THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

- The Chicago School was a group of architects active c. 1880-1910 and known for major
-

innovations in high-rise construction and for the development of modern commercial building
design.
Known for the American skyscraper and the developed the steel skeleton as a load-bearing
structure.
The safe elevator was invented by Ensha Graves Otis during this time.
Louis Sullivan is one of its best-known exponents.
It was during this period that the schism between construction and architecture, between the
engineer and the architect, was healed.

WILLIAM LE BARON JENNEY

- Can be regarded as the founder of the Chicago School.

- The First Leiter Building, Chicago, 1879. Built as a warehouse. Had brick pillars in its outer
walls, and wide glass openings similar to the Chicago windows of later date. Used the cast-iron
column in the interior.

- Home Insurance Building, Chicago, 1883-1885. First building in which skeleton or steel frame
construction was used. Elevations are still handled in a heavy, monumental fashion.

THE SECOND LEITER BUILDING, CHICAGO, USA, C. 1889

Of pure metal skeletal construction.

Has no more self-supporting walls.
The front of 120 m and 8 storeys in height was mastered through the use of great simple units.
First of the high buildings to exhibit the trend toward the use of pure forms.

Client: Levi Leiter

Jenney implemented the skeletal frame made of steel to make the design fireproof.
Occupies the entire block of State Street between Congress Parkway and Van Buren Street.
State street facade consists of 9 bays separated by wide pilasters. Pilasters are capped by
simple capitals. An unadorned cornice crowns the entire structure.
- The Congress and Van Buren facades are 3 bays wide with measurements of 121.9 m by 43.6
m. Within each bay are 4 windows on each floor aligned vertically.
- Faced with pink granite.
- Each floor contains 4600 sqm. with 4.9 m high ceilings that can be divided to house multiple
tenants.

BURNHAM AND COMPANY

- Daniel H. Burnham formed a partnership with John W. Root.

- Root was the more imaginative partner and perhaps ahead of his time.

MONADNOCK BUILDING, CHICAGO, USA, c. 1891

- Can be regarded as an ancestor of the Reliance Building.

- It was a 16-storey building with external walls of load-bearing masonry.
- The fenestration, projecting bays and curved edges and cornices, which are as elegantly shaped
as they are structurally logical, give a rhythmic movement to its bold silhouette.

RELIANCE BUILDING, CHICAGO, USA, c. 1894

- A glass tower 15 stories high.

- Base is formed from a dark and unobtrusive stone, in sharp contrast to the glass and glazed
white tile tower which springs up from it. The eaves of the flat roof are only thin slabs,
emphasised no more than they must to serve as protection. No overhanging cornice of stone.
- Horizontally proportioned Chicago windows: have now a history of 10 years behind them. They
project to pick up light. Wholly incorporated into the glad body of the building.
- Exhibits a sense of airiness and has pure proportions.
- Considered as a symbol of the spirit of the Chicago School.

LOUIS SULLIVAN (1856-1924)

Best known architect of the Chicago School.

The slogan Form follows function is attributed to him by some.
Considered by man say at the father of modern architecture.
Perhaps given the most searching consideration to the construction and functional problems of
the skyscraper, trying to integrate the technical and functional solutions into a significant form.
May also have been the first to consider the commercial high-rise office building as genuine
architecture and as a piece of art.
One of the originators of Functionalism and Organic Architecture.
Revived the humanistic approach to architectural design.
Believed that the building should have vertically three parts, according to its major functions, a
base for shops, restaurants and other places, a shaft of identical offices more for private use,
and an attic for the mechanical equipment.
His forms, ironically, did not follow only the functions. He had quite a flair for imaginative and
organic ornament.

FOUR ANCESTORS OF THE GUARANTY BUILDING

- Harper and Brothers Building, New York, c. 1854

- Marshall Field Warehouse, Chicago, c. 1885-1887

- In a kind of Romanesque revival.

- Embodied well the American confidence in continuity and permanence as an aspect of the
deep-rooted human need for security.

- Walker Warehouse, Chicago, c. 1888-1889

- Derives almost directly from Richardsons building.

- Although, the arches are stretched all the way up to the attic floor and the spandrels are
recessed somewhat.

- cThe exterior becomes a pattern of articulated three-dimensional members instead of a taut

screen.

- Wainwright Building, St. Louis, c. 1890-1891

- Sullivans first great skyscraper.

