The
International Style of architecture had appeared in Europe, particularly in the
Bauhaus movement, in the late 1920s. In 1932 it was recognized and given a name at an Exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City organized by architect
Philip Johnson and architectural critic
Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Between 1937 and 1941, following the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, most of the leaders of the German Bauhaus movement found a new home in the United States, and played an important part in the development of American modern architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum File:Lakeland FSC Pfeiffer Chapel01.jpg|The Pfeiffer Chapel at
Florida Southern College by Frank Lloyd Wright (1941–1958) File:Building, globe, and grounds of the S.C. Johnson and son headquarters building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Racine, Wisconsin LCCN2011634906.jpg|The tower of the
Johnson Wax Headquarters and Research Center (1944–50) File:Price Tower - Bartlesville.jpg|The
Price Tower in
Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1956) File:NYC - Guggenheim Museum.jpg|
Solomon Guggenheim Museum, by
Frank Lloyd Wright (1946–1959)
Frank Lloyd Wright was eighty years old in 1947; he had been present at the beginning of American modernism, and though he refused to accept that he belonged to any movement, continued to play a leading role almost to its end. One of his most original late projects was the campus of
Florida Southern College in
Lakeland, Florida, begun in 1941 and completed in 1943. He designed nine new buildings in a style that he described as "The
Child of the Sun". He wrote that he wanted the campus to "grow out of the ground and into the light, a child of the sun". He completed several notable projects in the 1940s, including the
Johnson Wax Headquarters and the
Price Tower in
Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1956). The building is unusual that it is supported by its central core of four elevator shafts; the rest of the building is cantilevered to this core, like the branches of a tree. Wright originally planned the structure for an apartment building in New York City. That project was cancelled because of the
Great Depression, and he adapted the design for an oil pipeline and equipment company in Oklahoma. He wrote that in New York City his building would have been lost in a forest of tall buildings, but that in Oklahoma it stood alone. The design is asymmetrical; each side is different. In 1943 he was commissioned by the art collector
Solomon R. Guggenheim to design a museum for his collection of modern art. His design was entirely original; a bowl-shaped building with a spiral ramp inside that led museum visitors on an upward tour of the art of the 20th century. Work began in 1946 but it was not completed until 1959, the year that he died.
Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer File:Story Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.jpg|Story Hall of the
Harvard Law School by
Walter Gropius and (
The Architects Collaborative) File:Stillman Photo 2.jpeg|The
Stillman House I,
Litchfield, Connecticut, by
Marcel Breuer (1950) The swimming pool mural is by
Alexander Calder File:Walter Gropius photo MetLife Building fassade New York USA 2005-10-03.jpg|The PanAm building (Now
MetLife Building) in New York, by
Walter Gropius and
The Architects Collaborative (1958–63)
Walter Gropius, the founder of the
Bauhaus, moved to England in 1934 and spent three years there before being invited to the United States by Walter Hudnut of the
Harvard Graduate School of Design; Gropius became the head of the architecture faculty.
Marcel Breuer, who had worked with him at the Bauhaus, joined him and opened an office in Cambridge. The fame of Gropius and Breuer attracted many students, who themselves became famous architects, including
Ieoh Ming Pei and
Philip Johnson. They did not receive an important commission until 1941, when they designed housing for workers in Kensington, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh., In 1945 Gropius and Breuer associated with a group of younger architects under the name TAC (
The Architects Collaborative). Their notable works included the building of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1956–57), and the headquarters of Pan American Airways in New York (1958–63).
