Modernism in the 1930s

1
Modernism in the 1930s

• Europe and the Americas

2
During the 1930s, modernism and its practices
were disseminated widely in the western world.
This was due in part to the fact that architects
and clients often felt that modernism responded
to the needs of post-WWI social and economic
circumstances. Often the introduction of
modernism was accomplished by governmental
agencies who commissioned new buildings to house
social and economic programs. The spread of
modernism was also accomplished by increased
attention to its accomplishments. One of the
most important ways that such attention was given
was an exhibit held by the then new Museum of
Modern Art in New York in 1932. Modern
Architecture International Exhibition was a show
researched and organized by two architectural
historians Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell
Hitchcock. Their fundamental position was that
modernism had coalesced into an identifiable and
international expression by 1922 and that it was
clear by 1932 that this was the style of the new
age.
3
Hitchcock and Johnson posited that there had
been an early period of preparation for the
advent of modernism. This early period was
characterized by qualities still representative
of the 19th century and earlier traditions of
European architecture. It was evidenced in the
work of such designers as Peter Behrens, Louis
Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. This early
formative period, they argued, was followed by
the great modernists Gropius, Breuer,
LeCorbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, George
Howe, William Lescaze, and others whose designs
followed the general principles laid out by the
Bauhaus and by LeCorbusier in his
writings. Hitchcock and Johnson further argued
that the new modern style was international and
could not be mistaken for idiosyncratic personal
expressions. It consisted of several
identifiable qualities, including volumetricity,
asymmetry, a sense of machine production, the
absence of applied ornament, and a clear interest
in functionalism.
4
The argument put forth by Hitchcock and Johnson
gained many adherents in the United States where
a debate had been waged for over ten years about
the definition of modernism. There was no
general agreement about what should be considered
authentically modern and for many people, the
definition offered by the exhibit at the MOMA was
a relief. It seemed plausible. Finally,
modernism also spread during the 1930s because of
the oppression suffered by modern artists and
architects under National Socialism in Germany.
The Bauhaus had suffered political criticism in
the 1920s in Weimar. It continued to be the
object of political assault after it moved to
Dessau. In 1930, the Bauhaus moved to Berlin and
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became the director.
However, despite the efforts of the Bauhaus to be
viewed as an art academy with no political
ambitions, the Nazis finally closed it. Most of
the faculty left Germany and settled elsewhere.
Gropius became the head of the Graduate School of
Design at Havard and Mies founded IIT in Chicago.
5
Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, c.1938-40
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
Lovell House by Richard Neutra, Griffith Park,
CA, 1929
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
Research House by Richard Neutra, Los Angeles,
CA, 1932-33
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
In Italy, the Gruppo 7 organized itself in
1926. Its members included Luigi Figini, Guido
Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Gino pollini, Carlo
Enrico Rava, Giuseppe Terragni, and Ubaldo
Catagnoli (later replaced by Adalberto Libera).
They intended to create an architettura
Razionale (rational architecture) and their
early work clearly reflected the influence of the
Bauhaus, Russian constructivism, the modernism of
other European countries along with memories of
Futurism. Probably the most important of all the
modernists working in Italy in the 1930s was
Giuseppe Terragni. Admiring the new modernism of
northern Europe, he worked to preserve a certain
classical figuration within the matrix of new
building techniques and abstract form. He admired
LeCorbusier more than any of the other modernists
and felt an affinity for Corbus ingrained love
of the classical tradition. This made Terragni
particularly well suited to create an
architectural setting for Fascisms program of
propaganda and mythology.
15
Giuseppe Terragni, Apartment house in Como,
Italy, c1936
16
(No Transcript)
17
Casa del Fascio (Headquarters of the Fascist
Party), Como, Italy,1932-36
18
In his design for the local headquarters of the
Fascist party, Terragni referred to Mussolins
definition of the Fascism as a glasshouse into
which everyone can peer. His metaphor for this
is found in his redefinition of the grid on the
façade as a clearly articulated between support,
opening and enclosure. The Corbusian sources of
this are abundant, but the building also recalls
a classical palazzo in its clearly described
proportions and its conversion of a central
cortile into a public meeting space reflective of
the adjacent outdoor piazza. The Casa del Fascio
is full of contradictory and productive tensions.
For example, the façade is both symmetrical and
asymmetrical. It is both open frame and closed
volume. The building is self-contained but
projects a strong axial relationship between
internal space and the surrounding urban space.
It is both fragile and strong.
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
One of Terragnis most interesting projects is
his design for a monument to the great Italian
poet Dante Alighieri. The building was to be
called the Danteum and would have stood near
the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine in the
Forum, a monument to the continuity of classical
culture and the renewed empire of the fascist
dictator Mussolini. It was to contain a Dante
study center as well as serve as a commemorative
structure. The building was based on Dantes
great poem The Divine Comedy in which Dante
visits the three realms of Paradise, Purgatory,
and Inferno. Spaces representing these three
stages of the Divine Comedy were arranged
processionally and each had a different mood or
character based on formal elements of walls and
cylindrical columns on a complicated proportional
system. The complexity was based on a
relationship between the Golden Section, the
dimensions of the Basilica of Maxentius, and a
symbolic numerology devised by Terragni.
22
Danteum project, 1938, by Giuseppe Terragni with
Pietro Lingeri
23
Terragnis design was further involved with his
ideas about the origins of architecture and what
he perceived to be archetypal forms (cylinders,
rectangles), archetypal relationships (rows,
grids), basic types (free-standing columns,
porticoes, hypostyles) and institutional
typologies (temple, palace). The building thus
amalgamates sources as remote as Egyptian temple
design (hypostyle halls), the vocabulary of
modern architecture, the abstract qualities of
modern painting, and elements of the nearby Roman
buildings. The Danteum and, for that matter,
much of Terragnis other work suggests that
modernism--even European modernism with
sympathies for Bauhaus and Corbusian ideas--was
not always based on liberal viewpoints but could
serve just as easily a conservative fascist
regime handsomely. Is this due to Terragnis
talents as a designer or to an inherent
flexibility within the modernist style?
24
(No Transcript)
25
Purgatory
Paradise
Inferno
26
If Terragnis work represents the sublime end of
the spectrum of conservative architecture in the
early 20th century, the architecture commissioned
by and produced for the Nazi regime in Germany
represents the banal. When Hitler first came to
power, he used Paul Ludwig Troost as his
architect. Troost and Hitler both admired Karl
Friedrich Schinkel and shared other views about
the need for an updated classicism to express the
values of the German Volk and the Nazi myth of
Arianism. When Troost died in 1934, he was
succeeded by Albert Speer who was more theatrical
and interested in quick effect and rhetorical
power. His designs for individual monuments were
usually conceived in over-simplified and
over-scaled classicism. His concepts for a new
Berlin were as megalomaniacal as Hitlers. His
most successful design was probably his use of
1,000 airplane headlights to create a cathedral
of light for a rally at the Zeppelin Field in
Nuremburg in 1934.
27
German Pavilion, International Exposition, Paris,
by Albert Speer, 1937
28
Salzburg-Munich Autobahn Propyleum, by Albert
Speer, 1937
29
Wehrmacht High Command, Berlin, by Albert Speer,
1940
30
Great Plaza Complex, Berlin, by Albert Speer, 1937
31
Great hall with Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, by
Albert Speer, 1937-43
32
(No Transcript)
33
(No Transcript)
34
Zeppelin Field, Nuremburg, by Albert Speer, 1934
35
(No Transcript)
36
(No Transcript)