THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE HENRY-RUSSELL HITCHCOCK AND PHILIP JOHNSON With a new foreword by Philip Johnson oa W. W. Norton & Company New York + LondonI INTRODUCTION The Idea of Style The light and airy systems of construction of the Gothic cathedrals, the freedom and slenderness of their supporting skeleton, afford, as it were, a presage of a style that began to develop in the nineteenth century, that of ‘metallic architecture. With the use of metal, and of concrete reinforced by metal bars, modern builders could equal the most daring feats of Gothic architects without endangering the solidity of the structure. In the conflict that obtains between the two elements of construction, solidity and open space, everything seems to show that the principle of free spaces will prevail, that the palaces and houses of the future will be flooded with air and light. Thus the formula popularized by Gothic architecture has a great future before it. Following on the revival of Graeco-Roman architecture which prevailed from the sixteenth century to our own day, we shall see, with the 3334 {full application of different materials, a yet more enduring rebirth of the Gothic style. Salomon Reinach, Apouo, 1904 Sei the middle of the eighteenth century there have been recurrent attempts to achieve and to impose a controlling style in architecture such as existed in the earlier epochs of the past. The two chief of these attempts were the Classical Revival and the Medieval Revival. Out of the compromises between these two opposing schools and the difficulties of reconciling either sort of revivalism with the new needs and the new methods of construc- tion of the day grew the stylistic confusion of the last hundred years. The nineteenth century failed to create a style of architecture because it was unable to achieve a general discipline of structure and of design in the terms of the day. The revived “styles” were but a decorative garment to architecture, not the interior princi- ples according to which it lived and grew. On the whole the de- velopment of engineering in building went on regardless of the Classical or Medieval architectural forms which were borrowed from the past. Thus the chaos of eclecticism served to give the very idea of style a bad name in the estimation of the first modern architects of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century there was always not one style, but “styles,” and the idea of “styles” implied a choice. The individu- alistic revolt of the first modern architects destroyed the prestige of the “styles,” but it did not remove the implication that there was a possibility of choice between one esthetic conception of design and another. In their reaction against revivalism these men sought rather to explore a great variety of free possibilities.The result, on the whole, added to the confusion of continuing eclecticism, although the new work possessed a general vitality which the later revivalists had quite lost. The revolt from stylistic discipline to extreme individualism at the beginning of the twen- tieth century was justified as the surest issue from an impasse of imitation and sterility. The individualists decried submission to fixed esthetic principles as the imposition of a dead hand upon the living material of architecture, holding up the failure of the revivals as a proof that the very idea of style was an unhealthy delusion. Today the strict issue of reviving the styles of the distant past is no longer one of serious consequence. But the peculiar tradi- tions of imitation and modification of the styles of the past, which eclecticism inherited from the earlier Classical and Medieval Revivals, have not been easily forgotten. The influence of the past still most to be feared is that of the nineteenth century with its cheapening of the very idea of style. Modern architecture has nothing but the healthiest lessons to learn from the art of the fur- ther past, if that art be studied scientifically and not in a spirit of imitation. Now that it is possible to emulate the great styles of the past in their essence without imitating their surface, the problem of establishing one dominant style, which the nineteenth century set itself in terms of alternative revivals, is coming to a solution. The idea of style, which began to degenerate when the revivals destroyed the disciplines of the Baroque, has become real and fertile again. Today a single new style has come into existence. The esthetic conceptions on which its disciplines are based de- rive from the experimentation of the individualists. They and not the revivalists were the immediate masters of those who have created the new style. This contemporary style, which exists throughout the world, is unified and inclusive, not fragmentary and contradictory like so much of the production of the first gen- 3536 eration of modern architects. In the last decade it has produced sufficient monuments of distinction te display its validity and its vitality. It may fairly be compared in significance with the styles of the past. In the handling of the problems of structure it is re~ lated to the Gothic, in the handling of the problems of design it is more akin to the Classical. In the preéminence given to the han- dling of function it is distinguished from both. The unconscious and halting architectural developments of the nineteenth century, the confused and contradictory experi- mentation of the beginning of the twentieth, have been suc- ceeded by a directed evolution. There is now a single body of discipline, fixed enough to integrate contemporary style as a re- ality and yet elastic enough to permit individual interpretation and to encourage general growth. The idea of style as the frame of potential growth, rather than as a fixed and crushing mould, has developed with the recogni- tion of underlying principles such as archeologists discern in the great styles of the past. The principles are few and broad. They are not mere formulas of proportion such as distinguish the Doric from the Ionic order; they are fundamental, like the organic verti- cality of the Gothic or the rhythmical symmetry of the Baroque. There is, first, a new conception of architecture as volume rather than as mass. Secondly, regularity rather than axial symmetry serves as the chief means of ordering design. These two princi- ples, with a third proscribing arbitrary applied decoration, mark the productions of the international style. This new style is not international in the sense that the production of one country is just like that of another. Nor is it so rigid that the work of various leaders is not clearly distinguishable. The international style has become evident and definable only gradually as different innova- tors throughout the world have successfully carried out parallel experiments.In stating the general principles of the contemporary style, in analysing their derivation from structure and their modification by function, the appearance of a certain dogmatism can hardly be avoided. In opposition to those who claim that a new style of ar- chitecture is impossible or undesirable, it is necessary to stress the coherence of the results obtained within the range of possi- bilities thus far explored. For the international style already ex- ists in the present; it is not merely something the future may hold in store. Architecture is always a set of actual monuments, not a vague corpus of theory. 