International Style

The International Style is the name given to a strand of architectural Modernism that emerged across Germany, France and the Netherlands during the 1920s and was introduced to American audiences under this name by the architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and the architect Philip Johnson at their 1932 exhibition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hitchcock and Johnson identified three defining principles: an emphasis on interior volume expressed through smooth planar surfaces rather than solid mass, a preference for regularity of structure over traditional symmetry, and a rejection of applied surface ornament. Built typically in steel, concrete and glass with flat roofs and expansive glazing, its buildings were intended to read as products of a shared modern technical civilization rather than of any single national tradition, an ambition captured in the style's own name. Its dominance in institutional and corporate building through the middle of the twentieth century drew sustained criticism, including from architects working in the organic architecture tradition, for producing an impersonal, placeless uniformity.