Chapter 1 David Gebhard suggests in his study of

Neutra’s compatriot and early partner

Rudolph Schindler [255] (who had realized

The International Style: a house at Newport Beach [254] for Lovell

just one year before), Lovell could have been

Theme and Variations 1925–65

regarded as embodying the athletic and
progressive attributes of the International
Style in his own persona:

Dr Lovell was a characteristic Southern

California product. It is doubtful whether his
career could have been repeated anywhere else.
Through his Los Angeles Times column, ‘Care
The effect of mass, of static solidity, hitherto modern materials and standard modular of the Body’ … and through ‘Dr Lovell’s Physical
the prime quality of architecture, has all but parts so as to facilitate fabrication and Culture Center’ he had an influence which
disappeared: in its place there is an effect of erection. It tended as a general rule towards extended far beyond the physical care of the
volume, or more accurately, of plane surfaces the hypothetical flexibility of the free body. He was, and he wished to be considered,
bounding a volume. The prime architectural plan, and to this end it preferred skeleton progressive, whether in physical culture,
symbol is no longer the dense brick, but frame construction to masonry. This permissive education, or architecture.2
the open box. Indeed, the great majority of predisposition became formalistic where
buildings are in reality, as well as in effect, specified conditions, be they climatic, The ideology of Lovell and its direct
mere planes surrounding a volume. With cultural or economic, could not support expression in the Health House exercised a
skeleton construction enveloped only by a the application of advanced light-weight decisive influence over the rest of Neutra’s
protective screen, the architect can hardly technology. Le Corbusier’s ideal villas of career. From now on his work was at its best
avoid achieving this effect of surface, of the late 1920s anticipated such formalism where the building programme could be
volume, unless in deference to traditional inasmuch as they masqueraded as white, interpreted as making a direct contribution
design in terms of mass he goes out of his way homogeneous, machine-made forms, to the psycho-physiological wellbeing
to obtain the contrary effect. whereas they were in fact built of rendered of its occupants. The central theme of
concrete blockwork held in place by a both Neutra’s work and his writings was
Henry-Russell Hitchcock and reinforced-concrete frame. the beneficial impact of a well-designed
Philip Johnson Dr Philip Lovell’s Health House [253], environment upon the general health of
The International Style, 1932 (exhibition built in Los Angeles in 1927 to the designs the human nervous system. And while his
catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, of the Austrian émigré architect Richard so-called ‘bio-realism’ rested largely on
New York)1 Neutra, may be regarded as the apotheosis unproven arguments linking architectural
of the International Style, its architectural form to overall health, it is difficult to
In many respects, the International Style expression deriving directly from a skeleton discredit the extraordinary sensitivity and
was little more than a convenient phrase steel frame, clad in a light-weight synthetic supra-functional attitude that coloured
denoting a cubistic mode of architecture skin. Set on a bluff overlooking a romantic, his whole approach. Nothing could be
which had spread throughout the developed half-wild parkscape, its asymmetrical further removed from the exclusively formal
world by the time of the Second World composition of dramatically suspended motivations attributed to the International
War. Its apparent homogeneity was floors was reminiscent of Wright’s West Style by Hitchcock and Johnson than the
deceptive, since its stripped planar form Coast blockhouse style of the 1920s, and overall biological concerns addressed by
was subtly inflected so as to respond to this formal similarity already suggests the Neutra in his book Survival Through Design
different climatic and cultural conditions. catholic sources from which the supposed (1954), where he wrote:
Unlike the Neo-Classical manner of the homogeneity of the International Style
253   Neutra, Lovell Health House, Griffith Park, Los
Western world in the late 18th century, initially derived. It has become imperative that in designing our
Angeles, 1927.
the International Style never became Almost incidentally, the open-plan form physical environment we should consciously 254   Schindler, Lovell Beach House, Newport Beach,
truly universal. Nonetheless, it implied a of the house was an appropriate reflection raise the fundamental question of survival California, 1925–26.
255   Rudolf Schindler (right) with Richard and Dione
universality of approach which generally of Lovell’s expansive personality and served in the broadest sense of the term. Any design Neutra and their son, at Schindler’s Kings Road house
favoured light-weight technique, synthetic to represent his callisthenic lifestyle. As that impairs or imposes excessive strain on (1921–22), Los Angeles, 1928.

