EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE -NETHRA SINGH

EXPRESSIONISM• Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in

poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of 20th century.

• typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective distorting it radially for emotional effects in order to evoke moods or ideas.

• Expressionism was developed as an Avant Garde style before the first world war.

• The style extended to a wide range of the arts including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music.

WHAT IS EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE?

• Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that developed 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.

• Expressionism transforms reality rather than seeking to imitate it.

• Appearances are only semblance, claims the expressionists;

BIONIC

GEOMORPHIC

The genesis of expressionism lies in art nouveau.Art nouveau, a decorative art convention turned to bionic and geomorphic forms.

• Expressionism is the way of expressing something in and around something that is felt emotionally, from all the things that happen phenomenally. This is one of the movements in architecture in the 20th century, mainly in Europe, where at that time people fought in the World War I, including the architects at that time. The political and social problems also influence the architecture, in places like Germany, Austria, and Denmark.

• Expressionist architects of the 1920s• Adolf Behne• Hermann Finsterlin• Antoni Gaudí• Walter Gropius - early period• Hugo Häring• Fritz Höger• Michel de Klerk• Piet Kramer• Carl Krayl• Erich Mendelsohn• Hans Poelzig• Hans Scharoun• Rudolf Steiner• Bruno Taut

EXPRESSIONISM CHARACTERISTI

CS

• Distortion of form for emotional effect.• Subordination of realism to symbolic or

stylistic expression of inner experience.• An underlying effort at achieving the new,

original and visionary forms.• Abundance work on papers and models with

discovery and representation of concepts.• Tendency more towards gothic that the

classical style.• BRICK EXPRESSIONISM. Expressionism that

uses brick as main visible building material.• ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.• NEO EXPRESSIONISM

Hermann finsterlin’s formspiels depict the form of buildings turned into organic amorphous massings.

EXPRESSIONISM EXAMPLE

S

• EINSTEIN TOWERS• TWA TERMINAL• SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE• GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO• GLASS PAVILION COLOGNE DEUTSCHER

WERKBUND EXHIBITION• WALTER GROPIUS’S MONUMENT

ERICH MENDELSOHN

EXPRESSIONISM

EXAMPLES

EINSTEIN TOWER IN POTSDAM-BERLIN -ERICH MENDELSOHN 1919-1922

• Tower built to symbolise Einsteinian concepts. It was designed to hold Einstein's laboratory.

• The tower was an anthromorphic form. • Mendelsohn wanted the building to be moulded rather than

built, without angles and with smooth, rounded corners.• The building was covered in brick and covered with

concrete.

EERO SAARINEN

EXPRESSIONI

SM EXAMPLES

TWA TERMINAL, NY -EERO SAARINEN• The terminal is sculpted as a symbol of flight-

abstract and not intentionally as a landing eagle as it has often been described.

• The expressive curves of the design creates attractive spacious halls and a rare degree of exhilaration for an airport terminal.

• ‘...a building in which the architecture itself would express the drama and specialness and excitement of travel...a place of movement and transition...the shapes were deliberately chosen in order to emphasize an upward-soaring quality of line. We wanted an uplift.’

-eero saarinen

BRUNO TAUT

GLASS PAVILION-BRUNO TAUT

• Built in 1914.• Glass dome structure at cologne deutscher

werkbund exhibition.• Constructed using concrete and glass.• The concrete structure had inlaid colored glass

plates on the facade that acted as mirrors.• The purpose of the building was to demonstrate

the potential of different types of glass for architecture. It also indicated how the material might be used to orchestrate human emotions.

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XPRE

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NIS

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XAM

PLES

• It had a fourteen-sided base constructed of thick glass bricks used for the exterior walls devoid of rectangles.• Each part of the cupola was designed to recall the complex geometry of nature.• The Pavilion structure was on a concrete plinth, the entrance reached by two flights of steps (one on either side of the building), which gave the pavilion a temple-like quality.• Taut's Glass Pavilion was the first building of importance made of glass bricks.

TAUT’S IDEA FOR GLASS PAVILION• Taut wanted to create a building with a different structure,

and similar to Gothic Cathedrals. Bruno told that his building wasn't going to have any real function, it was more to provoke something in someone than a practical building.

• The Glass Pavilion was one of the first exhibition building designed as a mechanism to create vivid experiences, where people would be able to feel, touch and primarily see.

• The goal of this functionless building as that architecture would include the other arts of painting and sculpure, to achive a new, unified expression.

CONCLUSION

• Time flattens distinctions such between works with similar forms. But, the history of architectural theory is about ideas and not just the shapes they make.

THANK YOU.