3738 II HISTORY ia style of the twelfth and thirteenth century was the last before our own day to be created on the basis of a new type of construction. The break away from the High Gothic in the later Middle Ages was an esthetic break without significant structural development. The Renaissance was a surface change of style generally coupled with actual regression in terms of structure. The Baroque and a fortiori the Romantic Age concerned them- selves all but exclusively with problems of design. When a cen- tury ago new structural developments in the use of metal made. their appearance they remained outside the art of architecture. The Crystal Palace at the London Exposition of 1851, Paxton’smagnificent iron and glass construction, has far more in common with the architecture of our day than with that of its own. Fer- roconcrete, to which the contemporary style owes so much, was invented in 1849. Yet it was at least fifty years before it first began to play a considerable part in architectural construction. Metal had begun to be used incidentally in architecture before the end of the eighteenth century. Thenceforth it achieved a place of increasing importance, even in buildings of the most tra- ditional design. Finally in the eighties it made possible the first skyscrapers. But on the whole the “arcades,” the train sheds, the conservatories and the exhibition halls, of which the London Crystal Palace was the earliest and the finest, were adjuncts to, or substitutes for, conventional masonry buildings. Behind the conventional story of nineteenth century revivals and eclecticism there are two further histories of architecture. One deals with the science of building alone. It traces the devel- opment of new engineering methods of construction and the gradual replacement of traditional masonry structure by succes- sive innovations. The other history deals with the development of the art of architectural design regardless of specific imitations. Design was freed here and there from the control of the past. Some architects even sought novel forms and many aimed at a more direct expression of the new methods of construction. A new art of proportioning plane surfaces, a free study of silhou- ette, even a frank use of metal appear in the work of most of the leading nineteenth century architects. Soane in England, Schin- kel and his followers in Germany, and Labrouste in France, were among these early precursors of modern architecture. Within the Classical Revival there developed a new sense of design, purer and more rational than that of the Renaissance or the Baroque, yet not restricted merely to the purity and rational- ism of the Greeks. Within the Mediaeval Revival there grew up a 39body of doctrine, based on the practice of the builders of the Middle Ages, which foreshadowed the theories of our own day. ‘There is not much to change today in the passage that has been quoted from Salomon Reinach’s Apollo. As late as 1904 it was possible to conceive of modern architecture chiefly as a sort of renaissance of the Gothic. Yet it should be stressed that the rela- tion of the modern style to the Gothic is ideological rather than visual, a matter of principle rather than a matter of practice. In design, indeed, the leading modern architects aim at Greek se- renity rather than Gothic aspiration. In writing on modern architecture some few years ago it was possible to accept that the individualists of the end of the nine- teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, who first broke consciously with the nominal discipline of the revivals, estab- lished tentatively a New Tradition. It appeared then as a sort of style in which the greatest common denominator of the various revivals was preserved and fused with the new science of build- ing. Today it seems more accurate to describe the work of the older generation of architects as half-modern. Each architect broke in his own way with the immediate past, each sought in his ‘own direction the positive elements which have been combined in the last decade. But there was no real stylistic integration until after the War. The industrial architecture of Peter Behrens in Germany in the years before the War was already extremely simplified and regular. The effect of volume began to replace the traditional ef- fect of mass. Otto Wagner, a decade earlier in Vienna, cultivated qualities of lightness and developed the plane surfaces of his ar- chitecture for their own sake. The Belgian Van de Velde experi- mented with continuity of surface, making much use of curves. Berlage at Amsterdam based his compositions on geometry and handled both old and new materials with unusual straightfor-wardness. In the constructions of Perret in France the use of fer- roconcrete led to a visible articulation of the supporting skeleton with the walls treated as mere screens between the posts. Thus in the different countries of Europe before the War the conceptions of the international style had come independently into existence. Itremained for the younger generation to combine and crystallize the various esthetic and technical results of the experimentation of their elders. But it was in America that the promise of a new style appeared first and, up to the War, advanced most rapidly. Richardson in the seventies and eighties often went as far as did the next gener- ation on the Continent in simplification of design and in direct expression of structure. Following him, Root and Sullivan de- duced from steel skyscraper construction principles which have been modified but not essentially changed by later generations. Their work of the eighties and nineties in Chicago is still too little known. We have in America only a few commercial buildings of 1900 to compare with the radical steel and glass department stores of Europe; but these few are more notable than all the sky- scrapers of the following twenty-five years. In the first decades of the new century Frank Lloyd Wright continued brilliantly the work of the Chicago school in other fields of architecture. He introduced many innovations, particu- larly in domestic building, quite as important as those of the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil in France and Germany. His open plan- ning broke the mould of the traditional house, to which Europe clung down to the War. He also was the first to conceive of ar- chitectural design in terms of planes existing freely in three di- mensions rather than in terms of enclosed blocks. Wagner, Behr- ens and Perret lightened the solid massiveness of traditional architecture; Wright dynamited it. While much of the innovation in Europe merely consisted in AL42 expressing more frankly new methods of construction within a framework of design still essentially Classical or Medieval, Wright from the beginning was radical in his esthetic experi- mentation. One may regret the lack of continuity in his develop- ment and his unwillingness to absorb the innovations of his con- temporaries and his juniors in Europe. But one cannot deny that among the architects of the older generation Wright made more contributions than any other. His consciously novel ornament may appear to lack even the vitality of the semi-traditional orna- ment of the first quarter of the century in Europe. Perret was, perhaps, a more important innovator in construction; Van de Velde showed a greater consistency and a purer taste in his esthetic experiments. But Wright preserved better the balance between the mere expression of structure and the achievement of positive form. There is, however, a definite breach between Wright and the younger architects who created the contemporary style after the War. Ever since the days when he was Sullivan’s disciple, Wright has remained an individualist. A rebel by temperament, he has refused even the disciplines of his own theories. Instead of developing some one of the manners which he has initiated, he has begun again and again with a different material or a different problem and arrived at a quite new manner. The new manner often enough contradicts some of the essential qualities of his previous work, qualities which European followers have emu- lated with distinction and used as the basis of further advance. In his refusal of the shackles of a fixed style he has created the illu- sion of infinite possible styles, like the mathematicians who have invented non-Euclidean geometries. His eternally young spirit rebels against the new style as vigorously as he rebelled against the “styles” of the nineteenth century.Wright belongs to