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe File:VT16_PD_zahrada.jpg|
Villa Tugendhat in
Brno, Czech Republic (1928–30) File:Farnsworth House by Mies Van Der Rohe - exterior-8.jpg|The
Farnsworth House in
Plano, Illinois (1945–51) File:S.R. Crown Hall.jpg|
Crown Hall at the
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (1956) File:Seagrambuilding.jpg|The
Seagram Building, New York City, 1958, by
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe described his architecture with the famous saying, "Less is more". As the director of the school of architecture of what is now called the
Illinois Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1956, Mies (as he was commonly known) made Chicago the leading city for American modernism in the postwar years. He constructed new buildings for the Institute in modernist style, two high-rise apartment buildings on Lakeshore Drive (1948–51), which became models for high-rises across the country. Other major works included
Farnsworth House in
Plano, Illinois (1945–1951), a simple horizontal glass box that had an enormous influence on American residential architecture. The Chicago Convention Center (1952–54) and
Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1950–56), and The
Seagram Building in New York City (1954–58) also set a new standard for purity and elegance. Based on granite pillars, the smooth glass and steel walls were given a touch of color by the use of bronze-toned I-beams in the structure. He returned to Germany in 1962–68 to build the new Nationalgallerie in Berlin. His students and followers included
Philip Johnson, and
Eero Saarinen, whose work was substantially influenced by his ideas.
Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames File:Eames House0.jpg|
Eames House by
Charles and Ray Eames,
Pacific Palisades, (1949) File:NeutraOfficeBldg.1.jpg|
Neutra Office Building by
Richard Neutra in Los Angeles (1950) File:Constance Perkins House.jpg|The
Constance Perkins House by
Richard Neutra, Los Angeles (1962) Influential residential architects in the new style in the United States included
Richard Neutra and
Charles and Ray Eames. The most celebrated work of the Eames was
Eames House in
Pacific Palisades, California, (1949) Charles Eames in collaboration with
Eero Saarinen It is composed of two structures, an architects residence and his studio, joined in the form of an L. The house, influenced by Japanese architecture, is made of translucent and transparent panels organized in simple volumes, often using natural materials, supported on a steel framework. The frame of the house was assembled in sixteen hours by five workmen. He brightened up his buildings with panels of pure colors.
Richard Neutra continued to build influential houses in Los Angeles, using the theme of the simple box. Many of these houses erased the line distinction between indoor and outdoor spaces with walls of plate glass. Neutra's
Constance Perkins House in
Pasadena, California (1962) was re-examination of the modest single-family dwelling. It was built of inexpensive material–wood, plaster, and glass–and completed at a cost of just under $18,000. Neutra scaled the house to the physical dimensions of its owner, a small woman. It features a reflecting pool which meanders under of the glass walls of the house. One of Neutra's most unusual buildings was
Shepherd's Grove in
Garden Grove, California, which featured an adjoining parking lot where worshippers could follow the service without leaving their cars.
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Wallace K. Harrison File:Manhattan House 65 jeh.JPG|
Manhattan House by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (1950–51) File:Lever House by David Shankbone.jpg|
Lever House by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (1951–52) File:Manufacturers Trust Company Building 510 Fifth Avenue.jpg|
Manufacturers Trust Company Building, by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York City (1954) File:Yale-beinecke-library.jpg|
Beinecke Library at
Yale University by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (1963) File:United Nations Headquarters.JPG|
United Nations Headquarters in New York, by
Wallace Harrison with
Oscar Niemeyer and
Le Corbusier (1952) File:CFiorentini007.jpg|The
Metropolitan Opera House at
Lincoln Center in New York City by
Wallace Harrison (1966) Many of the notable modern buildings in the postwar years were produced by two architectural mega-agencies, which brought together large teams of designers for very complex projects. The firm of
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was founded in Chicago in 1936 by
Louis Skidmore and
Nathaniel Owings, and joined in 1939 by engineer
John Merrill, It soon went under the name of SOM. Its first big project was
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the gigantic government installation that produced plutonium for the first nuclear weapons. In 1964 the firm had eighteen "partner-owners", 54 "associate participants, "and 750 architects, technicians, designers, decorators, and landscape architects. Their style was largely inspired by the work of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and their buildings soon had a large place in the New York skyline, including the
Manhattan House (1950–51),
Lever House (1951–52) and the
Manufacturers Trust Company Building (1954). Later buildings by the firm include
Beinecke Library at
Yale University (1963), the
Willis Tower, formerly Sears Tower in Chicago (1973) and
One World Trade Center in New York City (2013), which replaced the building destroyed in the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001.
