NEO CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE

Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that

began in the mid-18th century.In its purest form, it is a style principally derived from the
architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles, and the work of the Italian
architect Andrea Palladio.

The Cathedral of Vilnius

NEO CLASSICISM :
 By the mid-18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of
Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece.
 The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s. It first
gained influence in England.
 The style was also adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden
and Russia.
NEO CLASSICIST ARCHITECTURE,TRADITIONALISM,HISTORY :
In theory at least modernism negated all forms of the historical styles, while at the same time
cultivating the idea of the building as a machine.It was this line of thought that later led to the
idea of hightech architecture, an early example of which is the Pompidou Centre in Paris,
designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano.
Neo-classicist architecture used classical themes, principles and forms in loose associations,
reminiscent of but not identical to historical patterns. Consequently, the style is quite
diversified and its variants have been labelled as freestyle, canonic, metaphysical, narrative,
allegoric, nostalgic, realist, revivalist, urbanist, eclectic, etc. (Jencks, 1987)
Rogers prescribed construction by using prefabricated concrete components.
Robert A.M. Stern, Allan Greenberg, DemetriPorphyrios, James Stirling and Leon
Krierand Robert Krier may be mentioned as outstanding representatives of the style.
FREESTYLE ARCHITECTURE :
Arcology is a philosophy created by Soleri that is defined as the place where ecology and
architecture meet.Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the Arizona high desert was
created to test and demonstrate an alternate human habitat.
Although the Cosanti complex is not part of the Arcosanti, it still embodies the spirit of
arcology. Many of the structures at Cosanti have been placed underground and surrounded by
earth mounds, to insulate the interior spaces year around.
Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical
Architecture for contemporary buildings.In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is usually
referred to as Classicism while the newer revival styles of the 19th century until today are
called Neoclassical.
HISTORY :
 Intellectually, Neoclassicism was symptomatic of a desire to return to the perceived
"purity" of the arts of Rome, to the more vague perception of Ancient Greek arts and,
to a lesser extent, 16th-century Renaissance Classicism
 Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and
projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude Nicolas Ledoux.
 a building should immediately communicate its function to the viewer: taken literally
such ideas give rise to "architecture parlante".
PALLADIANISM :
 The baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. 2 influential books were
published in the first quarter of the 18th century which highlighted the simplicity and
purity of classical architecture:
1. Vitruvius Britannicus (Colen Campbell 1715)
 2. Palladio's Four Books of Architecture (1715),
 The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell.
 The book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been
inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio.
 This severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism.

Palladian revival: StourheadHouse, designed by Colen Campbell and completed in 1720.

The design is based on Palladio's Villa Emo.

BEGINNING OF MODERNITY
INTRODUCTION
Modern Architecture is Architecture that emerged in the 1920 in Europe and the United
States.
It began as a response by Architects to rapid technological advances and greater urbanization
of society at the turn of the century. It is the very dominant svle which came during the 19th
century.
It symbolized the Ideal Public Virtues of democracy, liberty and reason. It is the Architecture
of simple forms(rectangles) enclosed with flat opaque (solid) or transparent (glass) sells.
Beginning of Modernity In architecture
Modern architecture became a dominant architectural style after the Second World war, and
remained at the top for several decades.
As with other modern movements in literature, art, and music, modern architecture is believed
to come from the Enlightenment and new technological abilities developed out of the
Industrial Revolution. Modernity is also read as a reaction to eclecticism and the lavish,
detail-oriented styles of the Victorian era and later Art Nouveau.
Use Of New Construction Material
Early examples of modern architecture, like Paxton's Crystal Palace in London and Frank
Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Chicago make use of these new construction materials,
respectively iron and concrete.The Bauhaus School, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, was
a leading voice in early modern styles.
"Form follows function"
"Form follows function" was an architectural battle cry by the 1930s, and although many
modern buildings do feature lovely ornamentation, it was the goal of the modernists to shift
the focal point of architecture from ornamentation and interior design to construction and
form. While most modernists did not subscribe to Loos' idea that "ornamentation is
crime,"they sought to replace the earlier stresses on interior design with feats of construction
that were both functional and pleasing to the eye.
ORIGINS
 Modern architecture emerged at the end of the 19th century from revolutions in
technology, engineering and building materials, and from a desire to break away from
historical architectural styles and to invent something that was purely functional and
new.
The revolution in materials came first, with the use of cast iron, plate glass, and
reinforced concrete, to build structures that were stronger, lighter and taller. The cast
plate glass process was invented in 1848,
 The iron frame construction of the Eiffel Tower, then the tallest structure in the world,
captured the imagination of millions of visitors to the 1889 Paris Universal
Exposition.
 Early modernism (1900-1914)

