

24. German Expressionism
Water Tower, Posen
Hans Poelzig, Water tower, Posen, 1911. Hans Poelzig, a stalwart member of the Werkbund,
orchestrated a collision of seemingly heterogeneous functions and an almost hallucinogenic or
dreasm-like industrial esthetic. The skin of the tower is faceted and highly textured, with
disparate masonry and glazing patterns.

25. Peter Behrens and the Deutscher Werkbund
Behrens
In 1907 another significant step came
with the founding of the Deutscher
Werkbund. The Werkbund encouraged
fine design in industrially
manufactured goods.
Another important event of 1907 was
the hiring of Peter Behrens (1868-
1940), a member of the Werkbund, by
the Germany company AEG. Behrens
was responsible for all aspects of
design for the firm-including its
letterhead, electric-light fixtures, and
production facilities-a brief embracing
the modem fields of graphic design,
product design, and architecture.
The buildings Behrens designed for
AEG have a quality of transformed
classicism. They were also symbols of
the new industrial order then rising in
Germany.

26. Peter Behrens and the Deutscher Werkbund
Behrens
Peter Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory, Berlin,
1909. Below this roof, a glazed screen at
the front facade projects between huge,
battered, non-structural comer piers made
of concrete but banded with steel and so
mimicking traditional stone quoining.
As a prototype of 20th century Modernism,
the factory utilizes external vertical faces of
steel supports at the side wall, which define
the building's edge, while the internal
canted faces accept wide expanses of
glazing.
Three young designers who chose to work
for Behrens became leaders of the
architectural profession after World War I:
Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, better
known as Le Corbusier.

27. The Exploitation of Concrete
Rue Franklin
Auguste Perret: 25 bis Rue Franklin, Paris,
1902. In France, Perret (1874-1954) built
numerous apartment buildings,
commercial buildings, and churches in
reinforced concrete. Perret was a pioneer
in the architectural use of ferroconcrete.
Perret's clever design replaced the
conventional Parisian interior light-well
with a U-shaped plan that increased the
percentage of daylight-lit exterior walls.
He cast ornament into the building's
concrete skin.

28. Le Corbusier
Dom-ino System
Le Corbusier: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-
Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, is
considered to be the most influential
architect of the 20th century.
Dom-ino House, 1914. With this system, Le
Corbusier separated structure from
enclosure. The results were the free plan,
with its flexible distribution of walls, and the
free façade, which could take on any desired
configuration. The Dom-ino House
prototype was designed in response to the
outbreak of World War I. Anticipating that
destruction caused by the fighting would
increase the demand for rebuilding when
hostilities ended, Le Corbusier proposed a
mass-produced housing type that reduced
components to a minimum: floor slabs,
regularly spaced piers for vertical support,
and stairs to connect the floors

29. Le Corbusier
Vers une architecture
A collection of Le Corbusier's
essays on architecture that first
appeared in its pages was
reprinted as the book Vers une
architecture (Toward a New
Architecture) in 1923.
"Architecture is the masterly,
correct, and magnificent play of
masses brought together in
light," Le Corbusier proclaimed,
as he endorsed the design of
buildings based on the esthetics
of the machine. In anticipation of
eventual mass production on a
modular basis, he also advocated
the use of dimensions derived
from both a Golden Section-
based system of proportions and
the size of an average man for all
elements in a building.
Villa Savoye, Poissy, France

30. Le Corbusier
Citrohan House
Le Corbusier: Citrohan House, 1922. The house is built of reinforced concrete and raised off the
ground on piers or pilotis, with a garage and service-storage rooms on the lowest level. The
second floor, in the tradition of the piano nobile, has the living and dining rooms, maid's room,
and kitchen; the third floor has the master bedroom overlooking the two story living room; and
children's rooms and a roof garden fill the fourth level. Fenestration consists of simple punched
openings filled with industrial windows that divide the exterior into horizontal bands extending
continuously with little regard for the location of interior partitions.

31. Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye
Le Corbusier: The Villa Savoye, Poissy,
1929-31. Most expressive of Le
Corbusier's vision is the Villa Savoye,
designed as a weekend house for an
art-loving family. The curving ground-
floor wall was determined by the
turning radius of the motorcar that
would convey the family here from
Paris. Continuity is provided by the
columnar structural system and by the
ramp which links all three levels.

32. Le Corbusier
Five Points of Architecture
As early as 1926 Le Corbusier had
articulated his "Five Points Toward a New
Architecture":
1.Building is elevated on pilotis
2.Utilizes flat roof with roof garden
3.Interior partition walls result in a Free Plan
4.Horizontal ribbon windows
5.Free Façade, independent of structural
supports
Villa LaRoche-Jeanerret, Paris

33. Parisian Modernism
E1027
Eileen Gray, E1027,
Roquebrune, France,
1926-29. Displaying a
complete Modernist
vocabulary, E1027 is
distinguished by the
specificity of its
response to site,
intelligent use of
sunscreens, private
settings within an open
plan, original furniture
designs, and varied
systems of built-in
storage.

34. Futurism and Constructivism
Antonio Sant'Elia
Two fairly short-lived movements that influenced the development of European Modernism
were Futurism in Italy and Constructivism in Russia. The most celebrated Futurist architect was
Antonio Sant'Elia ( 1888-1916 ), who explored the possibilities of a dynamic city dominated by
multiple means of transportation. Particularly dramatic here are the tall elevator towers
connected to buildings flanked by leaping bridges.

35. Futurism and Constructivism
Antonio Sant'Elia
Two fairly short-lived movements that influenced the development of European Modernism
were Futurism in Italy and Constructivism in Russia. The most celebrated Futurist architect was
Antonio Sant'Elia ( 1888-1916 ), who explored the possibilities of a dynamic city dominated by
multiple means of transportation. Particularly dramatic here are the tall elevator towers
connected to buildings flanked by leaping bridges.

36. Futurism and Constructivism
Monument to the Third International
Vladimir Tatlin, Model of the
Monument to the Third International
(Communist Congress), 1919. This
tower was to be a fantastic double
spiral some 1300 feet tall, with a
revolving cone and cylinders housing
governmental and propaganda offices.
It was unbuildable, but the vision
caught the attention of the world.
This tower project, with its dramatic
proposal for the use of new materials
and construction methods, strongly
influenced young Russian designers.
Gone are solid walls in favor of a
technologically efficient, open frame.

37. Gropius
Fagus Factory
Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer: Fagus
Shoe Factory, Alfeld-an-der-Leine, 1911.
Their first major project, the Fagus Factory
is still considered a landmark in the history
of modern architecture. Gropius and
Meyer were hired primarily to design the
exteriors of the buildings. It was a complex
and critical rethinking of Behrens's Turbine
Factory, which included battered piers,
projecting and seemingly suspended walls
of glass, and dramatically cantilevered
concrete stairs visible from the outside. It
lacked, however, a free plan on the
interior.
Gropius and Meyer did not intend to
create a style with their rigorously
functional esthetic. However, the strips of
steel-frame windows and related spandrels
and flat roofs created a type used in the
United States not only for factories but
also for schools and even gas stations.

38. Gropius
Bauhaus
In 1919 Gropius combined the former
Ducal School of the Applied Arts and
the Ducal Art Academy in Weimar into
the Bauhaus Weimar (the German
word Bauhaus can be literally translated
as "House of Building.")
Gropius created a new type of
institution dedicated to training stu-
dents in all aspects of design and to
enabling them to work collaboratively.
Gropius was firmly convinced that fine
art came through mastery of craft, and
he arranged the teaching program so
that students were given manual
instruction in one of the many craft
workshops (such as wood, metal,
weaving, pottery, and mural painting)
and were introduced to principles of
form by separate instructors, most
often painters such as Paul Klee and
Wassily Kandinsky.

