International Style in USA

In the United States, the International Style architecture is found in the designs of Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Irving Gill on the West Coast. Frank Lloyd Wright’s works in Chicago during the first two decades of the 20th century also include examples of the design; his Wasmuth Portfolio especially is noted as an inspiration to European modernists. The US architects also propounded simplicity, adherence to structure and transparency through their works.

The much known entry by Eliel Saarinen in the competition for the Tribune Tower in 1922 set the tone for the future.

In 1932, Philip Johnson masterminded an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Along with Henry Russell Hitchcock, he authored a catalog for that display. The term International Style came from the title of this catalog, which chronicled architecture from 1922 to 1932 as well as categorized, promoted and included certain architects in the modernism trend along with Johnson’s perception of their objectives and ideals. An equally important contribution from the book to the International Style was its setting of the style as that which went beyond national or regional attributes.

It is to be noted that Johnson deviated from certain original Weissenhof architects, more so from the Dutch (particularly J.J.P. Oud), in that he referred to the modernism trend as an aesthetic style rather than as strictly adhering to the culture of being functional.

In 1932, the PSFS Building in Philadelphia, the world’s first International Style skyscraper was completed. It was designed by architects George Howe and William Lescaze.

During the 1930s in Weimar Germany, the National Socialist Party started rising in power. As, among others, it denounced modern architecture, almost all the contemporary architects had to flee from Europe. Noted among such defections are that of Mies (who reached Chicago in 1936 and established himself as one of the pioneering architects of modernism) and of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer (they came to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, from where they spread and promulgated the Bauhaus as the genesis of modernism in architectural design).

The end of World War II saw the International Style evolve into modernism. Leading architectural firms, Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) – founded by Louis Skidmore, Nathaniel Owings and John Merrill in Chicago in 1939, and Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) – founded by George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum in St. Louis in 1955, took to the style and popularized it for decades. The United Nations headquarters and the Seagram Building in New York are prime examples of the architecture style.

Common features of the International Style high-rise are:

• Square or rectangular layouts
• Plain cubic “extruded rectangle” structure
• Windows along irregular horizontal rows forming grids
• All facades at right angles

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