Frank Lloyd Wright was a highly original and independent American architect who refused to
be categorized in any one architectural movement.he had no formal architectural
training.Louis Sullivan, who pioneered the first tall steel-frame office buildings in Chicago,
and who famously stated "form follows function. Wright was particularly famous for
his Prairie Houses, including the Winslow House in River Forest, Illinois(1893–94),;Arthur
Heurtley House (1902) and Robie House (1909)

The Birth of the skyscraper

Home Insurance Building in Chicago The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building

At the end of the 19th century, the first skyscrapers began to appear in the United States.. The
first steel-framed "skyscraper", The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, was ten stories
high. It was designed by William Le Baron Jenney in 1883, and was briefly the tallest
building in the world. It was surpassed by the (Home Insurance Building) of Louis
Sullivan in Buffalo, New York. Sullivan built another monumental new structure,
the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, in the heart of Chicago in 1904-06. While
these buildings were revolutionary in their steel frames and height, the designs of their
facades were in the more traditional neo-renaissance, Neo-Gothic and Beaux-Arts
architecture.

The Rise of Modernism (1919-1930)

After the first World War, a prolonged struggle began between architects who favored the
more traditional styles of neo-classicism and the Beaux-Arts architecture style, and the
modernists, led by Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens in France, Walter
Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany, and Konstantin Melnikov in the
new Soviet Union, who wanted only pure forms and the elimination of any decoration. Art
Deco architects such as AugustePerret and Henri Sauvage often made a compromise between
the two, combining modernist forms and stylized decoration.
ART DECO

 The Art Deco architectural style (called Style Moderne in France), was modern, but it
was not modernist; it had many features of modernism, including the use of reinforced
concrete, glass, steel, chrome,
Art Deco had begun in France before World War I and spread through Europe; in the 1920s
and 1930s it became a highly popular style in the United States, South America, India, China,
Australia and Japan
Sources:
"Buffalo Architecture: A Guide." Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981
Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture, by Richard O. Reise

EARLY LIFE
Henri Labrouste(1801-1875) has long been recognised as one of the most important
architects of 19th century France.
As one who combined rationalism, light, and classical influences to form his own
architectural language, it is not surprising thatLabrouste’s work has often been a source of
controversy and debate.
Pierre-François-Henri Labrouste was born in Paris in 1801, one of four sons born to
lawyer François-Marie Labrouste. At the age of eight, Labrouste joined the reputable
Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris, before being admitted into the second class of the École
Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1819.

THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURE
A member of the Lebas-Vaudoyer workshop, his notable talent soon became evident and he
was promoted to the first class in 1820.after winning a departmental prize in 1823, he was
given the opportunity to act as sous-inspecteur alongside Étienne-HippolyteGodde,
As a consequence of this success, Labrouste was awarded a place at the Villa Medici in
Rome to study Roman construction for five years (1825-1830). There he encountered the
functionalist theories of Jean Nicolas Louis Durand, and of course, the classical Italian
structures which would later influence his most famous designs.
It’s the best rendered drawing I’ve ever seen. In one long touch of the two hair sable brush the
drawing reveals two languages at work:
1. the language of the permanent fabric and the language of its attachments –

2. that which continues the idea of architecture and that which is the
responsibility of those who use it.’
it is undoubtedly proved from his two spectacular reading rooms in Paris that Labrouste is
most often recognised, namely the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and what is now known
as the Salle Labrouste in the BibliothèqueNationale de France (in the Rue de Richelieu).

