HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IV

Module 1(g)
History of Architecture IV
Faculty - Ar. Laxmi Menon
Assistant Professor
 Expressionism
• Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry, painting
originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.
• Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective
perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke
moods or ideas.
• Expressionist artist have sought to express the meaning of emotional
experience rather than physical reality.
• Expressionism developed as an avant garde style before the first world
war. It remained popular during the Weimar republic, particularly in
Berlin.
• The style extended to a wide range of the arts including expressionist
architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, Film and Music.
• Artistic movements that preceded
Expressionist architecture and continued
with some overlap were the Arts and
Crafts movement and Art Nouveau or in
Germany, Jugendstil.
• It aims to convey the emotional world of
the artistic with distorted lines, shapes
and extravagant colors. It includes a
perspective with anti naturalistic
subjectivity opposed to 19th century
idealism and realism.
• When interpreting an expressionist art
work, attention to be paid to the use of
lines and colors. Pointed sharp lines,
reds and shades accentuate anger, while
circular formation, blue and shades
emphasize more calmness.
 Expressionist Architecture
• Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement in Europe
during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with
the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and
dominated in Germany.
• Expressionist architecture is one of the three dominant styles of Modern
architecture: International Style, Expressionist, and Constructivist
architecture.
• The term "Expressionist architecture" initially described the activity of the
German, Dutch, Austrian, Czech and Danish avant garde from 1910 until
1930.
• It exhibits some of the qualities of the original movement such as;
distortion, fragmentation or the communication of violent or overstressed
emotion.
• The style was characterized by an early-modernist adoption of novel
materials, formal innovation, and very unusual massing, sometimes
inspired by natural biomorphic forms, sometimes by the new technical
possibilities offered by the mass production of brick, steel and especially
glass.
 Characteristics
Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways eschewed
aesthetic dogma, but it is still useful to develop some criteria which
defines it.
• Distortion of form for an emotional effect.
• Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner
experience.
• An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary
Profusion of works on paper, and models, with discovery and
representations of concepts more important than pragmatic finished
products.
• Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept.
• Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains,
lightning, crystal and rock formations.
• As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which
characterized its close contemporary Art Nouveau.
• Uses creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.
• Tendency more towards the Gothic than the Classical architecture.
• Expressionist architecture also tends more towards
the Romanesque and the Rococo than the classical.
• Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is
as eastern as western.
• It draws as much from Moorish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art
and architecture as from Roman or Greek.
• Conception of architecture as a work of art.
It also determines its unique dynamics. While eliminating the 90degree
angle is considered as the basic technique, the purpose of integrating
the functionality with the form creates the peculiar dynamics of the
expressive understanding of architecture with the use of unusual forms
and new materials. The understanding of individual and therefore
emotional design is the philosophy of expressionist architecture.
• The Futurist and Constructivist architectural
movements, and the Dada anti-art movement were
occurring concurrently to Expressionism and often
contained similar features.
• The Merzbau by Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, with its
angular, abstract form, held many expressionist
characteristics.
• Influence of individualists such as Frank Lloyd
Wright and Antoni Gaudí also provided the
surrounding context for Expressionist architecture. The Merzbau, Sprengel
Museum,
• Expressionism art disappeared five years after the Hanover, 1933
Nazi administration took over in Germany in 1933
• The Sydney opera house built in the
1960s is among the most important works
of postmodern expressiveness.
Expressionism continues to be alive as a
basic artistic expression, also identifying
with cubist, minimalist, or futuristic insight.
 Brick Expressionism
The term Brick Expressionism describes a specific
variant of expressionism that uses bricks, tiles or
clinker bricks as the main visible building material.
Buildings in the style were erected mostly in the
1920s. The style's regional centres were the larger
cities of Northern Germany and the Ruhr area, but
the Amsterdam School belongs to the same category.

Chilehaus in Hamburg, 1923

(Fritz Höger)
The building has a reinforced
concrete structure and has been
built with the use of 4.8 million
dark Oldenburg bricks
 The Amsterdam Schools

The Scheepvaarthuis,
De Dageraad in Amsterdam. Architects: Johan
Amsterdam by Piet van der Mey, Michel de
Het Schip by Michel de Klerk Kramer from 1920–23 Klerk, Piet Kramer
Buildings of the Amsterdam School
are characterized by brick construction
with complicated masonry with a
rounded or organic appearance,
relatively traditional massing, and the
integration of an elaborate scheme of
building elements inside and out: decorative masonry, art
glass, wrought ironwork, spires or "ladder" windows (with
horizontal bars), and integrated architectural sculpture. The
aim was to create a total architectural experience, interior
and exterior.
Abstraction In Expressionism
• Publication of Concerning the Spiritual in
Art in 1912 by Wassily Kandinsky, his first
advocacy of abstraction while still involved
in Der Blaue Reiter phase, marks a
beginning of abstraction in expressionism
and abstraction in expressionist
architecture.
• By the publication of Kandinsky's Point and
Line to Plane in 1926 a rigorous and more
geometric form of abstraction emerged, and
Kandinsky's work took on clearer and
drafted lines.
• The trends in architecture are not dissimilar,
as the Bauhaus was gaining attention and
Expressionist architecture was giving way
to the geometric abstractions of modern
architecture.
• In Architecture, two specific buildings are considered as expressionist:
Bruno taut’ Glass Pavilion of the cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914)
and Enrich Mendelson’s Einstein Tower in Potsman Germany completed
in 1921

Einstein Tower The Interior of Hans

in Potsdam near Berlin, Poelzigs Berlin Theatre
1919–22 (Erich designed for the director
Mendelsohn) Max Reinhardt is also
cited sometimes.
Glass Pavilion at
the Cologne Deutscher
Werkbund Exhibition, 1914
(Bruno Taut)
 Erich Mendelsohn (21 March 1887 – 15
September 1953) was a German architect, known
for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as
well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in
his projects for department stores and cinemas.
Mendelsohn is a pioneer of the Art
Deco and Streamline Modern architecture, notably
with his 1921 Mossehaus design.

Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24

December 1938) was a renowned
German architect, urban planner and author
of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means
"nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during
the Weimar period and is known for his theoretical
works as well as his building designs.
 Einstein Tower
in Potsdam near Berlin, 1919–22
(Erich Mendelsohn)
 Glass Pavilion at
the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund
Exhibition, 1914 (Bruno Taut)