20 th Century Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright

• Believed designs should blend with their surroundings

• Should reinforce democratic ideals and freedom of movement

• Fireplace is the traditional center of the home

• Surrounding landscape should more beautiful that it was originally

• Frederick C. Robie’s house

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1907–1909.

Frederick C. Robie’s house

• Uninterrupted spaces, stained glass windows with modern designs.

• Architecture should reinforce concepts of democracy and freedom of movement.

• Windows unobstructed views.

• Focal point is the hearth

Frank Lloyd Wright• The roofs extend as overhangs on the side of the

house – cantilevered construction• Cantilevers – beams that jut out and are

anchored only at one side (David Smith –Cubi)• Wright’s designs blend with the surroundings –

Chicago (this part was prairie land) therefore the long, low and flat design

• “prairie style” Robie house is part of the campus of the Univ of Chicago

Kaufmann House• Edgar Kaufmann wealthy

department store owner• Asked Wright to design a

house over a waterfall that was on his property.

• Designed the home over the waterfall

• Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Kaufmann House (Fallingwater), Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1936–1939.

Kaufmann House• Wright wanted the house

to blend organically with its environment

• Living room made from onsite stones

• The hearth is center• Staircase extends from

upper floors all the way down to the stream

• The house became an icon of Modernist architecture

De Stijl - International Style• Avant garde architectural

movement.• Gerrit Thomas Rietveld’s –

“Schroder House”• Flat, rectangular planes, and

straight lines. • Looks like a Mondrian

painting• Rietveld’s belief that

architecture can be reduced to basic geometric shapes and colors.

GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD, Schröder House, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 1924.

The Bauhaus

• A school of design in Germany dedicated to teaching the International Style

• Founder – Walter Gropius, his idea was to unite fine and applied arts in a new architecture.

• Students would learn design and building, but also creating art

• Omitted architectural history – stifle creativity.

The Bauhaus

• “The Shop Block”• Built from basic

materials - glass steel and concrete.

• No ornamentation • Resembled a glass box • Straight lines, right

angles and flat roofs.