The International Style comes out of a specific show, which was called the International Style Architecture since 1922, and was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. And what we have is basically, if we take Bauhaus and we mix it with modern, we get the International Style. In fact, you'll see pieces that I will talk about here that we've already talked about to some degree.
In the modern, some of these pieces can mix styles, so they could be both modern and international style, in part based on this show and in part because they share so many of the same characteristics. Now, the international style is a functional style of 20th century architecture. It tends to cross national and cultural boundaries. And it's characterized by the use of steel, reinforced concrete, wide windows.
Uninterrupted interior spaces, simple lines in strict geometric form. So very simple forms. If you think of the skyscrapers you see in Chicago today, most of them are in this international style.
And there's a reason for it because it's also very efficient and very cost-effective. Now, when you look at the skyscrapers, and here we are, in fact, in Chicago, what you will notice is they all look very similar. All of them in... Basically the same style. We've moved from something that's more typically art deco, such as the structure here, where we have more masonry, something that would be more akin to the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building.
And now the windows are taking over entirely. What they're doing is they're building a core in the building. So there's a big concrete core in here, concrete and steel.
Usually it's where the elevators run. And then what they do is they go ahead and cantilever the floors off of that. So the floors are not actually supported out at the ends. They're supported primarily in the middle. This is the way everything from the World Trade Center to the Sears Tower is built.
And it's typical of the international style. It allows them to build these very simple forms, such as the concrete floors, and basically use pre-built materials. So this is all coming to them.
from the manufacturer, they're just bolting the steel framework together. Now, what they'll do is they'll use steel on the outside primarily as an aesthetic element, creating this grid for the windows, since you can't create a glass window that's the entire size of the building, but these are primarily aesthetic. And the designers, the architects at the time, will make the decision to take that steel and color it either a bronze color or a black color. Very common.
Later we'll see white and other colors used to kind of play out that grid and call our attention to it. Now, this being said, there was one thing that they had to deal with, which is steel has a relatively low melting point. And so in the event of a fire, it can soften, which is what more often happens, and then eventually it can melt. The problem is steel hits its softening point at a.
far lower temperatures. So what they have to do is they actually spray concrete onto the steel. So this means they have to hide all of those elements inside the building.
On the exterior, of course, that isn't as much of a concern because it's not actually structural steel. Now, what does this do? Well, this gives us our typical glass and steel skyscraper that we're used to today. The advantage of the cantilever design is that all of those floors are wide open. There aren't big lines of columns running down all of the floors.
Instead, you have this wide open floor space that's incredibly flexible for anyone who would use it. Skyscrapers also become increasingly important because, of course, the cost of the land that they're sitting on gets more expensive. Therefore, the most efficient thing to do is build vertically. Now, if you take one of those buildings and say, turn it on its side, you get the General Motors Technology Center that was built during this period. And it's basically a horizontal skyscraper, all the same ideas, they simply spread it horizontally.
And this is going to be really interesting because it gives me the ability to contrast it with our original Bauhaus style. And you see that they're both mimicking each other in a lot of ways. Well, really, the new Art Modern style. Or sorry, international style is mimicking the Bauhaus with those curtains of windows.
Everything is very practical and pragmatic. We see that the building is hanging over a road in the case of the General Motors Technology Building. It's more or less cantilevered.
We've got some beams at the end that you can see there. But, of course, they look like the building. They're very, very thin, so they don't stand out. It gives that sense of modernity, of being able to do something that we haven't been able to do in the past. And the only reason we can cantilever a building like this at the time is, again, that use of steel.
Homes will mimic a lot of the commercial space and a lot of the ideas that we've seen up until this point. They're open. We see massive patios. They are typically very horizontal structures, very similar to that GM technology building. So we have a very horizontal structure with walls of glass and minimal use of columns.
This creates a wide open space that other people... or sorry, that people really are attracted to. It gives them the sense of the outdoors indoors.
It's really an expansion of all those arts and crafts ideas that are now at this point, 30, 40, 50, 60, a hundred years old. Now, as we move through, of course, they're going to mimic a lot of the modern style. So they're bringing things inside.
And this is where we run into. issues. This is by an architect that works both in the modern style and the international style. And so people will argue back and forth, where does a structure fit?
And the truth of the matter is oftentimes they're hybrid. They take on forms from either one. And really the modern style and the international style are effectively the same thing for our purposes.
Just be aware that there are small differences. For example, this large curvilinear wall at the top. sets this out as arguably more modern than international.
They do tend to have these massive wide open patios. And in some cases, such as in the California style of within the international style, those large patios will serve as breezeways, as walkways between parts of the building. Now, there's usually other ways to get there. For example, there might be a downstairs hallway underneath this, but...
Someplace like California, why not encourage people to go outside and use this as a typical passageway? In terms of furniture, basically we're looking at Bauhaus style. And there's a reason for that.
