Modern Architecture before and between the world wars

The 19th century was a time of unprecedented technological progress in terms of construction. However, while buildings
were constructed according to new designs and with the use of new materials, in most cases they remained rather traditional
in a visual sense. It took the shock of the First World War for architects to offer the world an entirely new aesthetic, which
brought out the opportunities and advantages of new materials and construction methods.

There has long been a tendency to see the most important innovations of Modernism as arising directly from progressive
causes. Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century
sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. As an umbrella term, Modern Architecture
secured different compositional and workmanship styles under one rooftop, building on late nineteenth-century precedents,
artists around the world used new imagery, materials and techniques to create artworks that they felt better reflected the
realities and hopes of modern societies.

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, a considerable lot of styles had contending philosophies of their
own that were available around that particular time or followed one another. Certain ideas were regular among all these
common styles and are extensively named as basic standards of Modern Architecture. In particular, innovation dismissed old
style and evangelist ideas and looked to make another personality for the new time.

A few architects began to challenge the traditional Beaux Arts and Neoclassical styles that dominated architecture in Europe
and the United States. The Glasgow School of Art (1896–99) designed by Charles Mackintosh, had a facade dominated by
large vertical bays of windows. The Art Nouveau style was launched in the 1890s by Victor Horta in Belgium and Hector
Guimard in France; it introduced new styles of decoration, based on vegetal and floral forms. In Barcelona, Antonio
Gaudi conceived architecture as a form of sculpture; the facade of the Casa Battlo in Barcelona, 1907 had no straight lines; it
was encrusted with colourful mosaics of stone and ceramic tiles. Where the arts and crafts movement aimed to heal the
alienation that had arisen that had arisen as a consequence of industrialization, Art Nouveau stressed creativity and tended
to avoid the heavy, neo medieval look of the Arts and Crafts, preferring sinuous organic shapes and plant like motifs.

This was the time when the first skyscrapers began to appear in the United States and were a direct response to the shortage
of land and high cost of real estate in the centre of the fast-growing American cities, and the availability of new technologies,
including metal-frame building construction fireproof steel frames, improvements in the safety of elevators allowed
engineers to begin experimenting with lighter-weight buildings with large windows. In the first half of the 20th century, high-
rise buildings and the first “skyscrapers” blended a use of metal framing and concrete to create a sculpted look for walls full
of windows. Over time, skyscrapers continued to grow taller, shedding the concrete as part of the construction as steel-frame
construction was perfected. The first steel-framed skyscraper,
The Home Insurance Building (1883) in Chicago, was ten stories
high, designed by William Le Baron Jenney, was briefly the
tallest building in the world. Louis Sullivan built another
monumental new structure, the Carson, Pirie, Scott and
Company Building, in the heart of Chicago in 1904–06. While

The iconic Flatiron Building, New York (design by Daniel Burnha) The Sullivan Center, Chicago, Illinois
these buildings were revolutionary in their steel frames and height, their decoration was borrowed from Neo-
Renaissance, Neo-Gothic and Beaux-Arts architecture. New material sense of taste was created with new materials being
used, for example, iron, steel, cement and glass which gave the architects, greater freedom to create new forms. In 1903–
1904 in Paris Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage began to use reinforced concrete, previously only used for industrial
structures, to build apartment buildings. Reinforced concrete, which could be molded into any shape, and which could create
enormous spaces without the need of supporting pillars, replaced stone and brick as the primary material for modernist
architects.

Under a wide arrangement, certain styles are believed to be more pervasive before the First World War while the rest were
grown later on. The period before the Great War considered rise to be styles as Art and Craft Movement which dismissed
the thought of industrialization. At its centre, it was a greater amount of an ideological development as opposed to a style.

After the first World War, a prolonged struggle began between architects who favoured the more traditional styles of neo-
classicism and the Beaux-Arts architecture style, and the modernists, led by Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens in
France, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany, and Konstantin Melnikov in the new Soviet Union, who
wanted only pure forms and the elimination of any decoration. Louis Sullivan popularized the axiom “Form follows function”
to emphasize the importance of utilitarian simplicity in modern architecture. In an attempt to streamline construction and
eliminate ornamentation, modern architecture also incorporated
new ideas of the definition and purpose of art. Three of the most
well-known styles of the Early Modern period are Expressionist,
Art Deco, and the International style.