- Abandoned Richardsons arches, doubled the vertical piers and inserted the whole pattern
of piers and spandrels into a frame consisting of the base, the substantial corner piers and
the attic.
- Note should be taken that every other pier has no structural column within, and that
Sullivan was, therefore, consciously stressing both the verticality and the plastic density of
the building, avoiding any expression of the structural bayon which all the other architects
of the Chicago School with their Chicago windows were concentrating.
- The form that followed function was for Sullivan not that of an open steel cage but rather
that of a powerful body in upright position.

THE GUARANTY BUILDING, BUFFALO, NEW YORK, USA, c. 1895

- Represents the climax of Sullivans development of the tall, free-standing office tower.
- Building now really stands on its columnar legs, but these are contained by corner frames,
which both define the volume and hold it down, stretch upward as they are to the cornice.

- The static slab of the Wainwright Building is abandoned, and Richardsons arches reappear, but
the thin piers that they connect seem to be not so much rising up to them as pulling down like a
dropped screen within the larger frame.
- A drama of vertical continuity and human uprightness is realized.
- Anthropometric.

- The form is a single stereometric volume, a vertical shaft, rectangular in plan.

- Vertical subdivision into three parts: base, shaft, and attic.
- Base is subdivided into two parts: ground floor and mezzanine. Arched doorways indicate
entrances.

- Main part made up of office spaces stacked one on top of the other is visually separated from
the base.

- Only the corner piers give the desired continuity. The same corner piers connect also the main
shaft to the attic.

- The setback spandrels emphasise the verticality of the main central part and set it off against the
heavier and more horizontally organised base.

- The thin projecting cornice is just heavy enough to bring the soaring vertical movement to a
definite stop.

- Proportions seem to be derived from the human body.

- Rhythmic movements appear to be instep with the human step.

CARSON-PIRIE-SCOTT DEPARTMENT STORE, CHICAGO, USA, c. 1899-1904

- Located on the worlds busiest corner on State and Madison Street.

- A complementary, urban-space-bounding type of office building, capable of defining a street or a
square.

- Human body image would have been inappropriate and was abandoned.
- Surface of the building is now horizontally continuous, except at the corner, where it splits apart
as if under interior pressure. This round corner with its emphasis on verticality was introduced at
the insistence of the owners.
- Columns and spandrels are kept in one plane.
- Horizontal Chicago windows are inserted with great precision. With their thin metal frames they
cut sharply into the facade.
- The light-splintering ornament of the lower floors takes all sense of structural support away form
that zone. The upper stories, therefore, float free from attachment to the ground, and thereby the
velocity of the horizontal movement down the street is increased.

- Fenestration highlights the buildings structural frame.

- There is a predominance of horizontal windows due to the use of the structural steel skeleton.
No walls are needed to support the load above, allowing windows to span from column to
column.
- Column-to-column span is now greater than floor-to-floor span.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF ART NOVEAU

- Works in the vein of Romantic Naturalism as opposed to Romantic Classicism.
- Can be regarded as the forerunner and party as a contemporary of the organic architecture of
Wright and Aalto.
The West-European conception was to search for an art free from all historical styles.
Also known as the Floral Style.
The emphasis on applied ornament is contrary to the rationalistic approach of Functionalism.
Two lines of taste:
- Convex-concave and soft forms of Horta, van de Velde, and Gaudi
- Geometrical and hard forms of Wagner and Mackintosh (and the early Wright with his
Larkin Building and Unity Temple)
- First appeared in Belgium.
- Essentially an anti-movement, which may help to explain its short life.

VICTOR HORTA (1861-1947)

Originated Art Nouveau architecture.

Made head of the Academy at Brussels in 1913.
Later became Baron Horta.
Comparatively lost contact with the youth and the mainstream of creative endeavor.

TASSEL HOUSE, RUE DE TURIN, BRUSSELS, c. 1893

- Stands in a row of conventional Brussels residences.

- The front is only 7 m across.
- Floor is broken into two different levelsthe drawing room is half a story higher than the
entrance which leads into it.

- Light wells provided new and unusual sources of illumination for such a narrow space.
- Admired for its perfect adjustment to the needs of the owner and its freedom from any trace of
historical styles.

- Ornate cast-iron columns and girders in a private home.

- Bow window as standard feature of every house in Brussels is preserved, but it is transformed in
a curved, glassed-in surface.