All of those people, Gropius and Knoll and others, are either inspired by or coming directly from the Bauhaus. And they're coming to the United States. opening their own shops or becoming influential.
Gropius, for example, teaches famously at Harvard. So what are we looking at? We're looking at pieces that use modern technology, specifically steel tube construction, to really capture the essence of the period.
This is something where we can mix and move back and forth. So you can see something that is Art Deco or, in this case, international style, which is... playing off of the Bauhaus style, and it will have similar characteristics.
Again, we can have hybrid pieces that are not purely one movement. And one of those pieces is the Wassili chair, which I have talked about already in the past when we talked about De Stiel and we had an example there when we talked about Bauhaus. Now, the Wassili chair took advantage of the then newly developed tubular steel and is said to have been inspired by bicycle construction. The idea that I can create this tubular form.
It's relatively inexpensive to create and then it's simply a matter of using something to support the figure within it, to support the person. And so here we use leather, a very luxurious form, very typical of the Art Deco period. Within the international style.
So again, they're overlapping. And here, it gives you this rich, luxurious style, the highly polished chrome steel, and then the use of the black leather. And this would be a very comfortable chair because when you think about it, it looks very odd. But if you sit in it, it stops you from leaning against this big steel piece on the side.
In the back, again, you have two different straps holding you in place. The seat. of course is sling all of this is really sling construction so it's going to be very very comfortable very very pragmatic and it gets across that sense of modernity and streamlining that we've seen throughout we're also going to see the creation of the lacio chair sorry lacio table which is meant as a side table to go with the wassile chair and you can see that it mimics the form Although here it's meant as sort of a nested table, a coffee table, an end table that can nest together.
Instead of using our typical leather here, they're putting wood or other acrylic forms in place, maybe a plastic form in place to create the tabletop. But again, we have that tubular steel finish. We also see the development of the Barcelona chair.
Now, the Barcelona chair, with its continuous... quadrangular curved legs that form an X shape at each side. The chair was later manufactured by Knoll Associates, and it takes on this typical Bauhaus form.
It is primarily pragmatic. It's mixing ideas. For example, someone would have to be a carpenter to build some of the framework for the upholstery. You would need to have that skill as an upholsterer.
You would need that skill as a metal worker. So you can see that Bauhaus influence. It's also got very clean lines. The only place where we see texture or ornamentation is coming from the unique elements or the unique characteristics of the materials used.
So in other words, because this is leather, I can create a pleat that is going to be decorative. Because the legs are steel, I can... curve them without losing a great deal of strength. So they're playing to the strengths of the material. This is very typical of the Bauhaus movement and Bauhaus inspiration.
Then we have the Bibendum chair, which is going to be influenced by Michelin tires of all things. And it's kind of an interesting form because you don't generally think of a tire company as having anything to do with this, but this is by... Aline Gray, once again, and this is developed for the Michelin Company in 1926, although it's not going to be produced widely until the 1970s.
And it's based on their icon, which had, it's based on their icon and the chair actually had a hidden interior wooden frame while portions that are exposed incorporate steel, typically with that chrome finish. We would see For example, either a white or a black form. Usually the overstuffed back is going to be semi-circular. That creates the back and arms. It gives you the impression of sitting in tires or sitting in the intertubes for tires and gets across this sense of modern comfort.
It's sleek. It's got that streamlined feel. And yet it's got the luxury that would speak to a world that has just been through.
all of the austerity, or is going through all the austerity of the Great Depression. We'll also see the development of the womb chair. And this has a molded fiberglass shell covered first with a layer of foam rubber, then with upholstery. Of course, foam rubber being another synthetic material that's going to become widely used in this period between about 1920 and 1960. The seat and back...
And then we have this tulip chair, and this should stand out. This is a form that we've seen in the past. We usually associate it, for example, with the 1960s. And this was made by Knoll International, again, tied to Bauhaus or inspired by Bauhaus, and would be molded in white, although later you have other colors, and made out of fiberglass.
Now, the fiberglass means that I can have this very narrow... pedestal. It will be very strong.
It allows the chair to turn and it allows for this very complex form. If you look at it in terms of something that you're modeling, something that you're trying to create, it is particularly complex, far more complex than any form we've seen for a chair up until this point, especially an unupholstered chair, which of course you can have the unpolstered version. This is only possible because they have the use of molds and the use of fiberglass. Later, we can use plastics and things for the same thing. But at the time, fiberglass, specifically matte fiberglass, so it's going to look sort of random in terms of the strands if you look at the back of it, are going to be the perfect material because there's a great deal of strength there that's inherent in the fiberglass, and yet it has a flexibility.
So if you sit on it, it's not terribly uncomfortable, and it's really meant to sort of fit the form of... the average body.