ARCHITECTURE BEFORE THE WORLD WAR

ECLECTICISM
• Eclecticism is a nineteenth and twentieth-century architectural style in which
a single piece of work incorporates a mixture of elements from previous
historical styles to create something that is new and original.

• In architecture and interior design, these elements may include structural

features, furniture, decorative motives, distinct historical ornament, traditional
cultural motifs or styles from other countries, with the mixture usually chosen
based on its suitability to the project and overall aesthetic value.

• Eclecticism came into practice during the late 19th century, as Architects
sought after a style that would allow them to retain previous historic
precedent, but create unseen designs.

• From a complete catalogue of past styles, the ability to mix and combine
styles allowed for more expressive freedom and provided an endless source of
inspiration.

• Eclecticism differed, as the main driving force was creation, not nostalgia and
there was a desire for the designs to be original.
 Different Styles in Eclecticism
• Gothic Revival
• Orientalism
• Beaux-Arts
• Arts and Crafts
• Art Nouveau
• Art Deco
 Gothic Revival

Natural Gothic

Restitutive Gothic Structural Gothic

Eclectic Gothic
Modern Gothic
 Orientalism

Indian Egyptian

Mayan Moorish
 Orientalism

Imperialist

Chinese
 Beaux-Art
• Beaux-Arts architecture expresses the academic neoclassical architectural
style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

• The Beaux-Arts training emphasized the mainstream examples

of Imperial Roman architecture, Italian Renaissance, and French and
Italian Baroque models especially, but the training could then be applied to a
broader range of models.

• Beaux-Arts training emphasized the production of quick conceptual sketches,

highly finished perspective presentation drawings, close attention to
the program, and knowledgeable detailing.

• Beaux-Arts architecture depended on sculptural decoration along

conservative modern lines, employing French and Italian Baroque
and Rococo formulas combined with an impressionistic finish and realism.
 Characteristics
• Flat roof
• Rusticated and raised first story
• Arched windows
• Arched and pedimented doors
• Classical details: references to a synthesis of historicist styles and a tendency
to eclecticism; fluently in a number of "manners"
• Symmetry
• Statuary, sculpture (bas-relief panels, figural sculptures, sculptural groups),
murals, mosaics, and other artwork, all coordinated in theme to assert the
identity of the building
• Classical architectural
details: balustrades, pilasters, garlands, cartouches, acroteria, with a
prominent display of richly detailed clasps, brackets and supporting consoles
• Subtle polychromy.
 Characteristics

Modern Building Types

Civic Buildings

Iron Structures
 Characteristics

Imbricated Facades

High Facades
 Arts and Crafts
• Led by William Morris

• Aesthetic and idealistic reaction to the forces and the conditions of

modernity. A revolt against the hard mechanical conventional life and its
insensibility to beauty (quite another thing to ornament).

• Reintegration of high aesthetic and everyday craftsmanship.

• If artists and architect became craftsmen once more, the tyranny of the
machine could be overthrown-Idea of William Morris

• Characterised by a romantic historicism that harked back to the traditional

rural lifestyle before the advent of modernity and the squalor of industrial
cities.

• Traditional building crafts were combined with an eclectic range of

architectural styles like, Dutch Renaissance and English Baroque.
 Characteristics

Vernacular Picturesque sensibility

Indigenous materials and crafts

Domestic Garden Suburbs

 Characteristics

Decentralization Garden Suburbs

 Garden City Movement
• The Garden City Movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated
in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were
intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by
"greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and
agriculture.

• Howard published his book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in

1898 (which was reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow)

• His idealised garden city would house 32,000 people on a site of 6,000 acres
planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and six
radial boulevards, 120 ft wide, extending from the centre. The garden city
would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another garden
city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden
cities as satellites of a central city of 58,000 people, linked by road and rail.
 Garden City Movement
• In 1904, Raymond Unwin, a noted architect and town planner, along with his
partner Barry Parker, won the competition to plan Letchworth, an area 34
miles outside London.

• Unwin and Parker planned the town in the centre of the Letchworth estate
with Howard’s large agricultural greenbelt surrounding the town, and they
shared Howard’s notion that the working class deserved better and more
affordable housing. However, the architects ignored Howard’s symmetric
design, instead replacing it with a more ‘organic’ design.

• Two garden cities were built using Howard's ideas: Letchworth Garden
City and Welwyn Garden City, both in England.

• Even until the end of the 1930s, Letchworth and Welwyn remained as the
only existing garden cities. However, the movement did succeed in
emphasizing the need for urban planning policies that eventually led to
the New Town movement.
Garden City Movement

The Three Magnets

Garden City Movement

The Three Magnets

The Original Garden City concept by Ebenezer Howard
Garden City Movement

The Three Magnets

Conceptual Layout
 Garden City Movement
• Circular city growing in a radial manner or pattern.

• Divided into six equal wards, by six main Boulevards that radiated from the
central park/garden.

• Civic institutions (Town Hall, Library, Hospital, Theatre, Museum etc. ) are
placed around the central garden.

• The central park enclosed by a crystal palace acts as an arcade for indoor
shops and winter gardens.

• The streets for houses are formed by a series of concentric ringed tree lined
avenues.

• Distance between each ring vary between 3-5km .

 Garden City Movement
• A 420 feet wide , 3 mile long, Grand avenue which run in the center of
concentric rings , houses the schools and churches and acts as a continuous
public park.