- Second storey windows run downward from the supporting girders to the floor level.
- Horta took over elements which had appeared first in business and industrial buildings of the
1850s and incorporated them into a private house.

- Flexible ground plan results in the free disposition of rooms at different levels and the
independence of partitions one from another.

- One of the European beginnings of the free plan.

- Traditional structure with art nouveau incursions in the elements.
- Wrought iron used to form decorative elements.

THE MAISON DU PEUPLE, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, c. 1897

Reflects the socialist tendencies of the cultural life of Brussels at the time.
Functionally, it is a social and cultural center for the people, for the workers.
Concave iron and glass facade was one of the boldest achievements of the period.
Generally regarded as Hortas masterpiece.
In the Tassel House, the supporting vertical columns were still derived from plants, and the
sprouting tendrils merged into the painted ceiling. In the Maison du Peuple, the horizontal,
vertical and diagonal members of the structural frame of the lecture hall are connected to a
delicately articulated network, which in its transparency and lightness goes beyond a mere
ornamental effect and becomes an expression of the principles of construction.

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868-1928)

- Most gifted of the so-called Glasgow boys, a group of architects, painters and decorators.
- Became especially influential on Otto Wagner and his secession group in Vienna.
- Career and game was short-lived, following the pattern of his contemporaries Horta and
Sullivan.

- Hardly had any commissions during the last 15 years of his life.

GLASGOW ART SCHOOL, SCOTLAND, c. 1898-1907

- Uses more straight lines, hard, abstract and geometric shapes, as opposed to the free flowing,
soft, organic, concrete and natural forms.

- Contains a series of studio-classrooms on the north side, facing the main street.
- Row of classrooms is interrupted by the asymmetrically placed entrance, which contains the
directors office on the second floor.

- Back of the entrance there is the central stairway, which is surrounded by the museum on the
second floor.

- There are two additional stairs next to the library and the Mackintosh room.
- The front is primarily a wall of large studio windows facing the street and north.
- Front would have been a functional grid, it were not for the entrance bay or front piece, which is
-

place out of center and is a free, asymmetrical composition of elements of the Baroque and of
the Scottish-baronial past.
A division into three levels:
- Pediment on the first floor
- Bare turret over the entrance on the second
- Little oriel windows on the third
Functional grid and sturdiness of the centre are relieved by delightful, very thin metalwork, the
railings the handrail of the balcony, and especially the odd hooks carrying transparent, flowerlike balls in front of the upper windows (practical purpose is to hold boards for window-cleaning).
Aesthetic purpose of metalwork is to provide a delicate screen of light and playful form through
which the stronger and sounder rest will be seen.
Mackintosh gathered the national articulations of the past, reinterpreted them in a creative way,
and at the same time anticipated the development of contemporary architecture by
foreshadowing the neoplastic forms of the De Stijl movement, the architecture of Functionalism,
the bold and expressionistic shapes of Gaudi and even those of Le Corbusier at Ronchamp.

ANTONIO GAUDI (1852-1926)

- Perhaps the most creative architect of Art Nouveau.

- The only one who turned the free flowing linear forms into a truly three-dimensional expressive
architecture.

- Like Mackintosh, gathered the forms of the past of his native country, Spain, the forms of Gothic,
Moorish and Baroque architecture, and reinterpreted them in a creative way, foreshadowing at
the same time the expressionistic and surrealistic tendencies of the following contemporary
architecture in Europe.
- Eagerly studied Viollet-le-Duc, which helped him explore complicated structural problems.
- Wanted to continue and develop the Gothic style.

CASA MILA, BARCELONA, SPAIN, c. 1905-1910

A truly fantastic architecture.

Materials used were usually brick and stone.
Conventional, centuries-old structural methods were broken away in order to achieve new forms.
In order to achieve functional architecture, Gaudi approached the task empirically, not rationally.
The curves of Gaudis arches are determined empirically by suspension models.
Architectural forms are determined through observation, using a favorite device of his, the
drawing of visual analogies with forms from nature.
Uses nature as one source for new architectural forms.
One of Gaudis favorite nature forms is the human skeleton, which had been photographed for
him in a variety of positions in front of a mirror device.
The architecture of Gaudi then is empirically (anti-rational) conceived, but it is functional,
whereas the architecture of Mies is rationally conceived and strikes after and abstract perfection
which has little to do with reality, and ignores that which can be empirically perceived. As a
result, it is non-functional.
Rooms are arranged around courtyards.
Spaces seem to flow into one another.
Columns resemble elephant feet.
Balconies seem like waves crashing into the shore.
Railings look like seaweed.
Steel skeletal structure covered with stone.
Roof/ceiling made from single brick bars aligned to form webbing.

