SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

1. Chicago School of Thought

2. Chicago- II
3. Prairie School of Thought
4. Bauhaus
Chicago-I
Chicago's architecture is famous throughout the world and one style is
referred to as the Chicago School.
The style is also known as Commercial style.
The Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the
turn of the 20th century.
A "Second Chicago School" later emerged in the 1940s and 1970s which
pioneered new building technologies and structural systems
The Chicago School was a style that developed as a result of the Great
Fire of Chicago in 1871.
Before the fire, buildings were built of huge amounts of stone, and could
not be very high.
With the growing use of the elevator, and the steel skeleton, the buildings
grew taller and taller.
The steel structure also allowed windows to be made bigger.
The Chicago certainly contributed much to Illinois architecture.
The great ideas and strong personalities of
1. Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan,
2. Daniel Burnham and John Root,
3. William Holabird and Martin Roche,
4. William Le Baron Jenney.
It flourished chiefly over the 30 years from 1880 to 1910
Produced an original, indigenous, unified, yet highly diversified
architecture for every kind of building.
Most of which prefigured the modernist works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies
van der Rohe, Helmut Jahn and others.
Chicago presented a clean slate for new ideas
Examples:
1. Louis Sullivan, the Guaranty (Prudential Building), Buffalo, NY,
1894.

1.

2.
2. The Chicago Building by Holabird & Roche(1904-1905) is a prime
example of the Chicago School, displaying both variations of the
Chicago window

The whole city seemed to be designed and based on making money.

To wealthy Chicagoans, however, the relationship between money and art
was significant and seen without prejudice.
It is true that the greatest clients of Chicago architects were businessmen
and their wives, and their buildings were mostly built for profit.
This is what became known as 'functionalism'.
Chicago School = expression of the social purpose of the building = in its
structure.
It had to be admitted that this was to be considered a new order of
architecture, not simply a style.
It was intended to be the expression of the community, a way of life, not
simply that of a class or an individual.
Chicago group principle - architecture=the democratic
community+democratic architecture
What is the proper form for a democratic architecture, and what kinds of
human relationships will be possible in this new architecture?
Sullivan answered the first by proposing that whatever the use of a

building, its form must follow its function - a human function.

What he meant by stating that 'A building is an act' was the architectural
answer to the question 'How can I enhance the human satisfaction of
acting within my building or the communities I design?
If he designed a house of prayer, he tried to make prayer become more
significant,
if he designed a department store, he tried to make shopping more
pleasurable,
and if he designed a factory, he tried to enhance the working conditions in
order to make work as healthy as possible.

Distinguishing features of the Chicago School are

1. The use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding
(usually terra cotta),
2. Large plate-glass window areas and
3. Limiting the amount of exterior ornamentation.
4. Elements of neoclassical architecture are used in skyscrapers.
5. The skyscrapers contain the three parts of a classical column.
6. The first floor functions as the base, the middle stories, usually
with little ornamental detail, act as the shaft of the column, and
the last floor or so represent the capital, with more ornamental
detail and capped with a cornice.
7. The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a three-part
window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two
smaller double-hung sash windows.
The arrangement of windows on the facade typically creates a grid
pattern, with some projecting out from the facade forming bay
windows
Function = Light gathering + Natural ventilation

Buildings in Chicago:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Auditorium Building
Sullivan Center
Reliance Building
Gage Group Buildings
Chicago Building
Brooks Building

7. Fisher Building
8. Heyworth Building
9. Leiter I Building
10.
Leiter II Building
11.
Marquette Building
12.
Monadnock Building
13.
Montauk Building
14.
Rookery Building
15.
Wainwright Building

CHICAGO SCHOOL-II
In the 1940s, a "Second Chicago School" emerged from the work of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his efforts of education at the Illinois
Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Its first and purest expression was the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
Apartments (1951) and their technological achievements.
This was supported and enlarged in the 1960s due to the ideas of
structural engineer Fazlur Khan.
He introduced a new structural system of framed tubes in skyscraper
design and construction.
Framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed
of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls,
joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system
capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from
the foundation."
Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube.
Horizontal loads, for example wind, are supported by the structure as a
whole.
About half the exterior surface is available for windows.

Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable
floor space.
Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame
must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural
integrity.

Framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed

of three, four, or possibly more frames
Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube
Horizontal loads taken care by the structure
Half the exterior surface is available for larger windows
Fewer interior columns

PRAIRIE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

Prairie School was a late 19th and early 20th century architectural style,
most common to the Midwestern United States.
The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with
broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands,
integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and
discipline in the use of ornament.
Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the
native prairie landscape.

