International style, in architecture

International style, in architecture, the phase of the modern movement that emerged in Europe and the United States during the 1920s. The term was first used by Philip Johnson Johnson, Philip Cortelyou, 1906–2005, American architect, museum curator, and historian, b. Cleveland, grad. Harvard Univ. (B.A., 1927). One of the first Americans to study modern European architecture, Johnson wrote (with H.-R.
..... Click the link for more information. in connection with a 1932 architectural exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Architects working in the International style gave new emphasis to the expression of structure, the lightening of mass, and the enclosure of dynamic spaces. Important examples include the Bauhaus Bauhaus (bou`hous), school of art and architecture in Germany.
..... Click the link for more information. at Dessau, Germany, by Walter Gropius Gropius, Walter (väl`tər grō`pē
..... Click the link for more information. (1925–26) and the Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France, by Le Corbusier Le Corbusier (lə kôrbüzyā`), pseud.
..... Click the link for more information. (1929–30).

Bibliography

See H.-R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson, The International Style (1932, repr. 1966).

International style, in painting

International style, in painting: see Gothic architecture and art Gothic architecture and art, structures (largely cathedrals and churches) and works of art first created in France in the 12th cent. that spread throughout Western Europe through the 15th cent., and in some locations into the 16th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. .

International Style

Savoye House, Poissy, Fr., an International Style residence by Le Corbusier, 1929–30

(credit: Pierre Belzeaux—Rapho/Photo Researchers)

Architectural style that developed in Europe and the U.S. in the 1920s and '30s and dominated Western architecture in the mid 20th century. The term was first used in 1932 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in their essay “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922.” The style's most common characteristics are rectilinear forms, open interior spaces, large expanses of glass, steel, and reinforced-concrete construction, and light, taut plane surfaces devoid of applied ornamentation. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier are among the architects most clearly associated with the style. See also Bauhaus.