282 The International Style: Theme and Variations 1925–65 283

the natural human equipment should be Neutra’s completely straightforward but
eliminated or modified in accordance with beautifully detailed open-air school in
the requirements of our nervous and more Los Angeles of 1934, the former ranged
gradually, our total physiological functioning.3 from Vernon de Mars’s two-storey adobe
terrace housing built in New Mexico in
Thus, the primary concern for Schindler 1939 to the 1932 Neubühl Siedlung [257]
and Neutra alike – both of whom had built in Zürich to the designs of Roth’s
served their American apprenticeships 257   Haefeli, Hubacher, Steiger, Moser, Artaria and compatriots Max Haefeli, Carl Hubacher,
with Wright – was not abstract form as Schmidt, Neubühl Siedlung, Zürich, 1932. Site plan Rudolf Steiger, Werner Moser, Paul Artaria
(sloping down from bottom to top) and stepped
such, but rather the modulation of sun elevations. and Hans Schmidt. While meeting the
and light and the sensitive articulation of non-rhetorical (anti-monumental), social
the screens of plants between the building New Architecture, he attempted to show and technical criteria of the ABC group, by
and its general context. This ambient that the Neue Sachlichkeit was at its best whose members it was largely designed, the
hedonism was never more subtly expressed where neither advanced technique nor the Neubühl Estate was able to humanize the
than in the Sachs Apartments, Los Angeles, free plan was allowed to become an end in rigorous Zeilenbau approach of the Neue
built to Schindler’s design in 1929, or in itself. A well-formulated programme and Sachlichkeit, not only through the stepped
Neutra’s second masterwork, his Kaufmann a concern for the environmental impact of inflection of the row-house unit over a
Desert House [256], built at Palm Springs, detailing seem to have been more highly sloping site, but also through the delicacy of
California, in 1946–47. valued by Roth than the achievement of its landscaping.
For Alfred Roth, practising in Zürich spectacular solutions in either spatial or In featuring other equally restrained but
throughout the 1930s, the essential technical terms. Roth thus gave as much elegant works, such as the Bad-Allenmoos
touchstone of the International Style space to traditional techniques, such as swimming facility in Zürich by Werner
was a sensitive and strictly doctrinaire load-bearing masonry, as to advanced Moser of 1935 or Roth’s own Doldertal
approach to the creation of built form. systems of frame construction in timber apartments, built for Sigfried Giedion in
In his remarkable anthology of 1940, The and steel. And while the latter included Zürich in 1936 to designs made with Marcel
Breuer and his cousin Emil Roth, The New
256   Neutra, Kaufmann Desert House, Palm Springs, California, 1946–47. Architecture proclaimed the maturity of
the Swiss Modern Movement. But despite
its decided bias in favour of the work of
CIAM members, Roth’s anthology was just
as cosmopolitan as The International Style,
featuring works from Czechoslovakia,
England, Finland, France, Holland, Italy
and Sweden and thereby acknowledging
the establishment of the New Architecture
(Roth’s own term) in all these countries
by the late 1930s. France was represented
by two works: by the Perretesque open-air
school built at Suresnes outside Paris to
the design of Beaudouin and Lods, and
by Le Corbusier’s proto-Brutalist rubble-
walled and timber-roofed house built at
Mathes in 1935. Holland was represented
by the work of the Opbouw group (a
Dutch wing of CIAM), most notably by the
practices of Brinkman and Van der Vlugt,
and Van Tijen and Maaskant. Britain was
accounted for in the singular masterwork
258   Williams, Boots Pharmaceutical Plant, Beeston,
of the engineer Owen Williams, the Nottinghamshire, 1932.
famous Boots Pharmaceutical Plant [258], 259   Kysela, Bata Shoe Store, Prague, 1929.