HENDRIK PETRUS BERLAGE (1856-1934)

- Took Romanesque forms as points of departure.

- Developed relatively pure forms.
- Went to the USA and became an instant admirer of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

STOCK EXCHANGE, AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND, c. 1898-1903

- Unadorned brick is used externally and internally.

- There is a deliberate attempt to keep planes and surfaces flat.
- The wall as a flat surface was soon to become the starting point for new principles in
architecture.

- Building layout contains three large elongated rectangular spaces lighted from above for the
three exchanges.

- The largest in front is flanked by galleries of offices, and the allusion to the Romanesque basilica
with side aisles is perhaps intended.

- Well-lighted spaces reminds us of a medieval marketplace surrounded by houses.

- Value lies in its moral qualities, the conscious effort for sincerity and honesty, in the intent to
create an environment for social an human interaction.

- Another value comes from the ambiguity between its twofold character of cathedral and factory,
which gives the building an aura of mystery.

- Also known as the Beurs Van Berlage.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE PROTO-RATIONALISM

- Partly develops out of Art Nouveau and partly in opposition to it.

- Did not succeed in flowing into the Rationalism of the 1920s because it was not able to absorb
-

the development of the figurative arts, especially that of Cubism, and the movements which took
there origin from it, such as Neoplasticism, Constructivism, etc.
Reduced forms to simple geometric shapes, partly for reasons of economy and party as a
consequence of the search for pure, basic and simple forms.
Besides this tendency for simple and pure forms there was the lingering bent towards
Classicism in the romantic-classic vein.
Made reinforced concrete an architectural building material.
Characterized by a certain anti-art and anti-decoration tendency.
An architecture of hard straight lines and angular forms were produced.
A movement tending towards reduction:
- Architecture is reduced to construction
- Function is reduced to material function
- Architectural form is reduced to abstraction
- Building is reduced to an economic enterprise

OTTO WAGNER (1841-1918)

- Made professor of architecture at the Academy of Vienna at the age of 53.

- A celebrated architect who designed buildings in the typical eclectic manner, using Renaissance
and Baroque architecture as models.

- Stated that new balance must be found in form, function, and technic.

VIENNA POSTAL SAVINGS BANK, c. 1905

Interior reveals an astonishing purity of design.

Has a glass-roofed interior court.
Glass and iron vaulting does not merely fulfil all functional requirements but also blends into and
Tapered vertical supports of steel seem to increase the floating effect of the glass ceiling.
Linearity of the space is hard.
All ornament is omitted.
The individual elements, despite the curve of the ceiling, are essentially rectangular and exhibit
a machined, non-organic character.
- Contains no movement or continuities, no decoration.
- Double glass roofbarrel vault under gable roof.

ADOLF LOOS (1870-1933)

- Published the famous manifesto Ornament and Crime in 1908, showcasing his obsessive
puritanism.

- His work influenced the architecture of Le Corbusier, Mies and Gropus.

- His buildings assume a puritanical but elegant austerity from their lack of ornament.

STEINER HOUSE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA, c. 1910

- Resulted partly from an attempt to get around the existing building regulations, which allowed
only a single story facade on the street side.

- The building is covered on that side with a sweeping curved roof which allows four stories in the
back, making use of the sloping site.

- Side facades show clearly the dramatic arrangement of the interior volumes and are in stark
-

contrast with the garden facade, where everything i ordered and composed rhythmically in
iconoclastic and classicistic nudity.
Embodies best the architectural theory of Loos.
Garden facade is a concession to the Neoclassic trends of Proto-Rationalism.
Side facades anticipate already the principles of the so-called Raumplan, in which the facade
is determined by the spaces behind it.
Uses traditional vertical windows.

AUGUSTE PERRET (1854-1954)

- Father was a building contractor.

- First who succeeded in developing a characteristic form for reinforced concrete.
- Does not abandon decoration completely, but subordinates it so as not to obscure the clarity of
the design.

- Defined for the first time with extreme clarity the relationship between supporting and supported
elements of a building and in his profiling of the elements.

- Influenced Le Corbusier who developed his free plan out of the assumption that the supporting
structure should be separate from the space-enclosing and space-defining walls.

- Most important contribution of Perret to the younger generation of French architects was the
flexible treatment of the floor plan.

HOUSE IN THE RUE FRANKLIN, PARIS, FRANCE, c. 1903

Apartment building of 8 stories.

Inserted between two other buildings on the Rue Franklin.
Modified U in plan in order to increase the surface for letting in more sunlight.
Balconies are inserted at flat angles.
Result is a relatively free floor plan with a variety of spaces and views.
All five rooms have ample daylight and yet also privacy from neighboring windows.
Wall in the back of the staircase is executed in glass bricks, leaving it entirely open to daylight.
Building regulations did not permit window openings on that side.
Flat roof exhibits a rudimentary roof garden.
Reinforced concrete skeleton is used without disguise.
Parts of the outside are covered with ceramic tile, showing floral motifs.
Uses articulation of elements to promote visual interest.

PETER BEHRENS (1868-1940)

Influenced Gropius, Mies and Le Corbusier.

Northern German from Hamburg.
Started as a painter.
Had no formal training in architecture but studied in various art schools in his home country.
As a painter and craftsman he designed for a wide range of needs: tea-services for a porcelain
factory, letter-boxes for the German postal service, ecclesiastical vestments, churches, bridges,
warehouses, and suburban housing developments.
Succeeded Otto Wagner as head of the prestigious Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1922.
Had been a design consultant of one of the largest industrial enterprises in Germany, the
Allgemeine Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft (AEG).
One of the first artists to be concerned with the whole range of industrial design.
Succeeded in developing simple forms appropriate to the materials used and to massproduction methods.

AEG TURBINE FACTORY, BERLIN, GERMANY, c. 1909

- Divided into a main building and an asymmetrically placed annex, architecturally differentiated
from the main building.

- Long facade of the factory is made up of a glass wall from floor to ceiling, inserted between
vertical steel supports

- Steel supports taper towards the bottom into hinged baseplates fixed to the foundation walls.
- By canting the glass surfaces inward, a conspicuously projecting cornice is formed which divides
the building into two halvesa heavy roof looming over a building which is set back.

- Structural system is made up of three-hinged, arched trusses which swing in one movement
from base to crown, obliterating the division between roof and walls.

- Monumental effect is heightened by the massive corners where the long glass facade meets the
gable ends.

- Corners have nothing to do with the structure of the building and were chosen mainly for formal
-

reasons.
Building loses somewhat it straightforward practical character and becomes a monument.
On the gable ends appears the first glass curtain wall.
Powerful design is a combination of Romantic Classicism and the Romanticism of the machine.
A synthesis of a Greek temple with a factory.

WALTER GROPIUS (1883-1969)

- Worked in the office of Peter Behrens after finishing his studies from 1907 to 1910, when his
master was engaged in the work for the Turbine Factory of the AEG.

- Took part in discussions at the newly founded Deutscher Werkbund which helped crystallize
his ideas as to what the essential nature of a building ought to be.

- Early in his career became interested in the social aspects of architecture, in the housing
problem, in pre-fabrication as a means of cutting costs and achieving better quality.

- Advocated the application of aesthetically consistent principles.

FAGUS FACTORY, ALFELD AN DER LEINE, c. 1911 (WITH ADOLF MEYER)

Produced shoe lasts.

Here the schism between thinking and feeling in European architecture was healed.
Built of masonry, with columns in front and a load bearing wall in the back.
Only for the floors steel beams are used.
First example of functional architecture according to Pevsner.
Broadbent opposedx Pevsners view and made it a point to show that functional and rational
are far from synonymous and are in fact opposites.
Significance does not come from new technic but new conception of form.
Absence of supports at the corners springs less from structural considerations than from a
desire to dematerialize the corners.
A simple unified stereometric volume.
Walls are developed as planes and conceived as sheer curtains between inner and outer space.
Pillars are set back behind the facade so that its curtain character is fully realized.
Metal bars serve only to hold the glass in place, which is darkened where the floor slabs occur.
Glass-curtain wall has characteristics of the multistory office buildings of the 1950s and takes its
origin here.
Gropius factory has a simple and more human interpretation compared to Behrens monumental
factory.
Cantilevered staircase.