INTERNATIONAL STYLE

The International Style first appeared in Germany and France in the 1920s. By the 30s, it was firmly established in Europe and US.

When Nazi government outlawed modern architecture and closed the Bauhaus school of design, many key figures instrumental in developing the International Style emigrated to the US. Arrival of many founders became essential to the triumph of the style in the US during the first decades after World War II.

The International Style is the ultimate expression of a set of principles applied to theoretical underpinnings of architectural practice. This set of principles has been applied utilizing two concepts: functionalism and reductionism.

Functionalism is the tendency to generate the design of a building as a product of an analysis of functional criteria. Reductionism is the tendency to reduce the elements in a buildingÕs design to their most basic expression, resulting in an architecture of stark simplicity.

Utilizing these guiding concepts, architects working in the International Style have produced a sizeable body of work, the best of which are important buildings of exceptional elegance.