the international style no more than Behr- ens or Perret or Van de Velde. Some of these men have been ready to learn from their juniors. They have submitted in part to the disciplines of the international style. But their work is still marked by traces of the individualistic manners they achieved in their prime. Without their work the style could hardly have come into being. Yet their individualism and their relation to the past, for all its tenuousness, makes of them not so much the creators of anew style as the last representatives of Romanticism. They are more akin to the men of a hundred years ago than to the genera- tion which has come to the fore since the War. The continued existence of Romantic individualism is not a question of architecture alone. There is a dichotomy of the spirit more profound than any mere style can ever resolve. The case against individualism in architecture lies in the fact that Wright has been almost alone in America in achieving a distinguished architecture; while in Europe, and indeed in other parts of the world as well, an increasingly large group of architects work suc- cessfully within the disciplines of the new style. There is a basic cleavage between the international style and the half-moder architecture of the beginning of the present cen- tury. We must not forget the debt that Le Corbusier, Gropius, Miés van der Rohe, Oud and the rest owe to the older men with whom they studied. We must not forget such exceptional monu- ments of the nineteenth century as the Crystal Palace. We must not dismiss as lacking historical significance the fine sense of proportion and the vigorous purity of the Classical Revival, or the splendid theories and the stupid practice of the Gothic Revival. Even the absurdities of Romantic artificial ruins and the linear and naturalistic ornament of 1900 have a place in the pedigree of the contemporary style. But the new style after ten years of exis- 43tence and growth may now be studied for itself without continual reference to the immediate past. There are certain times when a new period truly begins de- spite all the preparation that may be traced behind the event. Such a time came immediately after the War, when the interna- tional style came into being in France, in Holland, and in Ger- many. Indeed, if we follow the projects of the War years made by the Austrian Loos and the Italian Sant’ Elia, it may appear that the new style was preparing on an even broader front. While the innovations of the half-moderns were individual and indepen- dent to the point of divergence, the innovations of their juniors were parallel and complementary, already informed by the co- herent spirit of a style in the making. It is particularly in the early work of three men, Walter Gropius in Germany, Oud in Holland, and Le Corbusier in France, that the various steps in the inception of the new style must be sought. These three with Mies van der Rohe in Germany remain the great leaders of modern architecture. Gropius’ factory at Alfeld, built just before the War, came nearer to an integration of the new style than any other edifice built before 1922. In industrial architecture the tradition of the styles of the past was not repressive, as many factories of the nineteenth century well illustrate. The need for using modern construction throughout and for serving function directly was pe- cculiarly evident. Hence it was easier for Gropius to advance in this field beyond his master, Behrens, than it would have been in any other. The walls of the Alfeld factory are screens of glass with spandrels of metal at the floor levels. The crowning band of brickwork does not project beyond these screens. The purely me- chanical elements are frankly handled and give interest to a de- sign fundamentally so regular as to approach monotony. There isno applied ornamental decoration except the lettering. The orga- nization of the parts of the complex structure i8 ordered by logic and consistency rather than by axial symmetry. Yet there are traces still of the conceptions of traditional ar- chitecture. The glass screens are treated like projecting bays be- tween the visible supports. These supports are sheathed with brick so that they appear like the last fragments of the solid ma- sonry wall of the past. The entrance is symmetrical and heavy. For all its simplicity it is treated with a decorative emphasis. Gropius was not destined to achieve again so fine and so coher- ent a production in the contemporary style before the Bauhaus in 1926. There he profited from the intervening esthetic experi- mentation of the Dutch Neoplasticists. ‘Ihe Bauhaus is some- thing more than a mere development from the technical triumph of the Alfeld factory. (See illustrations on pages 150 ff.) During the years of the War, Oud in Holland came into con- tact with the group of Dutch cubist painters led by Mondriaan and Van Doesburg, who called themselves Neoplasticists. Their positive influence on his work at first was negligible. Oud re- mained for a time still a disciple of Berlage, whose half-modern manner he had previously followed rather closely. He profited also by his study of the innovations of Wright, whose work was already better known in Europe than in America. Then he sought consciously to achieve a Neoplasticist architecture and, from 1917 on, the influence of Berlage and Wright began to diminish. At the same time he found in concrete an adequate material for the expression of new conceptions of form. Oud’s projects were increasingly simple, vigorous and geometrical. On the analogy of abstract painting he came to realize the esthetic potentialities of planes in three dimensions with which Wright had already ex- perimented. He reacted sharply against the picturesqueness of 45the other followers of Berlage and sought with almost Greek fer- vor to arrive at a scheme of proportions ever purer and more reg- ular. In his first housing projects carried out for the city of Rotter- dam in 1918 and 1919 he did not advance as far as in his unex- ecuted projects. But at Oud-Mathenesse in 1921-22, although he was required to build the whole village in traditional materials and to continue the use of conventional roofs, the new style promised in his projects came into being. The avoidance of pic~ turesqueness, the severe horizontality of the composition, the perfect simplicity and consistency which he achieved in execut- ing a very complex project, all announced the conscious creation of a body of esthetic disciplines. Oud-Mathenesse exceeded Gropius’ Alfeld factory in signifi- cance if not in impressiveness. Gropius made his innovations primarily in technics, Oud in design. He undoubtedly owed the initial impetus to the Neoplasticists, but his personal manner had freed itself from dependence on painting. The models Van Doesburg made of houses in the early twenties, in collaboration with other Neoplasticists, with their abstract play of volumes and bright colors, had their own direct influence in Germany. But the man who first made the world aware that a new style was being born was Le Corbusier. As late as 1916, well after his technical and sociological theorizing had begun, his conceptions of design were still strongly marked by the Classical symmetry of his master Perret. His plans, however, were even more open than those of Wright. In his housing projects of the next few years he passed rapidly beyond his master Perret and beyond Behrens and Loos, with whom he had also come in contact. His Citrohan house model of 1921 was the thorough expression of a concep- tion of architecture as radical technically as Gropius’ factory and as novel esthetically as Oud’s village. The enormous windowarea and the terraces made possible by the use of ferroconcrete, together with the asymmetry of the composition, undoubtedly produced a design more thoroughly infused with a new spirit, more completely freed from the conventions of the past than any thus far projected. The influence of Le Corbusier was the greater, the