It developed in sympathy with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts
and Crafts Movement.
The Prairie School houses (characterized by open plans, horizontal lines,
and indigenous materials) were related to the American Arts and Crafts
movement (hand craftsmanship, simplicity, function),
An alternative to the then-dominant Classical Revival Style (Greek forms
with occasional Roman influences).
It was also heavily influenced by the Idealistic Romantics (better homes
would create better people) and the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
It also influenced subsequent architectural idioms, particularly
the Minimalists (less is more) and Bauhaus (form follows function), which
was a mixture of De Stijl (grid-based design) and Constructivism (which
emphasized the structure itself and the building materials).
The Prairie School shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman
guilds as a reaction against the new assembly line, mass
production manufacturing techniques, which they felt created inferior
products and dehumanized workers.
The Prairie School was also an attempt at developing an indigenous North
American style of architecture that did not share design elements and
aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of European classical architecture.
The Prairie School were offended by the Greek and Roman classicism of
nearly every building erected for the fair.
The designation Prairie is due to the dominant horizontality of the
majority of Prairie style buildings which echoes the wide, flat, tree-less
expanses of the mid-Western United States.
The most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, promoted
an idea of "organic architecture", the primary tenet of which was that a
structure should look as if it naturally grew from the site.
Wright also felt that a horizontal orientation was a distinctly American
design motif, in that the younger country had much more open,
undeveloped land than found in most older, urbanized European nations.

Prairie Style Characteristics

1. 1 - 2 story
2. Open floor plan with free-flowing spaces (sometimes blurring the line
between indoor and outdoor spaces)
3. Projecting or cantilevered wings
4. Integrated with landscape and environment
5. Open floor plan
6. Low-pitched hipped or flat roof (less common is gabled)
7. Broad, overhanging eaves (usually boxed)
8. Strong horizontal lines
9. Ribbons of windows, often casements, arranged in horizontal bands
10.

Clerestory windows

11.

Prominent, central chimney

12.

Stylized, built-in cabinetry

13.

Wide use of natural materials especially stone and wood

14.

Siding often stucco, stone, or brick

15. Restrained ornamentation such as friezes around windows and

doors, or as bands under the eaves

An alternative to the then-dominant Classical Revival Style (Greek forms

with occasional Roman influences).
It was also heavily influenced by the Idealistic Romantics (better homes
would create better people) and the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
It also influenced subsequent architectural idioms, particularly
the Minimalists (less is more) and Bauhaus (form follows function), which

was a mixture of De Stijl (grid-based design) and Constructivism (which

emphasized the structure itself and the building materials).
The designation Prairie is due to the dominant horizontality of the
majority of Prairie style buildings which echoes the wide, flat, tree-less
expanses of the mid-Western United States
The most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, promoted
an idea of "organic architecture", the primary tenet of which was that a
structure should look as if it naturally grew from the site.

Architects
1. FL.Wright

BAUHAUS
German style movement from 1919-1933
All of the Bauhaus directors were architects. (The ultimate aim of all
creative activity is a building)
Walter Gropius, Founder
Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school
in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for
the approach to design that it publicized and taught.
It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for
"School of Building
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar.
The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents
in Modernist architecture and modern design.

Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a

school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was
famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught.
It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German
term stood for "School of Building
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar.
The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents
in Modernist architecture and modern design.

Bauhaus buildings have flat roofs, smooth faades and cubic

shapes.
Colors are white, gray, beige or black.
Floor plans are open and furniture is functional.
Characterized by economy of method, a severe geometry of form
and design that took into account the nature of the materials
employed.
The Bauhaus, encouraged designers to develop products that could
be manufactured on an industrial scale and yet be aesthetically
pleasing.
Art Nouveau had been about creating ornate, complicated,
decorative products.
The Bauhaus reduced the complexity of design to simplicity,
functionality and an pure form of aesthetics.
The idealistic basis of Bauhaus was a socially orientated program:
- an artist must be conscious of his social responsibility to the
community,
- on the other hand, the community has to accept the artist and
support him.

There are a number of characteristics to the Bauhaus Style of

architecture:
1) It shuns ornamentation and favours functionality
2) Uses asymmetry and regularity versus symmetry
3) It grasps architecture in terms of space versus mass
Architects inspired by Bauhaus Movement:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Walter Gropius
Le Corbusier
Richard Neutra
Philip Johnson
Mies van der Rohe
Marcel Breuer

Bauhaus and the International Style:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

The Seagram Building

The Gropius House
The Farnsworth House
Philip Johnson's Glass House
The Transco Building by Philip Johnson
United Nations Headquarters by Le Corbusier

7. The Miller House by Richard Neutra

8. The Lovell House by Richard Neutra
9. The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany
10.
Furniture by Bauhaus Architects