The International Style: Theme and Variations 1925–65 285

 the 1937 Paris World Exhibition, had yet to ground rules for the ideological struggles in the British scene immediately after the
come. Perhaps most serious of all, they failed of the 1950s. Their central issue, that of war, and the ten-year period following 1945
to mention the catalytic role played by the the primacy of the formal concept in was effectively dominated by the language
critic Karel Teige, whose Devětsil group was architecture and the ultimate significance invented by Lubetkin and his colleagues
the driving force behind the Czechoslovakian of built form, was touched on by Anthony in the previous decade. The Royal Festival
left-wing Functionalist movement. Cox in 1938, when he wrote of Highpoint 2: Hall, to take one of the most prominent
As in the United States, where the examples, designed in 1950 by a team
International Style was first practised by Highpoint 1 stands on tiptoe and spreads its including Leslie Martin, Robert Matthew
Viennese and Swiss émigrés, in England wings; Highpoint 2 sits back on its haunches and Peter Moro, was obviously indebted to
it had its origin in the work of outsiders. like Buddha. That this effect is deliberate, Lubetkin throughout, as was the work of
First and foremost was Peter Behrens’s Tecton themselves would probably be the the young ex-Tecton partnership of Lindsay
house for W.J. Bassett-Lowke, New Ways, first to admit; one has the feeling that a form Drake and Denys Lasdun, whose Bishop’s
260   Lubetkin and Tecton, Highpoint 1, Highgate, London, built at Northampton in 1926. Then has been imposed on the rooms (which is an Bridge housing, built in Paddington,
1935. came Amyas Connell’s house, High and altogether different thing from giving the London, in 1953, extended Lubetkin’s
Over, built at Amersham in 1930 for the rooms form). It is as if, during the three years façadism to indulge in a crude masking of
built at Beeston in 1932. Williams was an archaeologist Bernard Ashmole, Connell that separate the buildings, rigid conclusions reality, with syncopated fretwork façades
outsider in the whole anthology since he coming from New Zealand in the late 1920s had been reached as to what is formally and appliqué columns.
was neither an architect nor a member of and soon after founding the London firm necessary in architecture. The important MARS (Modern Architectural Research
CIAM. Nonetheless, his reinforced-concrete of Connell, Ward and Lucas. By far the point isn’t whether or not one personally Group), the English wing of CIAM, was
and glass factory rivalled the brilliance of most influential émigré to enter England likes these formal conclusions, but whether founded in 1932, on the initiative of the
Brinkman and Van der Vlugt’s Van Nelle at this moment was the Russian architect one thinks that any such rigid conclusions Canadian émigré Wells Coates, who
packing plant, built outside Rotterdam Berthold Lubetkin, whose impact on the are expedient … . The intellectual approach represented MARS at the 1933 Congress
in 1929. Williams’s audacious use of giant development of modern architecture which has produced what we know as modern dedicated to the theme of ‘The Functional
mushroom columns, supporting bays up to in England has never been adequately architecture is fundamentally a functionalist City’. While the MARS group possessed,
9.75 × 11 metres (31 × 36 feet) in plan, gave to appreciated. Lubetkin, who came from a approach. I take it that most of us do not need at least initially, the necessary élan to
this four-storey industrial shed a sculptural modest but brilliant career in Paris, brought to argue about that. Functionalism is a rotten attract the more avant-garde members of
form of remarkable precision and energy. to Tecton, the firm that he founded in 1932, name for the antithesis of formalism, because the British profession – including Connell,