appearance of anew style the more remarked, because of the vehement prop- aganda which he contributed to the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau, 1920-1925. Since then, moreover, he has written a series of books effectively propagandizing his technical and esthetic theories. In this way his name has become almost synonymous with the new architecture and it has been praised or condemned very largely in his person. But he was not, as we have seen, the only innovator nor was the style as it came generally into being after 1922 peculiarly his. He crystallized; he dramatized; but he was not alone in creating. When in 1922 he built at Vaucresson his first house in the new style, he failed to equal the purity of design and the boldness of construction of the Citrohan project. But the houses that im- mediately followed this, one for the painter Ozenfant, and an- other for his parents outside Vevey, passed further beyond the transitional stage than anything that Oud or Gropius were to build for several more years. Ozenfant’s sort of cubism, called Purism, had perhaps inspired Le Corbusier in his search for sources of formal inspiration for a new architecture. But on the whole Le Corbusier in these early years turned for precedent rather to steamships than to painting. Some of his early houses, such as that for the sculptor Miestchaninoff at Boulogne-sur- Seine, were definitely naval in feeling. But this marine phase was soon over like Oud’s strictly Neoplasticist phase, or the Expres- sionist period in the work of the young architects of Germany. Various external influences helped to free architecture from the 47last remnants of a lingering traditionalism. The new style dis- played its force in the rapidity with which it transmuted them beyond recognition. Miés van der Rohe advanced toward the new style less rapidly at first than Gropius. Before the War he had simplified, clarified, and lightened the domestic style of Behrens to a point that sug- gests conscious inspiration from Schinkel and Persius. After the War in two projects for skyscrapers entirely of metal and glass he carried technical innovation even further than Gropius, further indeed than anyone has yet gone in practice. These buildings would have been pure volume, glazed cages supported from within, on a scale such as not even Paxton in the nineteenth cen- tury would have dreamed possible. However, in their form, with plans based on clustered circles or sharp angles, they were ex- travagantly Romantic and strongly marked by the contemporary wave of Expressionism in Germany. It was in Miés’ projects of 1922 that his true significance as an esthetic innovator first appeared. In a design for a country house he broke with the conception of the wall as a continuous plane surrounding the plan and built up his composition of sections of intersecting planes. Thus he achieved, still with the use of sup- porting walls, a greater openness even than Le Corbusier with his ferroconcrete skeleton construction. Miés’ sense of proportions remained as serene as before the War and even more pure. This project and the constructions of Oud and Le Corbusier in this year emphasize that it is just a decade ago that the new style came into existence. The four leaders of modern architecture are Le Corbusier, Oud, Gropius and Miés van der Rohe. But others as well as they, Rietveld in Holland, Lurgat in France, even Mendelsohn in Ger- many, for all his lingering dalliance with Expressionism, took parallel steps of nearly equal importance in the years just afterthe War. The style did not spring from a single source but came into being generally. The writing of Oud and Gropius, and to a greater degree that of Le Corbusier, with the frequent publication of their projects of these years, carried the principles of the new style abroad. These projects have indeed become more famous than many executed buildings. From the first there were also critics, who were not architects, to serve as publicists. Everyone who was interested in the cre- ation of a modern architecture had to come to terms with the nas- cent style. The principles of the style that appeared already plainly by 1922 in the projects and the executed buildings of the leaders, still control today an ever increasing group of architects throughout the world. 4950 Il FuNCTIONALISM 1. part the principles of the international style were from the first voiced in the manifestoes which were the order of the day. In part they have remained unconscious, so that even now it is far simpler to sense them than to explain them or to state them categorically. Many who appear to follow them, indeed, refuse to admit their validity. Some modern critics and groups of ar- chitects both in Europe and in America deny that the esthetic element in architecture is important, or even that it exists. All esthetic principles of style are to them meaningless and unreal. This new conception, that building is science and not art, devel- oped as an exaggeration of the idea of functionalism.In its most generally accepted form the idea of functionalism is sufficiently elastic. It derives its sanctions from both Greek and Gothic architecture, for in the temple as well as in the cathe- dral the zesthetic expression is based on structure and function. In all the original styles of the past the esthetic is related to, even dependent on, the technical. The supporters of both the Classical Revival and the Medieval Revival in the nineteenth century were ready to defend much of their practice by function- alist arguments. The so-called rationalism of architects like Schinkel and Labrouste was a type of functionalism. It is vigor- ously advocated, moreover, in the archeological criticism of Vi- ollet-le-Duc and the ethical criticism of Pugin and Ruskin. Mor- ris and his disciples brought this sort of functionalist theory down to our own day, The doctrine of the contemporary anti-esthetic functionalists is much more stringent. Its basis is economic rather than ethical or archeological. Leading European critics, particularly Sieg- fried Giedion, claim with some justice that architecture has such immense practical problems to deal with in the modern world that esthetic questions must take a secondary place in architec- tural criticism. Architects like Hannes Meyer go further. They claim that interest in proportions or in problems of design for their own sake is still an unfortunate remnant of nineteenth cen- tury ideology. For these men it is an absurdity to talk about the modern style in terms of esthetics at all. If a building provides adequately, completely, and without compromise for its purpose, it is to them a good building, regardless of its appearance. Mod- em construction receives from them a straightforward expres- sion; they use standardized parts whenever possible and they avoid ornament or unnecessary detail. Any elaboration of design, any unnecessary use of specially made parts, any applied deco- 5152 ration would add to the cost of the building. It is, however, nearly impossible to organize and execute a complicated building with- out making some choices not wholly determined by technics and economics. One may therefore refuse to admit that intentionally functionalist building is quite without a potential esthetic ele- ment. Consciously or unconsciously the architect must make free choices before his design is completed. In these choices the European functionalists follow, rather than go against, the prin- ciples of the general contemporary style. Whether they admit it or not is beside the point. In America also there are both architects and critics who con- sider architecture not an art, as it has been in the past, but merely a subordinate technic of industrial civilization. Esthetic criticism of building appears to them nearly as meaningless as esthetic criticism of road building. Their attitude has been to some extent a beneficial one in its effect on American building, even from the esthetic point of view. Most European critics feel