European modernism
Modernism, known variously as the avant garde, the “international style”, or the “modern movement” can be dated from 1910 to the 1970s although it can be found both earlier and later. At different times other styles co-existed and interacted with modernism, most markedly neo-classicism and art deco. From its birth, modernist architecture grew out of technical achievements in construction, and the discoveries of avant garde art. Early modernism includes avant garde movements that appeared at about the same time in Germany, Holland, Russia, France and Italy. Although they all differed from each other, there was a rich interchange of ideas between them.
In Germany the centre of modernism was the school of architecture and design, Bauhaus (1919-1933) that gathered a brilliant international group of professors including, from Russia, Vasilii Kandinsky and El Lissitzky. The housing crisis and social crisis that Germany was going through after the First World War demanded the development of a prototype for mass cheap construction. As early as 1911-1912 the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, designed an absolutely modern building - the Fagus factory. Gropius thought that the way forward was the assimilation of architecture into industrial design: this avoided the use of unnecessary ornament and limited proportions to the functional minimal. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who replaced Gropius as the director of the school, was more occupied with architecture for the elite than housing for workers, including individual houses and exhibition pavilions. The aphorism that defines the essential character of the modernist aesthetic belongs to Mies van der Rohe: “less is more.”
The Dutch movement “De Stijl” (1917-1932) was more concerned with the spiritual than the utilitarian. Its followers considered architecture to be first and foremost an art form, which, as it comprises a man’s living environment, can lead to his spiritual transformation, and therefore to the creation of a just society. The houses designed by Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld are composed as pyramids, made out of separate cubic volumes. Unlike most modernists, De Stijl actively used colour: they painted different surfaces of the internal and external walls in white, red, dark blue, yellow and black, following the example of the paintings of the leader of the movement Piet Mondrian.
Тhe appearance of modernism in France is linked to the name, Le Corbusier, probably the most influential architect of the 20th century. From 1920 to1926 he published the magazine, L'Esprit Nouveau, a platform for his own views. He stated that it was necessary to start using new construction technology and planning strategies as quickly as possible in order to improve the standard of living of people of all classes and by doing so prevent revolution. Le Corbusier’s urban planning projects Contemporary City (1922) and the 1925 Plan Voisin, proposed replacing historic buildings with cross-shaped skyscrapers surrounded by green and inter-connected by a road system. From 1922-1927 together with his partner Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier designed a series of villas for the educated elite, during which time he formulated the famous “five principles of modern architecture” 1 and the concept of the house as a “machine for living.” He brought these ideas to fruition in the form of an apartment block with highly developed services – the so called Unité d'Habitation, first built in Marseilles 1947-52 and then repeated in other cities. In his designs for large public buildings (the first of which was Tsentrsoyuz in Moscow 1928-1937) Le Corbusier combined rectangular blocks with curvilinear volumes containing auditoriums and curved towers for stairwells and ramps. The other important contribution made by Le Corbusier to modernist architectre was the “Modulor” system of proportions based on the measurements of the human body.
The brightest representative of modernist architecture in italy was Giuseppe Terragni, who founded the Gruppo 7 in Milan in 1926. Terrani was a committed fascist, whose conclusions were nevertheless the same as the leftists in Europe. He believed that the new society needed a new architecture, liberated from the past, functionally organised and created for a collective way of life. In Terragni’s designs, modernist proinciples were combinsed with deeply rooted classical proportions. His Casa del Fascio in Como (1932-1936) with its interior construction projected on to the exterior, became one of the most well known buildings of the modernist movement despite its function – the headquarters of the Lombard fascists.
Mussolini was the only leader of Europe’s totalitarian regimes who was tolerant of modernism. Hitler cut short the development of modernism in Germany as decidedly as Stalin in the USSR. As a result a large number of Bauhaus masters sought asylum in the USA giving the international style that was flourishing there fresh impluse.
The appearance of Modernism in America is linked to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, but this style definitively took root thanks to the influx of architects finding refuge in the US from Europe. On new soil, these emigrant architects lost their social zeal and allowed their talents to serve large corporations. The New York Seagram Building (1958), Mies can Der Rohe’s finest building in the USA, became the prototype for the countless office blocks built throughout the world.
The most notable manifestation of modernism in post-war europe was mass housing construction. The coarseness and monotony inherent in industrial house-building was why many people rejected the modernist aesthetic. However it is important to remember that it is thanks to modernist solutions that it has become possible to provide for those left homeless by the war with relatively comfortable housing. The masterpieces of modernism are no less perfect than the masterpieces of other eras.
Today we live in a world the appearance of which to a huge extent was formed by modernism. Almost one hundred years have passed since the beginning of the modern movement and our culture continues to define itself according to it. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a rejection of the values of the previous period as “inhumane”. However this post-modern period quickly became outdated and gave way to post-postmodernism or neomodernism. Architects continue to believe that their work is able to transform the world into a better place.
Anna Bronovitskaya, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Moscow Institute of Architecture