(The sculptural effect derived from the 45° a capacity for logical organization which it carries with it dehumanized ideas which Ward and Lucas, Lubetkin, E. Maxwell
clipped setbacks in the floor levels of the has rarely graced English architecture. His nobody wishes to defend – but interpreted Fry and the historian/critic P. Morton
side elevation is an accident: the building 1935 block of flats in Highgate, London, in a wide sense, I think the word conveys the Shand – its sole achievement aside from its
was to be extendable in that direction.) Highpoint 1 [260], remains a masterpiece method of work underlying this movement. ‘New Architecture’ Exhibition staged in the
The one country which has always been even by the standards of today, its internal … My contention is that the recent work of Burlington Galleries in 1938 was its brilliant,
inadequately represented in any account of layout and disposition on an awkward Tecton shows a deviation from this approach. if highly utopian, plan for London, drawn
the International Style is Czechoslovakia, site being a model of both formal and It is more than a deviation of appearance; it up in the early 1940s under the direction
and an adequate history of the functional order. Despite the success of implies a deviation of aim. It is more than of the German architect Arthur Korn and
Czechoslovakian Functionalist movement their subsequent work for the London and an adjustment within legitimate limits: it is the Viennese engineer Felix Samuely. The
has yet to be written. Roth’s anthology Whipsnade Zoos, Lubetkin and his Tecton prepared to set certain formal values above MARS group naively hoped for a future
did include the insurance offices built in team – Chitty, Drake, Dugdale, Harding the use values, and marks the re-emergence of which, in the words of Coates, ‘must be
Prague in 1934 to the designs of J. Havliček and Lasdun – never attained this level the idea as a motive force.4 planned, rather than a past which must
and K. Honzik, and The International Style again. Their Highpoint 2 block, built in 1938, be patched up’; yet, unlike Tecton, it was
featured Otto Eisler’s ‘double-house’ of 1926 already shows a decided mannerist reaction. Preoccupied with the need to create a incapable of formulating a truly progressive
and Bohuslav Fuchs’s ‘formalist’ exhibition One is left to speculate on the extent to generally accessible modern architecture, methodology for the organization of this
pavilion of 1929, both built in Brno. Above which Lubetkin, as an architect of anarcho- Tecton’s work after 1938 seems to have future. Lubetkin seems to have been the
all they showed Ludvik Kysela’s eight-storey socialist persuasion, had become sensitive been determined by a conscious attempt first to sense this lack of orientation, and
Bata shoe store [259] in Prague, built in 1929 to Soviet Social Realism, for certainly his to assimilate the rhetorical tradition of he abandoned MARS at the end of 1936 to
and faced entirely in plate glass. Hitchcock essays on Soviet architecture written in the the Baroque to the rigours of a cubist become affiliated with the left-wing ATO
and Johnson failed, however, to include such 1950s reveal a sympathy in this direction. syntax. The critical acceptance of Tecton’s (Architects’ and Technicians’ Organization),
brilliant figures as Jaromir Krejcar, although The shift in expression between Highpoint 1 manneristic Corbusian style, as exemplified which up to the early 1950s was to concern
admittedly his most spectacular work, his and Highpoint 2 was noted at the time, and by their Finsbury Health Centre, London, of itself exclusively with the problem of
Czechoslovakian pavilion (fig. 122, p. 153) for the ensuing discussion established the 1938, gave Lubetkin a position of ascendance working-class housing.

