International Style


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International Style

, Modernism
a 20th-century architectural style characterized by undecorated rectilinear forms and the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

International style

(1920–1945)
A style of architecture in both Europe and America pioneered by Le Corbusier, which spread to the Bauhaus, where it was the most influential. It was characterized by an emphasis on function combined with a rejection of traditional decorative motifs and regional characteristics. It was further characterized by flat roofs, smooth and uniform surfaces, large expanses of windows and projecting or cantilevered upper floors. The complete absence of ornamentation is typical, and cubistic shapes were fashionable. White was the preferred color. Horizontality was emphasized with windows that continued around corners. Roofs without eaves terminated flush with the plane of the wall. Wood and metal casement windows were set flush to the wall as well. Sliding windows were popular, and clerestory windows were also used extensively. There were fixed panes of glass from floor to ceiling, and curtain-like walls of glass were common. Popular building materials were reinforced concrete, steel frames, and an unprecedented use of prefabricated parts, since the style had its roots in industrial architecture. The resultant forms were much akin to cubist and abstract art.
Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture Copyright © 2012, 2002, 1998 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

International style

An architectural style that is minimalist in concept, devoid of regional characteristics, stresses functionalism, and rejects all nonessential decorative elements; it emphasizes the horizontal aspects of a building; developed during the 1920s and 1930s, in western Europe principally in the Bauhaus school, and also in America. Buildings in this style are usually characterized by simple geometric forms, often rectilinear, making use of reinforced concrete and steel construction with a nonstructural skin; occasionally, cylindrical surfaces; unadorned, smooth wall surfaces, typically of glass, steel, or stucco painted white; a complete absence of ornamentation and decoration; often, an entire blank wall; often a cantilevered upper floor or balcony; open interior spaces; a flat roof without a ledge; eaves that terminate at the plane of the wall; large areas of floor-to-ceiling glass or curtain walls of glass; metal window frames set flush with the exterior walls, often in horizontal bands; casement windows; sliding windows; glass-to-glass joints at the corners, without framing; plain doors that conspicuously lack decor rative detailing. Houses are commonly asymmetric; in contrast, commercial buildings in this style are not only symmetric, but appear as a series of repetitive elements.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
References in periodicals archive ?
Judged on their appearance alone, MoMA's latest international style is defined by pitched timber roofing, masonry block and louvred windows.
Caryn Franklin (a former fashion editor and co-editor of International style bible i-D magazine), joined the team after Selina Scott left.
The university would offer academic education to students in an international style. It has been equipped with the latest in educational equipment and advanced technologies.
One side of the medallion shows CNA House, which has become an Ottawa landmark with its distinctive lantern tower and International style architecture.
Sure he's done a sterling job in putting Merthyr Tydfil on the international style map.
Despite working on her own, Gray (1878-1976) became one of the key designers of the International Style, which really began with the closure of The Bauhaus in Germany by the Nazis in 1933.
The debatable eclecticism was intended to honor Iraq's past while saving its future from the West's boxy International Style. Wright wanted "to demonstrate that we [the West] are not destructive, but constructive" where Iraq is concerned.
Channel head Sunil Khanna says the new channel will help Indians keep up with the best of Indian and international style.
ARC weekend started in truly international style with the accepted order of racing turned upside down when Danish challenger Dano-Mast beat the John Gosden-trained Binary File and Japanese challenger Eagle Cafe in the Group 2 Prix Dollar.
Any tendency to collapse the two eras into each other risks obscuring an historical riddle that Poiger's evidence poses: what transformed a youth culture that reveled in mass-produced American culture and fashions, to the horror of German parents who worried about m aterialism and the corruption of Germanness, into a youth culture that excoriated Konsumterror, capitalism, and Amerikkka, to the outrage of parents who had gone over to consumerism and the International Style lock, stock, and barrel?
In 1603 Cranfield was content to have a local builder construct a dwelling near his business in Cheapside; but in 1621, only the new International style would suffice for an addition to his newly acquired mansion in Chelsea.

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