Wallace Harrison played a major part in the modern architectural history of New York; as the architectural advisor of the
Rockefeller Family, he helped design
Rockefeller Center, the major Art Deco architectural project of the 1930s. He was supervising architect for the 1939 New York World's Fair, and, with his partner
Max Abramowitz, was the builder and chief architect of the
headquarters of the United Nations; Harrison headed a committee of international architects, which included
Oscar Niemeyer (who produced the original plan approved by the committee) and
Le Corbusier. Other landmark New York buildings designed by Harrison and his firm included
Metropolitan Opera House, the master plan for
Lincoln Center, and
John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Philip Johnson File:Glasshouse-philip-johnson.jpg|The
Glass House by
Philip Johnson in
New Canaan, Connecticut (1953) File:IDS reflecting Wells Fargo.jpg|The
IDS Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Philip Johnson (1969–72) File:Crys-ext.jpg|The
Crystal Cathedral by Philip Johnson (1977–80) File:Williamstower.jpg|The
Williams Tower in
Houston, Texas, by Philip Johnson (1981–1983) File:Pittsburgh-pennsylvania-ppg-place-2007.jpg|
PPG Place in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by Philip Johnson (1981–84)
Philip Johnson (1906–2005) was one of the youngest and last major figures in American modern architecture. He trained at Harvard with Walter Gropius, then was director of the department of architecture and modern design at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1946 to 1954. In 1947, he published a book about
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and in 1953 designed his own residence, the
Glass House in
New Canaan, Connecticut in a style modeled after Mies's
Farnsworth House. Beginning in 1955 he began to go in his own direction, moving gradually toward expressionism with designs that increasingly departed from the orthodoxies of modern architecture. His final and decisive break with modern architecture was the AT&T Building (later known as the Sony Tower), and now the
550 Madison Avenue in New York City, (1979) an essentially modernist skyscraper completely altered by the addition of broken
pediment with a circular opening. This building is generally considered to mark the beginning of
Postmodern architecture in the United States.
Eero Saarinen File:St Louis night expblend cropped.jpg|The
Gateway Arch in
Saint Louis, Missouri (1948–1965) File:Warren - General Motors Technical Center (50826111923).jpg|Main building of the
General Motors Technical Center (1949–55) File:Ingalls Rink Highsmith.jpg|The
Ingalls Rink in
New Haven, Connecticut (1953–58) File:Jfkairport.jpg|The TWA Terminal at JFK Airport in New York, by
Eero Saarinen (1956–62)
Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) was the son of
Eliel Saarinen, the most famous Finnish architect of the Art Nouveau period, who emigrated to the United States in 1923, when Eero was thirteen. He studied art and sculpture at the academy where his father taught, and then at the
Académie de la Grande Chaumière Academy in Paris before studying architecture at Yale University. His architectural designs were more like enormous pieces of sculpture than traditional modern buildings; he broke away from the elegant boxes inspired by Mies van der Rohe and used instead sweeping curves and parabolas, like the wings of birds. In 1948 he conceived the idea of a monument in St. Louis, Missouri in the form of a parabolic arch 192 meters high, made of stainless steel (1948). He then designed the
General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan (1949–55), a glass modernist box in the style of Mies van der Rohe, followed by the IBM Research Center in Yorktown, Virginia (1957–61). His next works were a major departure in style; he produced a particularly striking sculptural design for the
Ingalls Rink in
New Haven, Connecticut (1956–59, an ice skiing rink with a parabolic roof suspended from cables, which served as a preliminary model for next and most famous work, the
TWA Terminal at JFK airport in New York (1956–1962). His declared intention was to design a building that was distinctive and memorable, and also one that would capture the particular excitement of passengers before a journey. The structure is separated into four white concrete parabolic vaults, which together resemble a bird on the ground perched for flight. Each of the four curving roof vaults has two sides attached to columns in a Y form just outside the structure. One of the angles of each shell is lightly raised, and the other is attached to the center of the structure. The roof is connected with the ground by curtain walls of glass. All of the details inside the building, including the benches, counters, escalators, and clocks, were designed in the same style.
