The International Style: The Glass House Of Philip Johnson

Russel Wright is an American industrial designer and architect that lived during the early to mid twentieth century. Many of Wright’s ideas and designs were considered to modern at time, drawing influences from not only ingenious designers like Frank Lloyd Wright but nature as well. Wright’s influences would lead him to create a design style unlike any at the time; a style that would eventually become almost standard in many homes in the United States. The designer Russel Wright and his wife, Mary Wright together published a guidebook known as Guide to Easier Living. In it contains numerous suggestions and thoughts on home architecture, interior design, as well as product design. Many of the thoughts and suggestions conveyed in the book can be seen in present-day design and architecture. Wright’s book also laid the groundwork for his home, Dragon Rock, which of itself possesses elements of design that are seen in today’s homes. Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living is clearly a response to interior design at the time; containing numerous design ideas, Wrights guide influences Wright’s own future works.

In A Home Is Not a House, Reyner Banham starts by arguing that the main function of the typic American house is to cover its mechanical structure. In fact, he states that the use of mechanical services in architectural practice varies constantly because mechanical services are considered to be new in the profession, as well as, a cultural threat to the architect’s position in the world. To show his argument, Banham states that American houses are basically large single spaces divided by partitions inside that give a relative importance to the use of internal mechanical services, causing a threat to the need of architectural design. Similarly, American cultural characteristics, like cleanliness and hygiene, also foster the use and need of mechanical

There are multiple passages in the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls that are important to the book as a whole. Each of them is like an ingredient in a recipe, without one even the greatest pastry could taste completely different. Yet there is one in particular that is what you could call the special ingredient, without it the whole recipe could start or end differently. This book tells the story of young Walls and how she struggled to live happily with her family, especially when they were all constantly on the move. In the book the reader is able to experience life with the Walls’ family from the author’s perspective. The most important passage of the book though is when Walls says "I fretted about them, but I was embarrassed by them, too, and ashamed of myself for wearing pearls and living on Park Avenue while my parents were busy keeping warm and finding something to eat" (Walls 4), because Walls’ does two things

Influenced by his readings of ancient and modern architectural writings, Jefferson gleaned the best from both his readings and from his observations in Europe, creating his own personal style of architecture, a mix of Neoclassicism’s Roman temples, and Palladian villa. Partly, because of Jefferson’s influence, our federal buildings set an American precedent for the neoclassical style. Jefferson’s admiration for neoclassical style went so far as to design

It can be said that despite literal simplicity some objects or places have a much deeper metaphorical meaning to certain individuals. For Jeannette Walls, the Glass Castle is more than just the title of her memoir. To begin, Jeannette lived most of her childhood in poverty, running from town to town in order to avoid “federal agents” who are actually just bill collectors. Even so, the family dreamed of a much brighter future in a place called the Glass Castle. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls, planned “A great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase...solar cells on the top that would catch the sun's rays...even have its own water-purification system”

The architect's choice of material for the Fisher House is cypress wood set on top of a quarry stone platform. Use of cypress wood and lack of ornamental decorations throughout the building accentuates the cubical and geometrical features of the house. The large windows, window bays and the vertical slits on the facade create the impression of depth and massiveness of the walls, though not true, they add to the stability and sense of balance of the structure. With the passing of time and aging of the building the color of cypress wood changes and this is reminiscent of Kahn's belief that a building must carry its scars. (Figures 5 and 6)

This essay will focus on how those works are informed by both regional and international course. In this context, Sydney Ancher and his strong Miesian simplicity as well as Peter Muller’s affinity with Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture principle.

Many of those buildings were being developed in his mind while he was growing up and spending summers on his uncle’s farm. It was during this time that he developed his love for Nature, to be a part of it. His love for Nature is dominant in his earlier works dubbed the “Prairie Houses”, but can also been seen in his later works such as Johnson Wax and the Guggenheim Museum. When Frank Lloyd Wright was just sixty-eight years old, he was commissioned to design a house for Edgar Kaufmann. Wright and Kaufmann went to the property to survey the location for the house. Kaufmann liked to spend time at the water falls on his land so that is where Wright decided to build it. Wright figured if Nature could place the boulders over a waterfall, than he could build a house over one. It took Wright only three hours to draw the plans for the house. The house consists basically of concrete slabs balanced on the boulders above the stream, and the walls are slabs of the natural rock surrounding the house. The house includes a pool that is built under the house and is fed by the passing stream. Every aspect of the house embraces the Nature that it co-exists with, and the house appears to fade into its surroundings.

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most important architects of the twentieth century; with his buildings and his ideals of an organic architecture, he got to be known by everyone. Who does not know about the Fallingwater? This building is considered his masterpiece and represents all his principles. For him, organic architecture was designing by integrating a building to its site and context, and he was able to achieve it with most of his projects. However, Wright’s career did not started like this; he went through a lot of complex periods that ended consolidating his ideals as an architect. Moreover, each of these phases had different kind of influences that Wright took and learned from. Therefore, it’s important to acknowledge how outside architecture and social factors influenced his “Organic” idea.

Mies van der Rohe is one of the most prominent figures in modernist architectural history, the man who popularised some of the most influential phrases of the era, e.g. “less is more”, and strove to push his ideas and philosophies, not just on what he thought a building should be, but of what he thought architecture itself was. He changed the cityscape of America, showing the world a style that was simple and elegant, with such a controlled palette of expressions that shone through in its geometric beauty.

The Museum of Modern of Art was the first to use the words “International Style”, which was a fitting term to introduce modernist arts to the world. Johnson and another renowned architect Henry-Russell Hitchcock organized a major show under the title “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition”. There they described the International Style that expresses several design principles, that concerns with volume rather than mass and solidity, regularity instead of axial symmetry, and the proscription of “arbitrary applied decoration”. Exhibits featured leading European and American architects, especially the likes of Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der

In Wright and An alto's houses, a powerful sense of insides is generate by opacity. Which, in Falling water is express in roughly dressed stone masonry walls and, in Villa Mairea. By white-painted, solid walls. The transparency of glass windows in both houses thereby connect the two. In both houses, the architects created a strong sense of insideness yet, at the same time, devised ways to connect inside and outside and thereby create a robust continuity between the two. This inside-outside relationship can be translate into environmental and architectural experience in four different ways: (1) in-betweeness; (2) interpenetration generated by inside; (3) interpenetration generated by outside; and (4)

Different architects have different styles because they are trying to get at different things. Architecture is not just about making something beautiful anymore, it is about trying to get across a set of ideas about how we inhabit space. Two of the most famous architects of the twentieth century, one from each side, the early part and the later part up until today each designed a museum with money donated by the Guggenheim foundation. One of these is in New York City, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The other is in bilbao, Spain, and it was designed by Frank Geary. My purpose of this paper is to interrogate each of these buildings, glorious for different reasons, to show how each architect was expressing their own style.

In this essay, I am going to talk about the famous furniture designer George Nelson and his most

Centered in the house is a ramp that takes you on a journey from the underbelly of the house on the ground floor to the main body on the first floor and then on to a roof garden. Throughout the house views of the surrounding nature are framed, your mind is free marvel, as the forms evoke a sense of exploration and delight. Villa Savoye is better experienced than viewed through an image, only then can you understand the greater meaning and purpose that informs its beauty. One might argue that this is not beautiful architecture and a poor example, however upon visiting this house you cannot deny that the house is beautiful in its own right, evoking a response from the occupant. Le Corbusier’s masterpiece is moving; therefore achieving what he believed architecture to be about. This experience and the emotion that is felt can only be described in words. Shapes play a big role in the architecture but clearly the meanings behind are more important.