Week 6 - Modernism

Modernism took place from the 1900s to the 1950s, a time of political and economic unrest. World War 1 and 2 had a strong impact on the Modernist movement and on the architects themselves. This design style focuses on streamlined design, functionalism, mass production, and simple materials.

A lot of people lived in poverty in the early stages of Modernism, so this movement strove to provide the impoverished with design that suited their needs. The basic materials of this movement included steel, glass, concrete, plywood, and plastic, and they were all used in very functional design that rejected ornamentation and other historical precedents – this streamlined design style allowed for fewer materials to be used and cost to stay down. Modernism also relied on the use of machinery and mass production to spread the style around both Europe and the United States. The main architects of this design period were Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Both Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe were personally affected by World War 1, interrupting their architectural profession to become soldiers.

Two main design styles were prevalent during this rise of Modernism – the International Style and Bauhaus. The three main principles of the International Style include the expression of volume rather than mass, the emphasis on balance rather than reconceived symmetry, and the expulsion of applied ornament. The International Style finds common ground with De Stijl, Deutscher Werkbund, and the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus movement was very important, for it sought to reunite art with architecture, but specifically industrial design. All of the arts were brought together under Bauhaus and made of equal importance.

All of the architects involved in the Modernist movement were very passionate about their work. They all wanted to make use out of what they had and desired to uplift the struggling economy. Their design strategies and material choices were so influential that the style is still widely used to this day.

Design Examples

The Winslow House (1893)
Frank Lloyd Wright

Villa Savoyne
Le Corbusier

The Tugendhat House (1930)
Mies van der Rohe

Current Application

One Step Further

Walter Gropius was born in Germany and is known for being the founder of the Bauhaus School. He is also regarded as one of the masters of modernist architecture along with Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Gropius started working for Peter Behrens in 1908, alongside Mies and Corbusier. It is interesting to note that he had next to no drawing ability, so he often hired people to draw for him or relied on his coworkers; however, this inability to draw did not hinder him from starting his own firm in 1910. Gropius, along with Adolf Meyer, designed a glass curtain wall for a factory and it was considered one of the founding monuments of modernism. Gropius also published a text titled “The Development of Industrial Buildings” which influenced other modernists, including Corbusier.

This progress was stalled by World War 1 when Gropius was drafted in 1914 and served as both a sergeant major and a lieutenant on the Western front. When the war ended, Gropius returned to his career and replaced Henry van de Velde as the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar and transformed the school into the Bauhaus. Under this experimental program, he produced the armchair F 51 as well as his famous door handles.

The rise of Hitler forced Gropius out of Germany and into the United States. He built a house for his family in Lincoln, Massachusetts and brought International Modernism to America. He then moved to Cambridge and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1937 and then was appointed chairman of the Department of Architecture in 1938. Before his retirement, he also founded The Architects’ Collaborative based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. TAC was one of the most respected architectural firms in the world until its bankruptcy in 1995.

Walter Gropius was a very influential designer, and even after his death his architectural works were archived in both Berlin and Harvard. His house in Lincoln Massachusetts was added to the National Register of Historic Places and a Bauhaus Center was founded in Israel to commemorate the style of architecture Gropius was so influential in.