AP notes---American and European Modern Architecture
Elements of a skyscraper:
 10+ stories
 elevator
 steel skeleton and glass curtain
 patrons are capitalist businesses, not popes or kings
 Chicago style= glass curtain featuring 3-part window with sides open for ventilation; load-bearing iron skeleton, floating foundation of reinforced concrete
American skyscrapers--
Marshall Field Warehouse, Chicago, Henry Richardson, 1885. Pre-cursor to skyscraper with 7 floors, Italian Romanesque revival with rounded arches; frame is not cast iron but plaster (masonry) walls for load bearing; few historical allusions (eg: no columns or pediments, therefore it is “modern”)
The Guaranty Building, Louis Sullivan, Buffalo, NY, 1896. Prototype of modern office building; form follows function; vertical thrust with pilasters stretching bottom to top; steel supported, glass wall, elevator; ornamented exterior: terra cotta tiles, heavy cornices, fancy capitaled columns
Carson Pierre Scott Bldg, Chicago, Louis Sullivan, 1899. Steel frame with Chicago windows;
Art Nouveaus cast-iron embellishment; piers emph. verticality but horizontal emphasis per floor with maximum use of windows; Sullivan: “form follows function”
Chrysler Bldg, NY, Wm VanAlen, 1928---world’s tallest structure for 2 years until Empire
State Bldg; steel frame; ART DECO w/radiator caps and auto designs; stainless steel top decoration makes easy maintenance
Seagram Bldg. NY, Mies Van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson,, 1958---less is more, steel and glass—International Style, High Modernism, MINIMALIST
A,T&T (now Sony) Bldg., NY, Philip Johnson, 1984—Postmodern with notch on pedimenttriangle top
Other Major American Buildings—
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Robie House, FL Wright, Chicago, 1904—Prairie School, natural materials into landscape, cantilever; low to ground; ; chunky irreg. shapes like contemp. painting
Falling Water, FL Wright, PA, 1924—cantilever construct., organic; hearth is center; local materials
Guggenheim Museum, FL Wright, NY, 1964—organic , spiraling out; poured concrete
Glass House, Johnson, CT, 1949----totally open concept

Vanna Venturi House (mom), Robt Venturi, 1961—“Less is a Bore”, plays with form as style
Eiffel Tower, Gustave Eiffel, Paris, 1889. Looks like a railroad bridge; for 1889 Paris
Universal Expo; wrought iron; limited number of shapes; elevator swings diagonally
Schroeder House, Reitveld, Netherlands, 1922—De Stijl (The Style); Mondrian
Neoplasticism; moveable panels and spaces; roots to International School
Bauhaus, Gropius, Germany, 1922---utopian, international socialist, total architecture
uniting arts and industry; with De Stijl; ended when Nazis came; “simultaneity principle” two perspectives at the same time ( translucent walls and corners)....concepts later developed for Intl. style; harmonious brevity; union of art and technology
INTERNATIONAL STYLE—from 1932…”machine for living” (Le Corbusier), truth to materials; machine aesthetic; Philip Johnson, Gropius, VanderRohe, Le Corbusier
Villa Savoy, Le Corbusier, French, 1928---Purism, cubist principles of reducing to most basic shapes; hard edge, free façade; open floor plan; roof as garden and terrace; raised on concrete stilts; all space utilized; INTERNATIONAL STYLE; boxlike abstraction of “house”
Marseilles Housing Project, Le Corbusier, France, 1947---“machine for living”; Purism
Chapel of Notre Dame-du-Haut, Le Corbusier, Ronchamp, France, 1955---organic to the site, sculptural, rough concrete creates “primitive” feeling; ship or nun’s habit or dove (Holy Ghost)
Pompidou Center, Piano and Rogers, Paris, 1977---MODERN, inside-out style with colorcoded pipes on exterior, escalator on outside; modern art museum for Paris
Sydney Opera House, Utzon, Sydney, Australia, 1957—interlocking shells
“Dancing House”, Frank Gehry, Prague, 1994---DECONSTRUCTIVIST--impossible without current computer technology
Guggenheim, Bilbao, Gehry, Spain, 1996---sculpted organic contours; panels resemble fish scales, DECONSTRUCTIVIST, creating unstable environment