WORKS
The innovations of these constructions exist in Labrouste’s use of iron, an industrial material
whose potential for both elegance and functionality is exemplified in these libraries.

Commissioned to Labrouste in 1839, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève was the architect’s

first major project, and a chance for him to demonstrate the validity of his design principles in
the face of opposition.
The large, oblong exterior of the library was in itself unusual at the time, whilst its appearance
is suggestive of a similarly utilitarian use of iron inside the building.
Sixteen iron columns running down the centre of the room divide this vast interior into two
barrel-vaulted naves punctuated by intricate metal arches, yet attention remains on the room’s
primary purpose of learning and study.
Through such innovations, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève seems to embody Labrouste’s
belief that functionality, when built with artistry, is the most expressive and beneficial form of
decoration.
This reading room designed by Labrouste has since become the defining image of the library,
and bears the name of the architect himself.
Once again using the iron structures for which he is now known, Labrouste positioned 16 iron
columns, each only one foot in diameter, at intervals throughout the room to create expansive
10-metre-high spaces.
Natural ‘zenithal’ lighting filters between these columns as they support nine shallow
domes, each with its own oculus; Since his death in 1875, the ramifications of Labrouste’s
innovations in architecture have been repeatedly redefined, identifying him as an architect of
truth, and as one who harnessed emptiness and light.

Jacques GermainSoufflot

EARLY LIFE
Jacques GermainSoufflot (July 22, 1713 –August 29, 1780) was a French architect in the
international circle that introduced Neoclassicism. His most famous work is thePanthéon,
Paris, built from 1755 onwards, originally as a church dedicated to SainteGenevieve. crossing
piers strengthened

STUDIES
Soufflot was born in Irancy, near Auxerre. In the 1730s he attended the French Academy in
Rome, where young French students in the 1750s would later produce the first full-blown
generation of Neoclassical designers. Soufflot's models were less the picturesque Baroque
being built in modern Rome, as much as the picturesque aspects of monuments of antiquity.
After returning to France, Soufflot practiced in Lyon, where he built the Hôtel-Dieu, like a
chaste riverside street facade, interrupted by the central former chapel, its squared dome with
illusionistic diminishing coffers on the interior.

THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURE
With the Temple du Change, he was entrusted with completely recasting a 16th-century
market exchange building housing a meeting space housed above a loggia. Soufflot's newly
made loggia is an unusually severe arcading tightly bound between flat Doric pilasters,
with emphatic horizontal lines. He was accepted into the Lyon Academy.
Soufflot was entrusted in 1755 with the design ofSainte-Geneviève, which was intended to be
theprincipal church of Paris.His aim in this project was to combine thestrict regularity and
monumentality of Romanarched ceiling vaults with the lightness ofslender supporting piers
and freestandingCorinthian columns.

WORKS
A contemporary architect claimed that in this church, Soufflot had “united the lightness
ofconstruction of Gothic churches with the purity and magnificence of Greek
architecture.” The plan was essentially a Greek cross, the facade an enormous temple front.
The freestanding columns proved inadequate to support 0the building’s dome, which
eventually had to be buttressed. Because of the predominantly classical origins of the design,
it became a simple matter, when the Revolution abolished religion, for the church to be
secularized and renamed the Panthéon.
 Pantheon Hotel Marygnyn

Elysee palace
Soufflot considered classical rules essentialfor architectural progress. Utilizing
classicprinciples he used a 'strictness of line,firmness of form, simplicity ofcontour, and
rigorously architectonicconception of detail' which contrastedsharply with the architecture
of hiscontemporaries.Soufflot showed an unusual interest inGothic architecture at a time
when mostarchitects considered Gothic architecturebarbaric.
In his architecture he tried tounite the lightness of Gothicconstruction with the purity
andorder of Greek forms.His works predicted the eclecticismthat would
markmainstreamNeoclassicism