• All the industries, factories and warehouses were placed at the peripheral
ring of the city.

• The municipal railway was placed in another ring closer to the industrial
ring, so that the pressure of excess transport on the city streets are reduced
and the city is connected to the rest of the nation.
 Garden Cities
• The First Garden City evolved out
of Howard’s principles is
Letchworth Garden City designed
by Raymond Unwin and Barry
Parker in 1903.

• The second one to evolve was

Welwyn Garden City designed by
Louis de Soissons and Frederic
Osborn in 1920.

• Another example was Radburn

City designed by Clarence Stein
and Henry Wright in 1928.
 Letchworth
• Letchworth, officially Letchworth Garden City, is a town in Hertfordshire, England,
with a population of 33,600.

• It was designed by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker.

• Letch worth – 35 miles from London.

• Land of 3822 acres.

• Reserved Green belt- 1300 acres.

• Designed for a maximum of 35000 population.

• In 30 years – developed with 15000 population & 150 shops, industries.

Letchworth
 Welwyn
• Welwyn Garden City is a town within the Borough of Welwyn
Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England.

• It is located approximately 19 miles from Kings Cross and 24 miles from London.

• On 29 April 1920 a company, Welwyn Garden City Limited, was formed to plan
and build the garden city, chaired by Sir Theodore Chambers. Louis de
Soissons was appointed as architect and town planner and Frederic Osborn as
secretary.

• Land of 2378 acres.

• Designed for a maximum of 40000 population.

• In 15 years – developed with 10000 population & 50 shops, industries.

Welwyn
Welwyn
 Welwyn Characteristics

• Streets are designed so as to give the concept of a Neighborhood unit.

• Separation of the pedestrian walkways from the main roads gives a sense of
natural beauty.

• Open and green spaces are given on a large scale.

• Personalization of Homes in Welwyn with varying roofline, texture and

composition for each house.
 Radburn, New Jersey
• Radburn was planned by architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright in 1928.

• It is America’s first garden community, serving as a world wide example of the

harmonious blending of private space and open area.

• Radburn provided a prototype for the new towns to meet the requirements for
contemporary good living.

• Radburn was designed to occupy one square mile of land and house some 25,000
residents. However, the Great Depression limited the development to only 149 acres.

• Radburn created a unique alternative to the conventional suburban development

through the use of cul-de-sacs, interior parklands, and cluster housing.

• Although Radburn is smaller than planned, it still plays a very important role in the
history of urban planning.

• The Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) used Radburn as a garden city
experiment.
Radburn, New Jersey
 Elements Of Radburn City
• Park as backbone of the neighborhood.

• Specialized Highway system, Complete separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic with
21% of road areas.

• The Radburn planners achieved the separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic through
the use of the superblocks, cul-de-sacs, and pedestrian-only pathways. Through the use of
the superblock, houses in Radburn were uniquely designed to have two fronts.

• The ‘back side’ of the house, what we would normally consider the front side, faced the cul-
de-sac and parking. The kitchen was normally placed in the back to provide visitors a place
to enter the house. The ‘front side’ of the house faced towards the green spaces or parks
encouraging pedestrian traffic.

• Since automobiles were given limited access to the ‘backs’ of the houses, the ‘fronts’ of the
house were relatively quiet, therefore, the bedrooms were always placed on this side of the
house. The 2900 residents of Radburn share 23 acres of interior parks, which yield 345
square feet / person.
 Art Nouveau
• By the 1890s in Europe, the supremacy of French Beaux- Art and English
Victorian styles were being challenged by Architects in places that were
somewhat remote from the English and French spheres of influence like in
Spain, Austria, Germany, Scotland and Holland.

• Emerging at the end of the 19th century and prevalent until the outbreak of
World War I in 1914.

• Arguably the first avant-garde architectural style.

• Whereas the Arts and Crafts movement aimed to heal the alienation that had
arisen as a consequence of industrialization, Art Nouveau stressed creativity.

• Art Nouveau artists tended to avoid the heavy, neo medieval look of the Arts
and Crafts, preferring sinuous organic shapes and plant like motifs.
 Art Nouveau
• By the end of the 19th Century, Art Nouveau had drifted toward a virtuosic
display of form, a complicated intermingling of materials, and an interlacing of
structure and ornament. It was unabashedly expensive.

• Art Nouveau provided a connection between the inherent subjectivity of craft

and the objectivity of modern mechanized production.
 Features of Art Nouveau

Articulating Modernity

Organic Forms

Symbolism
 Features of Art Nouveau

Material Contrasts

Anti Ornament
 Art Deco(between World Wars)
• Art Deco burst onto the world stage at the Exposition Internationale des Arts
Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris 1925.

• The aim of the exhibition, which gave Art Deco its name, was to re-establish
Paris as the centre of Design, Fashion and high-end consumer products.

• The exhibition asked for the submissions that were modern. But the
submissions were somewhere between tradition and modernity.

• Art Deco, later was devoid of any intellectual content or of a social or moral
agenda. It was style in its purest sense, and embrace of eclectic ornament,
colour, rich materials and lustrous surfaces.

• Art Deco represented a vague optimism in the possibilities of modernity, not

as a break from the past, but in a way that ‘consumerized’ luxury.
 Characteristics

Glamour

Speed and Movement

Rectilinear

Exoticism
 Characteristics

Geometric Forms

Residual Classicism
Assignment 2-10 Marks

1. Write short notes on Radburn City in terms of planning. