DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45213#0107
103
Many housing estates designed by architects from various countries featured buildings looking
so much alike that they were regarded as examples of the "International Style" 255:"[...] plain undeco-
rated walls, windows and doors arranged irregularly, flat roofs, asymmetrical elevations and 'func-
tional' or 'rational' plans.256 A contemporary German architect observed: "Many private villas and
houses for rent are likewise built in this style. They all look very much alike: completely plain exterior
walls, flat roofs, pullman-style windows, terraces and balconies like steamboat decks." 257 Trade jour-
nals often featured side by side houses built in various European countries so similar in style that it
was impossible to identify the region.
The International Style possessed a set of paradigms or defining characteristics: simplicity and
a straightforward approach to materials and construction, human scale, simple geometric volumes
of varied size, articulated, juxtaposed or interpenetrating to emphasise the dynamic quality of the
arrangement, multiple axes, large expanses of glass in the form of long horizontal bands, rooftop
gardens, steel-framed or reinforced-concrete post-and-slab construction, undecorated walls. To
a contemporary commentator, new rationally-planned housing estates on the outskirts of Frank-
furt-am-Main appeared as: "[...] expansive developments built up with rows of identical row-houses:
long, plain, greyish facades, punctuated with narrow entrance doors set a few meters apart, a con-
crete slab over each door, two windows on the front wall, one larger, the other somewhat smaller
with narrow strip of flat roof above with hundreds of thousands of identical copies, and more of the
same on the opposite side."258
The architecture described above, distinguished by extreme functionalism of strictly geomet-
ric divisions, belongs to the trend referred to as Cubist or "boxlike" style. Already the 1st CIAM at La
Sarraz in 1928 revealed multiple approaches of the architects pursuing modernity, based on similar
premises but arrived at distinctively different formal solutions. Hugo Haring's Organic Architecture
(organhaftes Bauen) provided an alternative to the International style promoted by Le Corbusier,
Walter Gropius or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Pieter Blundell Jones calls Hugo Haring the lost key
to comprehending the 1920's. Haring insisted that the building's form should be determined by its
plan which had to optimally suit the user's needs. In contrast to the style promoted by Le Corbusier
or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. What is referred to as Organic Architecture did not become a well-de-
fined standard to copy, rather as reflected in the term "organic", it implied a search, allowing forms to
develop through a process which mirrored natural growth and not through the architect's artificial
intervention. Architectural beauty was seen as a product of natural factors and not as the result of
some imposed predetermined plan. Organic buildings featured sophisticated shapes, soft contours
and large windows connecting the inside with the outside. The house's architectural form was but
an outer shell to encapsulate and shelter the process of living going on inside.
255 Philip C. JOHNSON, Mies van der Rohe. New York 1947, p.43. The term was first used by Alfred Barr.
256 Szczpsny RUTKOWSKI, op.cit., p.78
257 Ibidem, p.109.
258 Ibidem, p.108-109. The author observes that "similarly rationalized and functional housing estates spread throughout Berlin, Munich, Karl-
sruhe, Dessau, as well as in other locations. The Socialist magistrates of cities tried to please blue and white collar workers with such 'modern'
housing."
Many housing estates designed by architects from various countries featured buildings looking
so much alike that they were regarded as examples of the "International Style" 255:"[...] plain undeco-
rated walls, windows and doors arranged irregularly, flat roofs, asymmetrical elevations and 'func-
tional' or 'rational' plans.256 A contemporary German architect observed: "Many private villas and
houses for rent are likewise built in this style. They all look very much alike: completely plain exterior
walls, flat roofs, pullman-style windows, terraces and balconies like steamboat decks." 257 Trade jour-
nals often featured side by side houses built in various European countries so similar in style that it
was impossible to identify the region.
The International Style possessed a set of paradigms or defining characteristics: simplicity and
a straightforward approach to materials and construction, human scale, simple geometric volumes
of varied size, articulated, juxtaposed or interpenetrating to emphasise the dynamic quality of the
arrangement, multiple axes, large expanses of glass in the form of long horizontal bands, rooftop
gardens, steel-framed or reinforced-concrete post-and-slab construction, undecorated walls. To
a contemporary commentator, new rationally-planned housing estates on the outskirts of Frank-
furt-am-Main appeared as: "[...] expansive developments built up with rows of identical row-houses:
long, plain, greyish facades, punctuated with narrow entrance doors set a few meters apart, a con-
crete slab over each door, two windows on the front wall, one larger, the other somewhat smaller
with narrow strip of flat roof above with hundreds of thousands of identical copies, and more of the
same on the opposite side."258
The architecture described above, distinguished by extreme functionalism of strictly geomet-
ric divisions, belongs to the trend referred to as Cubist or "boxlike" style. Already the 1st CIAM at La
Sarraz in 1928 revealed multiple approaches of the architects pursuing modernity, based on similar
premises but arrived at distinctively different formal solutions. Hugo Haring's Organic Architecture
(organhaftes Bauen) provided an alternative to the International style promoted by Le Corbusier,
Walter Gropius or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Pieter Blundell Jones calls Hugo Haring the lost key
to comprehending the 1920's. Haring insisted that the building's form should be determined by its
plan which had to optimally suit the user's needs. In contrast to the style promoted by Le Corbusier
or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. What is referred to as Organic Architecture did not become a well-de-
fined standard to copy, rather as reflected in the term "organic", it implied a search, allowing forms to
develop through a process which mirrored natural growth and not through the architect's artificial
intervention. Architectural beauty was seen as a product of natural factors and not as the result of
some imposed predetermined plan. Organic buildings featured sophisticated shapes, soft contours
and large windows connecting the inside with the outside. The house's architectural form was but
an outer shell to encapsulate and shelter the process of living going on inside.
255 Philip C. JOHNSON, Mies van der Rohe. New York 1947, p.43. The term was first used by Alfred Barr.
256 Szczpsny RUTKOWSKI, op.cit., p.78
257 Ibidem, p.109.
258 Ibidem, p.108-109. The author observes that "similarly rationalized and functional housing estates spread throughout Berlin, Munich, Karl-
sruhe, Dessau, as well as in other locations. The Socialist magistrates of cities tried to please blue and white collar workers with such 'modern'
housing."