After the first world war, inflation pushed up the cost of building
materials. Additionally, shortages of materials encouraged the use
of new materials such as Crittall windows, sand-lime bricks, and
prefabrication (steel and concrete systems) for council housing.
These experiments were to be developed further after the Second
World War, eg. No Fines housing, first tried in Britain in 1924 was
widely used by (especially) Wimpeys (builders) after WWII.

International Style - While symmetry and clean lines were praised,

Villa Savoye – le Corbesiur buildings also became taller, more complex, and innovative in
terms of their conscious use of space. pioneering modernist architects sought to
develop a completely new style appropriate for a new post-war social and
economic order, focused on meeting the needs of the middle and working classes.
Modernist architects were concerned with expressing the social conditions of their
time and place; therefore, much modern architecture is designed for large cities.

New styles emerged such as Art Deco taking its inspiration from Art Nouveau style.
It focused on geometry, streamline curves and sharply defined edges and colours.
It found prevalence in both Europe and North America and also in our home city
of Bombay which has the second the greatest number of Art Deco buildings in the
world. The Chrysler Building completed in 1929, was purely modern, but its
exterior was
decorated with Neo-
Gothic ornament,
complete with
decorative
buttresses, arches
and spires and is a
prominent example
of Art Deco. Art
Deco architects such
as Auguste
Perret and Henri Chrysler Building
Sauvage often made a
compromise between the two, combining modernist forms and
stylized decoration.
La Samaritaine department store, by Henri Sauvage, Paris, (1925–28)
One of the most famous modernist architects, the American Frank Lloyd Wright, made it an artistic point to also design single-
family homes in a distinctly modern style. His “prairie homes” are repeated templates that construct and divide a family’s
living space, and they have served as the pattern for many
contemporary home designers.

Wright’s home, Oak Park, Illinois – F.L Wright Fallingwater, Pennsylvania (design by Wright)
Around this period there was shift towards abstraction drawing inspiration on prevalent art styles involving use of straight
lines and simple forms, while using less and less ornamentation, and emphasising on Form follows Function. Motives that
were slowly gaining momentum pre-world war one era became mainstream. New styles emerged in central Europe like De
Stijl and Bauhuas both focusing on functionality, simplicity, true to original form and thus giving rise to new principals in
architecture and developing a new international style. The Schroder House is a great example for depicting De Stijl theology
at its best with the use of Black, White and Primary colour scheme
along with a rectilinear asymmetric design.

Shroder House

An example of Bauhaus style - Avraham Soskin House, Street by Zeev

Bruno House, 3 Strauss Street by Ze'ev Haller
Rechter - designed for a photographer, the structure is divided into
two asymmetrical wings, each with its own entrance and stairwell.
The front wing – designed as the family home – has a flat roof with
a pergola and a horizontal emphasis, expressed in rows of windows
and the balconies' elongated ventilation slits.T he large rear wing,
invisible from the street, is designed in a local, industrial language.
Its two floors and basement served as Soskin's photography studio
Expressionism, which appeared in Germany between 1910 and 1925, was a counter-movement against the strictly functional
architecture of the Bauhaus and Werkbund. Its advocates, including Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig, Fritz Hoger and Erich
Mendelsohn, wanted to create architecture that was poetic, expressive, and optimistic. Many expressionist architects had
fought in World War I and their experiences, combined with the political turmoil and social upheaval that followed
the German Revolution of 1919, resulted in a utopian outlook and a romantic socialist agenda.

The Einstein Tower – an astrophysical observatory in the The Second Goetheanum, Basel, Switzerland, is an
Albert Einstein Science Park in Potsdam, Germany built by example of architectural Expressionism
Erich Mendelsoh

Thus based on all these styles new principals emerged focusing on space over form; modularity and repetitiveness in form;
denouncement of the old and classic; less use of ornamentation while using new materials like iron, steel and glass; True to
the form- honest and simple design. Thus, these are the binding principals of all these styles prevalent during the World War
era and serve as the similarities between all apart from certain difference that are inherent to these styles thus defining their
identity as a stand-alone style and philosophies of their own.