rightly that American engineers have always been far more suc- cessful with their technics than American architects with their esthetics. But to the American functionalists, unfortunately, design is a commodity like ornament. If the client insists, they still try to provide it in addition to the more tangible commodities which they believe rightly should come first. But they find one sort of design little better than another and are usually as ready to provide zigzag trimmings as rhythmical fenestration. For orna- ment can be added after the work is done and comes into no di- rect relation with the handling of function and structure. Amer- ican modernism in design is usually as superficial as the revivalism which preceded it. Most American architects would regret the loss of applied ornament and imitative design. Such |things serve to obscure the essential emptiness of skyscraper composition. The European functionalists are primarily builders, and ar- chitects only unconsciously. This has its advantages even for ar- chitecture as an art. Critics should be articulate about problems of design; but architects whose training is more technical than intellectual, can afford to be unconscious of the zsthetic effects they produce. So, it may be assumed, were many of the great builders of the past. Since the works of the European functional- ists usually fall within the limits of the international style, they may be claimed among its representatives. (Page 223 f.) Natu- rally these doctrinaires achieve works of esthetic distinction less often than some others who practice the art of architecture as as- siduously as they pursue the science of building. The American functionalists claim to be builders first. They are surely seldom architects in the fullest sense of the word. They are ready, as the European functionalists are not, to deface their building with bad architectural design if the client demands it. Nor can they claim for their skyscrapers and apartment houses the broad sociological justification that exists for the workers’ housing, the schools and hospitals of Europe. On the whole, American factories, where the client expects no money to be spent on design, are better buildings and at least negatively purer in design than those constructions in which the architect is forced by circumstances to be more than an engineer. Technical developments, moreover, are rapidly foreing almost all commer- cial and industrial building into the mould of the international style. It is not necessary to accept the contentions of the functional- ists that there is no new style or even to consider their own work still another kind of architecture. While the older generation hascontinued faithful to individualism, a set of general esthetic principles has come into use. While the functionalists continue to deny that the zsthetic element in architecture is important, more and more buildings are produced in which these principles are wisely and effectively followed without sacrifice of functional virtues.IV A First PRINCIPLE Architecture as Volume C contemporary methods of construction provide a cage or skeleton of supports. This skeleton as it appears before the build- ing is enclosed is familiar to everyone. Whether the supports are of metal or of reinforced concrete, the effect from a distance is of a grille of verticals and horizontals. For protection against the weather it is necessary that this skeleton should be in some way enclosed by walls. In traditional masonry construction the walls were themselves the supports. Now the walls are merely subordi- nate elements fitted like screens between the supports or carried like a shell outside of them. Thus the building is like a boat or an umbrella with strong internal support and a continuous outside 5556 covering. In the buildings of the past, support and protection were both provided by the same masonry wall. It is true that sup~ porting wall sections are still sometimes used in combination with skeleton construction, (Pages 133 and 217.) Isolated sup- ports, piers of metal or reinforced concrete, are, however, normal and typical. Plans may be worked out with far greater freedom than in the past. The piers of modern construction are so slight in section that they create no serious obstruction. If in given cases they might interfere, occasional supports may be omitted and their burden carried by cantilevering. Entire fagades are frequently cantilevered and the screen walls set some distance outside the supports. (Pages 118 and 172.) Symbolically the indication of modern plans is reduced to points representing support and lines representing separation and protection from the weather. No lon- ger do we find the solid blocks of bearing walls and piers of ma~ sonry. The plan can be composed almost entirely in terms of the needs it must provide for, with only minimal concessions to the inescapable needs of sound construction. The effect of mass, of static solidity, hitherto the prime quality of architecture, has all but disappeared; in its place there is an effect of volume, or more accurately, of plane surfaces bounding a volume. The prime architectural symbol is no longer the dense brick but the open box. Indeed, the great majority of buildings are in reality, as well as in effect, mere planes surrounding a vol- ume. With skeleton construction enveloped only by a protective screen, the architect can hardly avoid achieving this effect of surface of volume unless, in deference to traditional design in terms of mass, he goes out of his way to obtain the contrary effect. The European functionalists conform unconsciously to this principle of the international style without accepting its validity as an esthetic discipline. The American functionalists, however,often load their surfaces, thus obscuring with an effect of solidity and weight the non-supporting character of their wall screens. If they design at all—and except in factories the client usually de- mands some sort of applied design—they design still in mass. A striking contrast is familiar to everyone as it appears in buildings under construction: the strong light cage of steel, and the heavy solid-appearing walls with which it is gradually covered. The greater simplicity of the newer skyscrapers, the increase in the window area and the growing awareness of the international style are reducing little by little this superficial heaviness. But thus far the more expensive the building, the more surely is there a con- flict between its true character as an enclosed steel cage and the apparent mass of its vertical buttressing and its pyramidal com- position. Of course this pyramidal composition is required in high buildings by the zoning laws. Present American zoning laws are at best pseudo-functional. They attempt merely to ameliorate the sociological and technical difficulties inherent in crowding tall buildings together on narrow streets. Proper zoning laws would require the spacing of skyscrapers far enough apart so that they might rise straight to the top without setbacks. Set- backs complicate the structure and provide relatively little ter- race space, nor do they adequately protect the light and air of neighboring buildings. The criticism that accepts the present zoning laws as beneficent is mistaken. If that criticism is esthetic, it rests on the false assumption that skyscrapers are mere enlargements of the masonry towers of the past. If the criticism is functional, it has failed to go to the root of the urban problem. Skyscrapers have their proper place in the modern city, but they must be so widely spaced that they re- lieve congestion rather than aggravate it. The McGraw-Hill Building (Page 163) comes nearest toachieving esthetically the expression of the enclosed steel cage, but it is still partially distorted into the old silhouette of the mas- sive tower. The setbacks are, of course, required by the zoning law, but they are arranged without subtlety. The unnecessary py- ramidal feature which crowns the structure