Louis Kahn File:First Unitarian Church of Rochester NY North Side at West end 1227-8.jpg|The
First Unitarian Church of Rochester by Louis Kahn (1962) File:Salk Institute 2.jpg|The
Salk Institute by
Louis Kahn (1962–63) File:WTP2 Mike Reali 01d.jpg|
Richards Medical Research Laboratories by Louis Kahn (1957–61) File:Kimbell Art Museum Dusk Highsmith.jpg|The
Kimball Art Museum in
Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72) File:Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (Roehl).jpg|The
National Parliament Building in
Dhaka,
Bangladesh (1962–74)
Louis Kahn (1901–74) was another American architect who moved away from the Mies van der Rohe model of the glass box, and other dogmas of the prevailing international style. He borrowed from a wide variety of styles, and idioms, including neoclassicism. He was a professor of architecture at Yale University from 1947 to 1957, where his students included
Eero Saarinen. From 1957 until his death he was a professor of architecture at the
University of Pennsylvania. His work and ideas influenced
Philip Johnson,
Minoru Yamasaki, and
Edward Durell Stone as they moved toward a more neoclassical style. Unlike Mies, he did not try to make his buildings look light; he constructed mainly with concrete and brick, and made his buildings look monumental and solid. He drew from a wide variety of different sources; the towers of
Richards Medical Research Laboratories were inspired by the architecture of the Renaissance towns he had seen in Italy as a resident architect at the
American Academy in Rome in 1950. Notable buildings by Kahn in the United States include the
First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York (1962); and the
Kimball Art Museum in
Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72). Following the example of
Le Corbusier and his design of the government buildings in
Chandigarh, the capital city of the
Haryana &
Punjab State of India, Kahn designed the
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in
Dhaka,
Bangladesh (1962–74), when that country won independence from Pakistan. It was Kahn's last work.
I. M. Pei File:Green Building, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.JPG|
Green Building at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology by
I. M. Pei (1962–64) File:National Center for Atmospheric Research - Boulder, Colorado.jpg|The
National Center for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colorado by I. M. Pei (1963–67) File:Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell Univ Ithaca NY USA.jpg|
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at
Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York by I. M. Pei (1973) File:National Gallery East Wing by Matthew Bisanz.JPG|East Wing of the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., by I M. Pei (1978) File:Louvre Museum Wikimedia Commons.jpg|Pyramid of the
Louvre Museum in Paris by I. M. Pei (1983–89)
I. M. Pei (1917–2019) was a major figure in late modernism and the debut of
Post-modern architecture. He was born in China and educated in the United States, studying architecture at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While the architecture school there still trained in the
Beaux-Arts architecture style, Pei discovered the writings of
Le Corbusier, and a two-day visit by Le Corbusier to the campus in 1935 had a major impact on Pei's ideas of architecture. In the late 1930s, he moved to the
Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied with
Walter Gropius and
Marcel Breuer and became deeply involved in Modernism. After the war he worked on large projects for the New York real estate developer
William Zeckendorf, before breaking away and starting his own firm. One of the first buildings his own firm designed was the
Green Building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While the clean modernist façade was admired, the building developed an unexpected problem; it created a wind tunnel effect, and in strong winds the doors could not be opened. Pei was forced to construct a tunnel so visitors could enter the building during high winds. Between 1963 and 1967 Pei designed the
Mesa Laboratory for the
National Center for Atmospheric Research outside
Boulder, Colorado, in an open area at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The project differed from Pei's earlier urban work; it would rest in an open area in the foothills of the
Rocky Mountains. His design was a striking departure from traditional modernism; it looked as if it were carved out of the side of the mountain. In the late modernist area, art museums bypassed skyscrapers as the most prestigious architectural projects; they offered greater possibilities for innovation in form and more visibility. Pei established himself with his design for the
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at
Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York (1973), which was praised for its imaginative use of a small space, and its respect for the landscape and other buildings around it. This led to the commission for one of the most important museum projects of the period, the new East Wing of the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, completed in 1978, and to another of Pei's most famous projects, the pyramid at the entrance of
Louvre Museum in Paris (1983–89). Pei chose the pyramid as the form that best harmonized with the Renaissance and neoclassical forms of the historic Louvre, as well as for its associations with Napoleon and the
Battle of the Pyramids. Each face of the pyramid is supported by 128 beams of stainless steel, supporting 675 panels of glass, each .