39. Gropius
Bauhaus
As the Bauhaus matured, the thrust of its
program, which began with the idea of
handicraft as a means to art, shifted to
handicraft as a means of making prototypes
for industrial production. In placing
emphasis on design for industrial production
the Bauhaus had found an appropriate
resolution of the relationship of art to the
machine.
The Bauhauslers saw the integration of art
with mechanized production as the great
challenge for the twentieth-century
designer and organized their teaching to
address this issue.
In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to temporary
quarters there in Dessau, and by December
1926, the school was established in a new
building designed by Gropius that ranks
among the finest expressions of the
emerging Modern Movement.

40. Gropius
Bauhaus
The asymmetrical, pinwheeling composition
represented a break with the typical
monumental disposition employed for
educational facilities. Separate articulation
was given to each element of the program,
resulting in an abstract, sculptural treatment
for the whole, and the introduction of a
road and bridge reinforced the sense of
plastic or flowing space. The building was a
total work of art, a unity of architecture and
related crafts. Its industrial construction
materials, concrete and glass, were
employed without ornament, and
circulation was clearly expressed.
Gropius resigned as head of the school in
April 1928 and returned to his private
architectural practice. His replacement was
Mies van der Rohe, whose reputation was
by then international. In 1932 the Nazis
gained control of Dessau, and in October
1932 they closed the school.

41. De Stijl
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg,
Axonometric analysis of the
Maison Particuliere
(lithograph hand-colored
with gouache), 1923. Van
Doesburg's provocative
drawings made space the
primary stuff of a new
architecture, but his images
were impossible to translate
into earthbound building
construction. Still, they
offered a goal to which
space-obsessed Modernist
architects could aspire.

42. De Stijl
Schroeder House
Gerrit Rietveld' s Schroeder
House in Utrecht (1924) is most
often cited as the quintessential
De Stijl building, but it is limited
by the realities of habitation.
From the exterior, it looks like
one of van Doesburg's house
compositions: planes in various
orthogonal orientations
intersecting and interconnected
by linear steel sections. There is,
however, a rigor and a palette of
primary colors like those
preferred by Mondrian in his
paintings.

43. Mies van der Rohe
Early Skyscraper Designs
In 1920-21 Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe developed the
concept of a transparent
skyscraper in a project for a
thirty-story tower wrapped
entirely in glass, with a
highly irregular perimeter
and two circular elevator-
stair cores.
However, because materials
science and construction
techniques in 1920 were
inadequate to construct
these designs, the first
completely glazed office
building was not built until
1950-52: Lever House on
Park Avenue in New York
City, designed by Gordon
Bunshaft of Skidmore,
Owings, and Merrill.

44. Mies van der Rohe
Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion has become one
of the most celebrated architectural
designs of the twentieth century. it
contained no displays. Aside from the
stainless-steel-and-leather tables,
stools, and chairs designed by Mies
specifically for the building, the only
object on view was a sculpture of a
dancing girl by Georg Kolbe, carefully
placed in a reflecting pool at one end of
the building.
The columns were shiny chromium-
plated steel; the walls were onyx and
polished book-matched marble in deep
shades of green and red; the floors
were Roman travertine; and the gray-
tinted glass contributed to the feeling of
sophisticated taste and luxury. The
Mies-designed Barcelona chairs and
stools were chrome-plated steel with
white kid upholstery.

45. Mies van der Rohe
Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion has become one
of the most celebrated architectural
designs of the twentieth century. it
contained no displays. Aside from the
stainless-steel-and-leather tables,
stools, and chairs designed by Mies
specifically for the building, the only
object on view was a sculpture of a
dancing girl by Georg Kolbe, carefully
placed in a reflecting pool at one end of
the building.
The columns were shiny chromium-
plated steel; the walls were onyx and
polished book-matched marble in deep
shades of green and red; the floors
were Roman travertine; and the gray-
tinted glass contributed to the feeling of
sophisticated taste and luxury. The
Mies-designed Barcelona chairs and
stools were chrome-plated steel with
white kid upholstery.