is inexcusably heavy. Yet the architect, Raymond Hood, in the Daily News Building of the previous year, which is in other ways less pure in expression, handled the setbacks so that they did not suggest steps and brought his building to a clear stop without decorative or termi- nal features. This has also been justly criticised by those func- tionalists whose ideology is more European. For the water-tanks and elevator machinery which have to find a place on top of a large building are there, hidden within the shell of the main structure. These various objections, which place both of these buildings as something less than distinguished architecture, are implicit in American conditions. Only the acceptance of a thoroughgoing zsthetic discipline by our architects would make it possible for our skyscrapers to be finer than our factories. For our factories, unless the client has called for embellishment, are like the con- structions of the European functionalists. They exist clearly and effectively as the surfaces of volumes, even though the architect has never accepted the zesthetic principle that they should do so. In the past the great styles became something more than a cer- tain sort of construction, or a certain repertory of ornament. Post and lintel construction was used in Egyptian architecture as well as Greek. Romanesque churches achieved nearly as great a sci- ence and elaboration of vaulting as did the later ones of the Gothic age. The Gothic architects emphasized the impression of height and of orderly multiplicity of organically related parts; the Greek architects so adjusted their design as to give their build- ings the plastic somatic character of their sculpture. Style ischaracter, style is expression; but even character must be dis- played and expression may be conscious and clear, or muddled and deceptive. The architect who builds in the international style seeks to display the true character of his construction and to ex- press clearly his provision for function. He prefers such an orga- nization of his general composition, such a use of available sur- face materials, and such a handling of detail as will increase rather than contradict the prime effect of surface of volume. In giving this effect the flat roofs normal with modern methods. of construction have an essential esthetic significance. Roofs with a single slant, however, have occasionally been used with success. For they are less massive and simpler than the gabled roofs usual on the buildings of the past. Flat roofs are so much more useful that slanting or rounded roofs are only exceptionally justified. The clarity of the impression of volume is diminished by any sort of complication. Volume is felt as immaterial and weightless, a geometrically bounded space. Subsidiary projecting parts of a Hence a compact and unified building are likely to appear s solution of a complex problem will be best esthetically as well as economically. The massiveness of the architecture of the past was felt as gravitational, with surface and content one. Being heavy, massive architecture demanded the appearance of sup- port such as could be given by a piling up of the parts. This sort of stability, like that of a wood pile, our tenuous cage construc- tion does not give. The sense of internal support is, on the other hand, increased by the avoidance of subsidiary parts and by the achievement as far as possible of the effect of a single volume with continuous surfaces. Thus as a corollary of the principle of surface of volume there is the further requirement that the surfaces shall be unbroken in effect, like a skin tightly stretched over the supporting skeleton. 5960 The apparent tensions of a masonry wall are directly gravita- tional, although they are actually modified more or less by the use of lintels and arches. The apparent tensions of screen walls are not thus polarized in a vertical direction, but are felt to exist in all directions, as in a stretched textile. Hence the breaking of the wall surface by placing windows at the inner instead of at the outer edge of the wall is a serious fault of design. (Pages 159 and 232.) For the glass of the windows is now an integral part of the enclosing screen rather than a hole in the wall as it was in ma- sonry construction. Where the roof is supported on sections of wall rather than on isolated posts, only the non-supporting sections are really screens. Yet the discipline of the general style is better served if the contrast between the supporting wall surfaces and the non- supporting surfaces is not over-emphasized. Such construction with a reinforced concrete roof slab is still more like the normal modern cage construction than like traditional masonry con- struction. (Page 133.) This is a special case which demands on the part of the designer unusual tact and sense of the style. Such exceptions must always be borne in mind by the critic. Their suc- cessful incorporation in the style according to the spirit, if not the letter, of the fundamental disciplines makes the existence of a contemporary style difficult to dispute. The ordering of the openings in the wall surface is quite as important as the avoidance of apparent reveals in the preserva- tion of the integrity of the wall plane. But questions of order fall more logically in a later section of this discussion. Needless to say, the more consistently a surface is arranged, the more con- spicuous will be its character as a surface. Contemporary build- ings often have entire walls of transparent glass constituting one enormous window. The frames of the panes in such walls must be light enough to be distinguished from true supports. (Pages 156and 191.) Otherwise these subordinate divisions will so break up the surface into panels that its continuous character is confused. Even though the independent supporting skeleton is perfectly clearly seen behind, such a panelled treatment appears to have weight if not mass. Such altogether transparent walls are not by any means the easiest for the architect to handle effectively. They no longer appear the extreme toward which the develop- ment of the contemporary style inevitably leads. Indeed, as the Crystal Palace of the last century and the steel and glass depart- ment stores of 1900 suggest, such maximal fenestration was a preparation for the development of a more general principle of modern design: that of emphasizing the surfaces whether they are opaque or transparent. Windows constitute a more important element in modern ar- chitecture than they have in any architecture since that of the Gothic cathedrals. They are the most conspicuous features of modern exterior design. Their handling is therefore an xsthetic problem of the greatest importance. The very effect of volume that is sought in choosing surfacing materials can easily be diluted or contradicted by bad fenestration. Window frames unavoidably break the general wall surface and if they are heavy tend to make the window a mere hole in the wall quite as much as do reveals. (Pages 139 and 179.) Light simple frames, preferably of durable non-corroding metal in standardized units, are to be desired as much esthetically as practically. (Pages 155 and 173.) Non-corroding metals are still rather expensive. Moreover standardized metal frames have not yet come into use everywhere. But the general development in this direction is undeniable and one of happy augury for the con- temporary style. Wooden window frames are becoming a makeshift. Yet many architects have been able to make them appear hardly heavier 61than metal ones. Some of the finest examples of fenestration in modern architecture are executed in wood, (Pages 113 and 127.) Of course the elegance which is obtained by light frames and muntins goes for nothing if the windows are badly subdivided and badly placed in the general design. The spirit of the principle of surface covers many exceptions to its letter. The type of construction represented by Miés van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion, (Page 