AS 101: American Architecture in Depression and War
Spring 2007
Review Sheet
TERMS
You should not only identify these, but also understand their significance in architectural history.
General
Modernism/Modernist
modern
moderne
classicism
colonial revival
International Style
regionalism vs. internationalism
nativism
abstraction
cubism
“better” living, housing, etc.
public housing
Art Deco
scrapbook planning
industrial design
suburbanization
urban renewal
Broadacre City
social realism
Bay Area regional style/Bay Region modernism
mature economy
frontier
Events
International Exposition of Decorative Arts, 1925
World’s Fairs (identify the key ones)
MOMA International Style Exhibition
New Deal
People
Mies van der Rohe
Walter Gropius
Marcel Breuer
Eliel Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Philip Johnson
Raymond Hood
Lewis Mumford
Frank Lloyd Wright
Richard Neutra
Louis Kahn
Le Corbusier
Buckminster Fuller
William Wurster
Catherine Bauer
Bernard Maybeck
Julia Morgan
John Galen Howard
Institutions
Ecole des Beaux Arts
Bauhaus
MOMA
Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
WPA, PWA, other New Deal agencies
Buildings & Places
Farnsworth House
Johnson House
Fallingwater
Guggenheim
Rockefeller Center
Levittown
Havens House
Key shopping centers
Villa Savoye
QUESTIONS/THEMES
Go deep into lectures, readings, and your own research to firm up your conceptual understanding of these issues with an array of concrete examples.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, “this period” refers to the 1930s and 1940s.
1)What were the major historical forces that shaped architectural modernism during the late 19th/early 20th century?
2)What were the major principles of architectural modernism as advanced by the International School? Who were the practitioners? What were some exemplary buildings, and how do these buildings articulate these principles?
3)Think through some of the major tensions within architectural modernism, in terms of debates, proponents, and concrete instances of building, planning, or visioning:
a)European vs. American
b)regional vs. international
c)individualist vs. collectivist
d)centralization vs. decentralization
…. Draw examples from lectures and from readings, including The Fountainhead and Space, Time and Architecture.
4)Consider the tension between individualism and collectivism during this period, not just in architecture but on the world stage and at the national level in the U.S.
5)Consider how each of these architectural forms changed from the 1920s to the 1950s, and what forces were at work in changing them:
a)skyscrapers
b)residences – consider changing notions of domestic life
c)monumental buildings and plazas (e.g., government institutions, etc.) – consider changing ideas of citizenship, public domain
d)memorials
e)department stores and shopping centers – consider changing patterns of consumption
f)theaters – think about spectacle, escape
6)What were the major challenges faced by the architectural profession during the Depression and then WWII, and how did architects cope with or resolve them? How was the practice of architecture changed in the process?
7)What do architectural competitions reveal? Consider specific competitions.
8)How did different World’s Fairs advance particular visions of modernity (and historicism), and what was the role of architecture in this process?
9)What did different architects and planners see as major problems with the city? How did they seek to correct them?
10)What are some of the relationships between advertising and architecture, as you’ve seen in lecture and readings and in the process of writing your Architectural Rags paper? How has architecture been used in advertising, and to what end? How has advertising been used as a way to influence the practices of architecture and building?
11)Numerous utopian visions were advanced during this period. What were these visions, who were their proponents, and what was the medium through which each utopian vision was advanced? What is the relationship between architecture and utopia in each of these instances?