46. International Style
Definition
The publication of the book,
Internationale Architektur (1925) by
Walter Gropius, led Alfred H. Barr of
MoMA in New York to call such
modern architecture of the late 1920s
the International Style. According to
Barr's definition, the International
Style was characterized by an
"emphasis upon volume-space
enclosed by thin planes or surfaces as
opposed to the suggestion of mass
and solidity; regularity as opposed to
symmetry or other kinds of obvious
balance; and dependence on the
intrinsic elegance of materials,
perfection, and fine proportions, as
opposed to applied ornament.“

47. International Style
Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building
The largest American International Style
building exhibited was the Philadelphia
Savings Fund Society Building (1929-32)
by Howe and William Lescaze. The entire
Market Street facade is cantilevered
beyond the column line, allowing the
windows to wrap in a horizontal band
around the comer and so glorify the
freedom from structural constraint.

48. Art Deco
Chrysler Building
Slid in between Modernism and traditionalism
was an architectural phenomenon called Art
Deco. It was un-ornamented and dominated by
horizontal lines and curvilinear elements, and so
was considered "streamlined." Art Deco was a
"thin-skinned" look, produced by minimizing the
surface projections of both architectural and
ornamental features.
In the 1920s in the United States, architects
searching for a decorative vocabulary applicable
to skyscrapers adapted Art Deco to create the
American Vertical style as something up-to-date,
stylish, and expressive of a machine age.
The most famous Art Deco skyscraper is the
Chrysler Building in New York City (1928),
designed by William Van Alen. Its crown-like
dome of stainless steel, with tiered arches filled
with sunbursts and capped by a spire, remains a
classic for skyline-makers. Its other notable
ornamental features include eagle gargoyles.

49. Art Deco
Empire State Building
The tallest structure of the period was, of
course, the Empire State Building (1931) by
Richmond Shreve, William Lamb, and Arthur
Harmon. Its Art Deco ornamentation includes a
vast number of sandblasted aluminum spandrel
panels with zigzag patterning.

50. Art Deco
Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center
Wallace K. Harrison, Radio
City Music Hall foyer, New
York City, 1933. Within
Rockefeller Center, no single
interior space is better
known than this one. Its
plush furniture, opulent
materials, and dramatic
lighting capture the spirit of
New York City in the 1920s
and '30s.

51. Later Works: Wright
Fallingwater
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Fallingwater,
Ohiopyle,
Pennsylvania, 1935-
37. Wright took the
natural features of a
rural site in the
mountains of
Pennsylvania, a
rocky outcropping
where a small
stream falls over a
series of ledges, and
planted the house
beside the stream,
letting the
reinforced concrete
balconies cantilever
dramatically out
over the waterfall.

52. Later Works: Wright
Fallingwater

53. Later Works: Wright
Fallingwater

54. Later Works: Wright
Fallingwater

55. Later Works: Wright
Guggenheim Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Guggenheim
Museum, New York
City, 1957-59. The
Guggenheim is
considered to be
one of the great
buildings of the
twentieth century
even though art
lovers have a limited
viewing distance and
must negotiate the
constant slope of
the spiraling ramp.

56. Later Works: Wright
Guggenheim Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Guggenheim
Museum, New York
City, 1957-59. The
Guggenheim is
considered to be
one of the great
buildings of the
twentieth century
even though art
lovers have a limited
viewing distance and
must negotiate the
constant slope of
the spiraling ramp.

57. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Unité d’Habitation
Le Corbusier, Unité
d’Habitation, Marseilles,
1946-52. The Unité
apartment block is set in a
landscaped park and raised
on pilotis. The apartments are
ingeniously arranged to have
frontage on both the east and
west sides of the building,
making possible cross-
ventilation, a desirable trade-
off for their long, narrow
plans. Balconies, integrated
into brises-soleil or
sunscreens, give each side
exterior living space.
The section shows that each
unit has a two-story living
space with an overlooking
balcony.

58. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Unité d’Habitation
The building originally
featured a two-story
shopping floor (grocery store,
beauty shop, repair services,
etc.) halfway up, and the roof
levels were devoted to
extensive recreational and
health facilities: a
gymnasium, running track
movie theater, health club,
nursery school, sun terraces,
and the like.
Le Corbusier created the
building's proportions using a
system that he called "Le
Modular," based upon the
height of an average person
repeatedly subdivided using
the Golden Section ratio
(approximately 1:1.6 ).

59. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Ronchamp
Le Corbusier: Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1951-55. Built as a pilgrimage site for
worshippers, to replace a previous church destroyed by artillery fire during World War II, this
small building allowed Le Corbusier to give maximum expression to the sculptural possibilities of
architectural form.

60. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Ronchamp
The rationalism of earlier works
was laid aside-no proportioning
system - no five points, no
pilotis - and a dramatic, highly
symbolic design emerged. The
roof is a sail-like cap of
unpainted concrete that rolls
over the east wall to provide
protection for the exterior
pulpit.

61. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Ronchamp
The random window openings contain glass decorated with Le Corbusier’s painted images. The
principal entry lies between this wall and the tower, with a secondary entry in the rear between
the two, smaller towers.

62. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Chandigarh
Le Corbusier: Parliament Building, Chandigarh, Punjab, India, 1951-59. Despite his numerous city-planning
projects on paper, Le Corbusier was invited only once to design an actual town. In 1951 the government of
lndia asked him to work on the design of Chandigarh, the new capital of the northern state of Punjab. Le
Corbusier made a master plan, while the designs of individual sectors and most buildings were left to others.

63. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Chandigarh
However, he did design the
symbolic governmental
buildings, which he located
on the highest ground at the
head of the scheme, with the
majestic foothills of the
Himalayas beyond.
He grouped four major
buildings around a great
ceremonial plaza: the Palace
of the Governor (not built),
the Secretariat Building
(1951-57), the Parliament
Building (1956-59), and the
Palace of Justice (1951-56).

64. Later Works: Le Corbusier
Chandigarh
However, he did design the
symbolic governmental
buildings, which he located
on the highest ground at the
head of the scheme, with the
majestic foothills of the
Himalayas beyond.
He grouped four major
buildings around a great
ceremonial plaza: the Palace
of the Governor (not built),
the Secretariat Building
(1951-57), the Parliament
Building (1956-59), and the
Palace of Justice (1951-56).
Secretariat
Building
Parliament
Building
Palace of the
Governor
Palace of
Justice

65. Later Works: Mies van der Rohe
Crown Hall
Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, Crown Hall, IIT,
Chicago, Illinois, 1956. For
the IIT campus, Mies van
der Rohe designed Crown
Hall to house the School
of Architecture. Four deep
panel girders straddle the
building, supporting the
roof and leaving the entire
interior free of columns.
Except for the stairs and
toilet rooms, which are
fixed, the possible
locations of subdividing
walls are not hindered by
the architectural
container. The steel
skeleton of Crown Hall is
completely exposed.

66. Later Works: Mies van der Rohe
Seagram Building
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram
Building, New York City, 1958. There is
no more celebrated Miesian skyscraper
than this one. To increase the vertical
appearance of the building and visually
express its internal structural system,
thin I-beams run continuously up the
building as window mullions; the
exterior steel, therefore, serves no
structural purpose.

67. Later Works: Mies van der Rohe
Seagram Building
The granite-paved plaza constructed adjacent to the Seagram Building offered a level of civic
generosity uncommon in midtown Manhattan in 1958. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyyuflY5k2k

68. Later Works: Mies van der Rohe
Farnsworth House
Mies van der Rohe:
Farnsworth House, Plano,
Illinois, 1950-52. Whatever
the complaints about
Mies’s simplification of
design, the formal results
are elegant, almost
timeless. In fact, the
Farnsworth House can be
interpreted as a Modernist
take on a classical temple
form, its raised base slid
forward to create an arrival
sequence. It is as elegant
an expression of the
distinction between
structure and envelope as
could be imagined.

69. Later Works: Mies van der Rohe
Farnsworth House
Mies van der Rohe:
Farnsworth House, Plano,
Illinois, 1950-52. Whatever
the complaints about
Mies’s simplification of
design, the formal results
are elegant, almost
timeless. In fact, the
Farnsworth House can be
interpreted as a Modernist
take on a classical temple
form, its raised base slid
forward to create an arrival
sequence. It is as elegant
an expression of the
distinction between
structure and envelope as
could be imagined.