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Lecture 9

The Chicago School of Architecture emerged in the early 20th century following the Great Chicago Fire, leading to innovative skyscraper designs utilizing steel and new construction techniques. Key characteristics include bold geometric facades, extensive ornamentation, and a focus on functional design, with Louis Sullivan recognized as a pivotal figure in this movement. The style significantly influenced modern architecture, paving the way for future developments in the field.

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Mohammad Shabander
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9 views

Lecture 9

The Chicago School of Architecture emerged in the early 20th century following the Great Chicago Fire, leading to innovative skyscraper designs utilizing steel and new construction techniques. Key characteristics include bold geometric facades, extensive ornamentation, and a focus on functional design, with Louis Sullivan recognized as a pivotal figure in this movement. The style significantly influenced modern architecture, paving the way for future developments in the field.

Uploaded by

Mohammad Shabander
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Theory of Architecture I

By
Dr. Mohammed Shabander
(B.Sc.Arch.,M.Sc.U.D.,Ph.D.C.P.)

Lecture 9
(The Chicago school )

3rd Year Architecture


2015/2016 Second Semester
The Chicago School

• Chicago's architecture is famous throughout


the world and one style is referred to as the
Chicago School. In the history of architecture,
the Chicago School was a school of architects
active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th
century.
Historical Background
• This school appeared after the fire in
Chicago that created the need of
rebuilding the city
• Architects were encouraged to build
higher structures because of the escalating
land prices
• Conscious of the possibilities of the new
materials and structures they developed
buildings in which:
Historical Background
– Isolated footing supported a skeleton of iron
encased in masonry
– There were:
• fireproof floors
• numerous fast elevators
• gas light
– The traditional masonry wall became
curtains, full of glass, supported by the
metal skeleton
– The first skyscrapers were born
• The Chicago
fire of 1871
destroyed
most of the
city and gave
an
opportunity
for
architects to
design and
build new
structures.
Sources of the style
• The Louisiana-born architect Henry
Hobson Richardson. Although he was
trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, Richardson rejected the école's
dictum that the Greek and Roman
classical style was the ultimate standard
of design. Instead, his ideal was the
rugged Romanesque of the South of
France.
Sources of the style
• The second source of style for the
architects of the First Chicago School
derived from the very nature of the
material they so wholeheartedly
adopted: steel.
Characteristics
• Bold geometric facades pierced with
either arched or lintel-type openings.
• The wall surface highlighted with
extensive low-relief sculptural
ornamentation in terra cotta.
• Buildings often topped with deep
projecting eaves and flat roofs.
Characteristics
• The multi-story office complex highly
regimented into specific zones or
ground story, intermediate floors, and
the attic or roof.
• The intermediate floors are arranged in
vertical bands. Large arched window .
Characteristics
• Large arched window
• Decorative terra cotta panel
• Decorative band
• Vertical strips of windows
• Pilaster-like mullions
• Projecting eaves (the under part of a
sloping roof overhanging a wall)
Characteristics
• Only in Chicago, where there were not
links to the past did architects produce
innovative structures.
Architects
• Adler
• Sullivan
• Le Baron Jenney
• Burnham
• Wellborn Root
Louis Sullivan
1856 – 1924
The Chicago School of
Architecture
(Form follows
function)
Louis Henry Sullivan was
an American architect,
and has been called
the "father of
skyscrapers" and
"father of
modernism" .
Sullivan
• Sullivan was the main architect of this
style
• Sullivan provided his building with a
firm visual base, treated the
intermediate office floors as a unit, and
crowned the whole with a bold cornice.
Sullivan
• The decorative ornamentation devised
by Sullivan and used on some of his
office buildings is based on floral motifs
but organized in a manner closely
resembling the Irish interlace of the
early Middle Ages
• Sullivan designed with the principles of
reconciling the world of nature with
science and technology
Louise Sullivan:
Father of Modern
Architecture,
Guaranty Building,
Buffalo, New York,
1895

“Whatever is beautiful
rests on the
foundation of the
necessary.”
Sullivan
• His buildings were detailed with lush,
yet tastefully subdued organic
ornamentation.
• His attempt to balance ornamentation
into the whole of building design
inspired a generation of American and
European architects;
Sullivan
• the idea that ornamentation be integral
to the building itself, rather than merely
applied.
• He created a personal style that had few
imitators or followers
• Sullivan is one of the few human beings
to whom Frank Lloyd Wright publicly
acknowledged a debt of influence in his
career.
Sullivan
• First to design steel-framed skyscrapers
– Created tall and structurally secure buildings
– Invented unique American style of architecture
– Steered away from Greek and Roman
architectural designs to create unique American
style
– Borden Block-reflected this style
Buildings
• Chicago’s Auditorium
• Montauk block
• Chicago Stock Exchange
• Home Insurance Building
• Carson Store
Chicago’s Auditorium
Auditorium Building
• One of my greatest works, designed with Adler
• Combined theater, hotel, and office building
• Three stages: a block with pitched roof and squat towers, a raised
tower with a pyramidal cap, and a massive, unornamented block
with a tower rising stories above the larger structure
• Was the showplace in Chicago until the Great Depression
– Roosevelt University moved into the building in 1947
– Auditorium Theater Council was established to restore the
theater
– 25 years after it was closed, the NYC Ballet performed
• Audience was crazy about the architecture as well as the
ballet
• I became famous through the Auditorium’s rational structure and
ornamentation
Theater
Carson Pirie Scott Building
Influences
• The First Chicago School was an astonishing
and a profoundly important achievement.
• Its matchless tradition of technical prowess
and aesthetic boldness would surface again in
Chicago
– in the 1930s with the arrival of the Bauhaus,
and
– in the following decades in the work of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his disciples.

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