Fazlur Rahman Khan File:Hancock_tower_2006.jpg|
John Hancock Center in Chicago by
Fazlur Rahman Khan was the first building to use X-bracing to create the trussed-tube design. File:2004-07-14_2600x1500_chicago_lake_skyline.jpg|
Willis Tower in Chicago was the first building to use the bundled-tube design. In 1955, employed by the architectural firm
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), he began working in Chicago. He was made a partner in 1966. He worked the rest of his life side by side with Architect Bruce Graham. Khan introduced design methods and concepts for efficient use of material in building architecture. His first building to employ the tube structure was the
Chestnut De-Witt apartment building. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became noted for his designs for Chicago's 100-story
John Hancock Center, which was the first building to use the trussed-tube design, and 110-story Sears Tower, since renamed
Willis Tower, the tallest building in the world from 1973 until 1998, which was the first building to use the framed-tube design. He believed that engineers needed a broader perspective on life, saying, "The technical man must not be lost in his own technology; he must be able to appreciate life, and life is art, drama, music, and most importantly, people." Khan's personal papers, most of which were in his office at the time of his death, are held by the
Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the
Art Institute of Chicago. The Fazlur Khan Collection includes manuscripts, sketches, audio cassette tapes, slides and other materials regarding his work. Khan's seminal work of developing tall building structural systems are still used today as the starting point when considering design options for tall buildings. Tube structures have since been used in many skyscrapers, including the
construction of the World Trade Center,
Aon Centre,
Petronas Towers,
Jin Mao Building,
Bank of China Tower and most other buildings in excess of 40 stories constructed since the 1960s. The strong influence of tube structure design is also evident in the world's current tallest skyscraper, the
Burj Khalifa in
Dubai. According to Stephen Bayley of
The Daily Telegraph:
Minoru Yamasaki File: Skyline_Twin_Towers_Sander_Lamme.jpg|The Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center (1973–2001) in
Lower Manhattan by
Minoru Yamasaki (1913–1986) File: Pruitt-igoeUSGS02.jpg|The
Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments Housing Project, in
St. Louis (1955–1976) File: CenturyPlazaTowers.jpg|The
Century Plaza Towers in Los Angeles, California (1975) File:OneWoodwardAvenue.JPG|
One Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan (1962) In the United States, Minoru Yamasaki found major independent success in implementing unique engineering solutions to then-complicated problems, including the space that elevator shafts took up on each floor, and dealing with his personal fear of heights. During this period, he created a number of office buildings which led to his innovative design of the towers of the World Trade Center in 1964, which began construction 21 March 1966. The first of the towers was finished in 1970. Many of his buildings feature superficial details inspired by the pointed arches of
Gothic architecture, and make use of extremely narrow vertical windows. This narrow-windowed style arose from his own personal
fear of heights. One particular design challenge of the World Trade Center's design related to the efficacy of the elevator system, which was unique in the world. Yamasaki integrated the fastest elevators at the time, running at 1,700 feet per minute. Instead of placing a large traditional elevator shaft in the core of each tower, Yamasaki created the Twin Towers' "
Skylobby" system. The Skylobby design created three separate, connected elevator systems which would serve different segments of the building, depending on which floor was chosen, saving approximately 70% of the space used for a traditional shaft. The space saved was then used for office space. In addition to these accomplishments, he had also designed the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, the largest ever housing project built in the United States, which was fully torn down in 1976 due to bad market conditions and the decrepit state of the buildings themselves. Separately, he had also designed the Century Plaza Towers and One Woodward Avenue, among 63 other projects he had developed during his career. ==Postwar modernism in Europe (1945–1975)==