286 Part III: Chapter 1 The International Style: Theme and Variations 1925–65 287
 the redent prototype of Le Corbusier’s had died and Hanson had begun to challenge this rhetorical manner was Oscar Niemeyer,
Ville Contemporaine. the socio-economic validity of Le Corbusier’s who had worked with Costa, Affonso Reidy,
The last significant gesture of the planning, arguing against the in-vacuo Jorge Moreira and others on the design for
Spanish Modern Movement was made under abstraction of his simplified urbanism. the Ministry of Education. Niemeyer’s freely
the aegis of the doomed Second Republic, In Brazil modern architecture had its planned Brazilian Pavilion for the 1939
in the form of Sert’s Spanish Pavilion origins in the mid-1920s partnership of New York World’s Fair [263], designed with
designed for the Paris Exhibition of 1937 Lúcio Costa and Gregori Warchavchik, an Costa and Paul Lester Wiener, gained world
[261]. This pavilion was the occasion for the émigré Russian architect who had been recognition for the Brazilian movement
first showing of Picasso’s Guernica, which influenced by Futurism during his studies and confirmed his own exceptional ability.
commemorated the aerial bombardment in Rome and who was responsible for the Niemeyer brought Le Corbusier’s concept of
of this Basque town earlier in the same first cubistic houses in Brazil. With the the free plan to a new level of fluidity and
year. Commissioned by the Republican revolution headed by Getúlio Vargas in 1930 interpenetration. Initially planned around
government, as a monument to the dead and the appointment of Costa as head of the an exotic garden court of Brazilian flora
of Guernica, this work was intended as a School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1931, and fauna – a micro-Amazonian landscape
solemn rebuke to the international betrayal modern architecture came to be welcomed complete with orchids and snakes – this
of the Republican cause. in Brazil as a matter of national policy. plastic concept evoked the tropical corniche
After the Hitchcock and Johnson In 1936 Le Corbusier had a direct impact of Rio itself. The garden layout was the work
exhibition of 1932 the International Style on South America when he was invited to of the painter Roberto Burle Marx, whose
expanded outside Europe and North Brazil to act as adviser for the design of a landscapes after 1936 became a seminal
America and began to emerge in areas as new building for the Ministry of Education force in the Brazilian movement. Burle Marx
261   Sert,
Spanish Pavilion, World Exhibition, Paris, 1937, far flung as South Africa, South America in Rio de Janeiro. After working with Costa
showing Picasso’s Guernica. and Japan. The pioneering South African and his design team, Le Corbusier seems
movement, lasting from 1929 to 1942, was a to have endorsed the sixteen-storey slab
A parallel polemical movement special case since Le Corbusier associated solution which departed dramatically
developed in Spain after 1930 under the himself with it directly by dedicating the from his initial sketches. Yet the final
leadership of the socialist architects José second edition of his first Oeuvre complète version, raised on a peristyle of pilotis,
Luis Sert and Garcia Mercadal. Initiated to Rex Martienssen and his Transvaal was an occasion for the first monumental
in 1929 as a Catalan cultural movement, Group. He opened his dedicatory letter of application of many of the characteristic
it was organized on a national basis, 1936 with the words: Corbusian elements, including the toit-
as the Spanish wing of CIAM, under jardin, the brise-soleil and the pan-verre.
the abbreviation GATEPAC (Grupo It is a very moving experience to turn over the The young Brazilian followers of Le
de Arquitectos y Técnicos Españoles pages of your South African Architectural Corbusier immediately transformed these
para el Progreso de la Arquitectura Record. Firstly, because one is amazed to Purist components into a highly sensuous
Contemporánea). Its membership included find something so vital emanating from a native expression which echoed in its plastic
important figures such as Sixte Yllescas, distant point in Africa which lies far beyond exuberance the 18th-century Brazilian
Germa Rodríguez Arias and Torres Clave. the equatorial forests, but yet more because Baroque. The most brilliant exponent of
Before the Spanish Civil War, in the space one can discover so much of youth’s faith in it,
of some eight years, these men produced such solicitude for architecture, and so fervent 262   Niemeyer, Casino, Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Minas
three major theoretical studies, including a desire to attain a cosmic philosophy.5 Gerais, Brazil, 1942. Second-floor plan.
263   Niemeyer, Costa and Wiener, Brazilian Pavilion,
the Maciá Plan for Barcelona, designed in World’s Fair, New York, 1939.
collaboration with Le Corbusier in 1933. By this date a close rapport had already
This remarkable low-rise residential project been established between Le Corbusier
achieved the exceedingly high density of and the Transvaal Group, with Le Corbusier
1,000 persons per hectare (400 per acre), contributing a special article to the South
without exceeding two storeys. The most African Architectural Record and men like
significant realization of GATEPAC was the Martienssen and Norman Hanson building
seven-storey Casa-Bloc communal dwelling, houses in Johannesburg in an extremely
including duplexes, a library, a crèche, a sophisticated post-Corbusian style. By 1942,
kindergarten and a swimming pool – a however, before the group could become the
type-form that was clearly derived from South African wing of CIAM, Martienssen

288 Part III: Chapter 1