187), as well as that repre- sented in Le Corbusier’s house at Le Pradet, (Page 133), leads to a treatment of surfaces sensibly different from that which has been primarily stressed here. These works, nevertheless, testify that their designers are extending the possibilities of the contem- porary style. In each of these buildings the surfaces are empha- sized and their continuity made evident although their relation to the supporting construction is less simple than in most buildings. In the Barcelona pavilion the walls are screens but they do not define a fixed volume. The volume beneath the post-supported slab roof is in a sense bounded by imaginary planes. The walls are independent screens set up within this total volume, having each a separate existence and creating subordinate volumes. The design is unified by the slab roof on its regular supports, not by the usual continuous exterior screen wall. In the Le Pradet house by Le Corbusier sections of rubble ma- sonry wall provide the main support and isolated piers are used only subordinately. These supporting sections are unbroken by windows and widely separated by wall areas entirely of glass. As in the Barcelona pavilion the enclosing volume is defined by the continuous slab roof. The exterior surfaces are not continuous. because they are of two sorts, unbroken masonry walls and inter- vening glass screens. But the two sorts of surfaces are both treated in a way to emphasize their specific characters. The sup- porting walls are rough and solid in appearance; the intermediatescreens, light, smooth and transparent. The two sorts are care- fully related in proportion. The use of a special type of construc- tion suited to the particular problem of a Riviera country house has led to a special type of design. The expression is related to the general principle of surface of volume but not restricted by it. Thus the prime principles of the great styles of the past were ap- plied in exceptional cases. This special type of design has its place in the general contemporary style as much as astylar build- ings in Greek architecture or unvaulted construction in the Gothic. The principle of surface of volume intelligently understood will always lead to special applications where the construction is not the typical cage or skeleton of supports surrounded by a pro- tecting screen. The apparent exception may not prove the valid- ity of the general principle, but it undoubtedly indicates its elas- ticity. Rigid rules of design are easily broken once and for all; elastic principles of architecture grow and flourish. Forgetting neither the origins in a certain type of construction nor the possi- bilities which lie always ahead, architects should find in such principles as that of surface of volume a sure and continuing guidance as the international style develops. 63V SuRFACING MATERIAL 3 character of surface of volume is not expressed merely by the general design of a modern building; the actual materials of the surface itself are of the utmost importance. The ubiquitous stucco, which still serves as the hall-mark of the contemporary style, has the esthetic advantage of forming a continuous even covering, But if the stucco is rough, the sharpness of the design, which facilitates apprehension of the building’s volume, is blunted. (Page 155.) Rough stucco, because of its texture and because it recalls the stucco-covered buildings of the past, is likely to suggest mass. All stucco, rough or smooth, is subject to cracking and streaking; if painted, it is even less likely to pre-serve its original surface and color. Stucco, like exposed con- crete, must be considered inferior to more solid’sheathing except where the large scale of the construction makes the flaws that come with time relatively inconspicuous. A material like stucco but elastic and with a wide color range, which could be laid over various bases, would be ideal. Wooden sheathing is admirable in the special case of modern construction in wood. It is not as durable as stone or brick, yet as we are aware in America, it can well outlast a century if it is kept painted. Smooth matchboarding is desirable because overlap- ping or stripped joints mar the surface, particularly in small- scale construction. (Page 227.) In interiors and on temporary buildings, plywood panels are excellent since they are large in area and smooth. (Page 119.) They may be painted or left to show the grain. Any enframement suggesting panelling seriously breaks the continuity of surface and should be avoided. As in the architecture of the past, the finest materials for wall surfacing are stones, granites and marbles. (Pages 135 and 187 f.) Unless they are large in area, however, the separate units are likely to appear like the faces of blocks of masonry, suggesting weight and mass. As in Byzantine architecture it is possible to use plates so that their true character as sheathing is evident. Rich natural materials are expensive and hence more suitable in construction of a monumental or luxurious character than in or- dinary buildings. Artificial plaques of various sorts and metal plates exposed or painted have similar advantages and will doubtless be increasingly used. (Pages 113 and 169.) In any sort of plate covering it is important that the plates be so joined that the surface is as little broken as possible. Graining, moreover, should be so disposed as to emphasize the continuity of the whole wall and not, as in the past, to produce symmetrical pat- terns. It is also important that the surface remain a plane without 65convexities and concavities. Otherwise the effect becomes pic- turesque and the sense of equal tension in all directions is de~ stroyed. Plate sheathing has the distinct advantage of similarity in tex- ture and scale to the glass panes of the windows. The massive- ness of the walls of the past was emphasized by the contrast be- tween the wall surfaces and the windows. The walls appeared the more solid for being visibly penetrated by infrequent holes. Today the general consistency of the design and the sense of con- tinuous surface is emphasized by reducing the contrast between the transparent and the opaque sections of the bounding walls. Windows should be independent in character but not a breach in. the general coherence of the surface. Burmed clay products are more frequently used than plate sheathing. Brick is from the practical point of view the most sat- isfactory inexpensive surfacing material in general use. It may be equally well used for screen walls and for sections of supporting wall where they supplement skeleton construction. Yet from an esthetic point of view, brick is undoubtedly less satisfactory than other materials, including stucco. Indeed, brick is often covered with stucco even by architects who claim to be unin- fluenced by esthetic considerations. (Page 219.) This conces- sion to the principle of achieving a smooth continuous surface is an important instance of the exaggeration of the functionalists’ anti-gsthetic claims. Brick, when laid conventionally, suggests a solid supporting wall even where that does not exist. Even a screen wall of brick appears to retain something of the mass and the dead weight of the architecture of the past. The use of brick tends to give a pic- turesqueness which is at variance with the fundamental charac- ter of the modem style. Bricks are more or less rough in texture,often irregular in color, and quite unrelated in scale to the panes of the windows. (Page 217.) Nevertheless, much can be done to emphasize continuity of surface. If the color of the mortar be near that of the brick, and the bricks relatively even in value and texture, the bonding pat- tern need not be strikingly evident. The actual material of a wall surface of considerable area is then relatively inconspicuous. (Pages 167 and 183.) On the whole, the cheapest, the most com- mon types of brick and the most straightforward method of laying have fortunately proved best. Since brick is