城市与建筑专业英语

城市与建筑专业英语

T he international style was a architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s ,the formative decades of modernist architecture .the term had its origin from the name of a book by Henry-Rueesll Hitchconk and Philip Johnson written to record the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932 which identified ,categorized and expanded upon characteristics common to Modernism across the world。Previous uses of the tern in the same context can be attributed to Walter Gropius in International Architektur ,and Ludwig Hilberseimer in Internationale neue Baukunst.

B y the 1920s the most important figures in modern architecture had established their reputations.The big three are commonly recognized as Le Corbusier in France ,and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Waletr Gropius in Germany. The common characteristics of the International style include :a radical simplification of form , a rejection of ornament , and adoption of glass,steel and concrete as preferred materials . Further ,the transparency of buildings,construction(called the honest expression of structure ),and acceptance of industrialized mass-production techniques contributed to the International style ‘s design philosophy .Finally , the machine aesthetic , and logical design decisions leading to support building function were used by the International architect to create buildings reaching beyond historicism.

The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in four slogans :ornament is a crime , truth to materials,form follows function ,and LeCorbusier ’s description of houses as “machines for living ”

Prior to use of the term ”international style ”,the same striving towards simplification,honesty and clarity identifiable in US architects,notably in the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago ,as well as the west-coast residences of IrvingGill.Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wasmuth Portfolio influenced the work of European modernists, and his travels there probably influenced his own work ,although he refused to be categorized with them. In 1922, the competition for the Tribune Tower and its famous second-place entry by Eliel Saarinen gave a clear indication of what was to come .

The term international Style then came from the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art ,organized by Philip Johnson ,and from the title of the exhibition catalog for tha exhibit,written by Johnosn named ,codified ,promoted and subtly re-defined the whole movement by his inclusion of certain architects , and his description of their motives and values . As a result ,the focus was more on the stylistic aspects of Modernism .Hitchcock’s and Johnson ‘s aims were to define a style of the time ,which would encapsulate this modern architecture . They identified three different principles:the expression volume rather than mass,balance rather than preconceived symmetry and expulsion of applied ornament .All the works which were dis played as the exhibition were carefully selected , as only works which strictly followed the rules were displayed.

Many Modernists disliked the term ,believing that they had arrived at an approach to architecture that transcended “style ”along with any national or regional or continental identity. The British architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner commented ,”to me what had been achieved in 1914 was the styje of century .It never occurred to me look beyond.Here was the one and only style which fitted all those aspects which mattered,aspects of economics and sociology ,of materials and function .It seems folly to think that anybody would wish to abandon it.”

After World War II, the International Style matured ,HOK and SOM perfected the corporate practice , and it because the dominant approach for decades.Perhaps its most famous /notorious manifestations include the United Nations headquarters and the Seagram Building in New York , and the Toronto –Dominion Centre in Toronto . Further examples can be found in mid-century institutional building throughout North America . In Canada, this period coincided with a major building boom and few restrictions on massive building projects .International Style skyscrapers came to dominate many of Canada’s major cities , especially Vancouver , Calgary , Edmonton, and Toronto. While these glass boxes were at first unique and interesting , the idea was soon repeated to the point of ubiquity .Architects attempted to put new twists into such tower, such as the Toronto City Hall . By the 1970s a backlash was underway against modernism, and Canada was one of its centres---prominent anti-modernists such as Jane Jacobs and George Baird were based in Toronto.

T he typical International Style high-rise usually consists of the following:

1. Square or rectangular footprint;

2. Simple cubic “extruded rectangle ” form;

3. Windows running in broken horizontal rows forming a grid;

4. All facade angles are 90 degrees.

The stark , unornamented appearance of the International style with contemporaneous criticism and continues to be criticized today by many .Especially in larger and more public building , the style is commonly subject to disparagement as ugly , inhuman ,sterile,and elitist . Such criticism gained momentum in the latter half of the 20th century , from academics such as Hugo Kukelhaus to best-selling American author Tom wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House , and contributed to the rise of such counter-movements as postmodemism. The negative reaction to international Style was largely superseded in the era of Postmodern architecture that started in the 1960s. In 2006, Hugh Pearlman , the architectural critic of THE Times , observed that those using style today are simply “another species of revivalist, ”nothing the irony.

Seagram Building

The Seagram Building is a skyscraper in New York City , located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan.It was designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , in collaboration with the American Philip Johmson and was completed in 1958.

This structure , and the International Style in which it was built , had enormous

influences on American architecture . One of the style ‘s characteristic traits was to express or articulate the structure of buildings externally. It was a style that argued that the functional utility of the building’s structural elements when made visible, could supplant a formal decorative articulation; and more honestly converse with the public, than any system of applied ornamentation . A building ’s structural elements should be visible ,Mies thought . The Seagram Building , like virtually all large buildings of the time , was built of a steel frame , from which non-structural glass walls were hung. Mies would have preferred the steel frame to be visible to all; however , American building codes required that all structural steel be covered in a fireproof material, usually concrete, because improperly protected steel columns or beams may soften and fail in confined fires. Concrete hid the structure of the building ---something Mies wanted to avoid at all costs ---so Mies used non-structural bronze-toned I-beams to suggest structure instead. These are visible from the outside of the building ,and run vertically, like mullions, surrounding the large glass window . Now, observers look up and see a “fake and tinted-bronze” structure covering a real steel structure . This method of construction using an interior reinforced concrete shell to support a large non-structural edifice has since become commonplace . As designed ,the building used 1,500 tons of bronze in its construction.

Glaspaleis

The Glaspaleis (in English :Glass Palace or Crystal Palace ) is the name of former fashion house and department store Schunck in Heerlen,The Netherlands, built in 1935. The architectural style is corresponds roughly to Modernism, Bauhaus and International style . The visually most distinguishing aspect is the free-standing glass that covers three sides, which makes it even more transparent than famous Bauhaus building in Dessau and is part of the natural climate control.

The purpose of the hypermodern, functional building was to create an atmosphere of a market, with all goods (cloth , clothes , carpets and beds) displayed in the shop instead of back in the stock-room, a rather revolutionary idea at the time. As were the shopping windows of the old 1894 shop (for such a rural town), an idea that was taken to the extreme in the new building.

The result was a structure of stacked and covered “hanging ”markets, protected against the elements by the free standing glass encasing on three sides (North,East and West).

The Glaspaleis is a good example of early modern architecture , made of glass, steel and concrete (except for some marble, wood and copper on the ground floor).Each floor has about 30 mushroom-shaped pillars, ever narrower as one goes up the floors. Part of the multifunctionality lies in the fact that , apart from the back, there are no walls inside the building , not only creating an open atmosphere, but also leaving more freedom in filling in the space . None of the walls , even though they are made pf reinforced concrete , to resist soil(6-9m)

and water pressure, insofar as the pressure has not been absorbed by the outer walls of the insulation gaps(covered at street level) that are meant to protect the building against traffic vibrations and noise ang for ventilation of basement.

The 30mX30m building consists of, from the bottom up, two cellars, ground floor , mezzanine, four more former shop-floors, two penthouse levels for the Schunck family, the lower of which was partly a semi-covered roof terrace with a restaurant, and an accessible top roof. At seven floors (eight floors in US parlance )and a height of 26.5m, it was at the time the tallest building in Heerlen(not counting the tip of the church tower next to it). It has been called a “palace for the people ”, especially for the miners, who formed an important factor in this coal mining town, also because they were paid for manual labourers at that time.