permanent in color and not subject to cracking and streaking, it is in the long run actually superior zsthetically to stucco for large-scale construc- tions. (Pages 189 and 151.) A different shape of brick and a different method of laying might be developed which would be more satisfactory estheti- cally as well as practically than present types and methods. In- crease in size would be only a disadvantage since it would make the individual unit more conspicuous. Indeed, the finest surfaces from the point of view of the contemporary style are those at- tained in eighteenth century Holland with very small smooth bricks and thin joints. Ordinary terra cotta blocks or concrete blocks of the cheapest sort are less satisfactory in appearance and more suggestive of traditional masonry than even the commonest brickwork. Con- crete slabs even though they may attain the scale of plate sheath- ing are also too irregular in texture and variable in color to be acceptable except at the economic minimum. In the range of constructions of medium cost and medium size glazed tile laid with continuous vertical as well as horizontal joints provides a material that vies in aesthetic effectiveness with plate sheathing. (Page 175.) The shape of the units may be such 67that all suggestion of the traditional masonry block is lost. The texture is smooth and permanent; the color possibilities are wide. The small scale of the individual tiles is less harmonious with the panes of the windows than are large plaques, but the individual tiles are less independently assertive. An adjustment of the minor rhythm of the individual tiles to the rhythm of the windows and the structural elements is a possible refinement. Tiles prop- erly laid give even more surely than bricks a continuous surface pattern like the texture of a fabric. They also quite avoid the sug- gestion of a supporting masonry wall. Their pattern is more regu- lar than the graining of natural materials used in sheathing plates. Marble or granite plates are certainly richer; tile, how- ever, fulfills better the rigid letter of the principle of surface. Glass bricks and translucent glass plates are types of surfac- ing materials which may occasionally take the place of true win- dows. (Pages 172 and 193.) In certain buildings various panes of transparent, translucent, and opaque glass have been combined together for entire walls. The effect is rich and harmonious but perhaps too fragile for permanent architecture. Glass bricks pro- vide a means of carrying light through the wall without a window frame. When they are of the same or related scale they combine best esthetically with other unitary coverings such as brick and tile. (Page 147.) In the choice of surfacing materials the architect is far from free. Factories will hardly have marble sheathing; yet because they have very large wall areas, the surfacing material itself is less noticeable. Brick appears the best material for large and inexpensive construction, tile in the middle range and plate sheathing for exceptional buildings. In the last the architect has the opportunity to seek to the full the possibilities of richness and individual distinction which the contemporary style affords quite as much as the styles of the past.VI A SECOND PRINCIPLE Concerning Regularity 2. patterns of Gothic fenestration were ordered according to definite conceptions of design derived from structure and leading more and more to arbitrary decoration. Today the pat- tems of windows, the composition of the parts of contemporary architecture, must also be ordered according to an esthetic prin- ciple if a contemporary style exist. The functionalists claim that they order their designs according to practical considerations alone. Yet even they, because of the economic force of standard- ization, accept a discipline of design not dissimilar to that found in the work of contemporary architects who grant the importance of esthetic considerations. Beside the principle of surface of vol- 6970 ume already discussed there is a second controlling principle, evident in the productions of the international style including the work of the European functionalists. This second principle of contemporary style in architecture has to do with regularity. The supports in skeleton construction are normally and typically spaced at equal distances in order that strains may be equalized. (Pages 117 and 149.) Thus most buildings have an underlying regular rhythm which is clearly seen before the outside surfaces are applied. Moreover, eco- nomic considerations favor the use of standardized parts throughout. Good modern architecture expresses in its design this characteristic orderliness of structure and this similarity of parts by an esthetic ordering which emphasizes the underlying. regularity. Bad modern design contradicts this regularity. Regu- larity is, however, relative and not absolute in architecture. The varied purposes which most buildings serve cannot be completely regularized. A loft building in a city may be, and often is, regular throughout except for the entrances and the elevators. (Page 162.) The many purposes which each floor serves are so nearly alike that the same plan and elevation may be used throughout. Few buildings, however, are so simple. In most cases, within a structure as regular as possible and using similar parts the architect must provide for many varying func- tions related in various different ways to one another. In a hotel, for example, although the suites considered as units repeat them- selves, the lobbies, dining rooms and kitchens serve the whole building and are on an entirely different scale. Within an indi- vidual dwelling house it is obvious that there are relatively fewer interchangeable elements. The functional requirements of the different rooms are even more varied. The bathroom, for exam- ple, makes far more elaborate specific demands than the living room, but it is possible to take care of them in much less space.Thus technically the prime architectural problem of distribution is to adjust the irregular and unequal demands of function to reg- ular construction and the use of standardized parts. Just as the esthetic principle of surface of volume has been derived from the fact that architecture no longer has solid sup- porting walls, the second principle, that of regularity, depends on the regularity typical of the underlying skeleton of modern con- struction. This second principle is expressed in an ordering of design more consistent than would result merely from the esthetically unconscious use of regular structure and standard- ized parts for varying and complicated functions. Thus the ex- pression receives a visible regularity and consistency. This is the symbol of the underlying technics, which in the completed build- ing are known rather than seen. (Pages 149 and 161.) It must be remembered that the nearer approaches to absolute regularity are also approaches to monotony, as the earlier refer- ence to the loft building will have suggested. The principle of regularity refers to a means of organization, a way of giving defi- nite form to an architectural design, rather than to an end which is sought for itself. As an end, regularity is modified by the equal necessity, understood in all zsthetic organization, of achieving a proper degree of interest. What constitutes a proper degree of interest is hardly to be determined in theory. Many critics, more familiar with the architecture of the past than with that of the present, claim that the international style seldom if ever achieves a proper degree of interest. They miss the interest arising from the normally irregular construction of much of the architecture of the past. They fail to comprehend the new and possibly more subtle sorts of interest which derive from the principle of surface of volume or which lie in the positive appli- cation of the principle of regularity itself. The same critics, pre~ ferring the picturesqueness of less rigorous styles, are equally 1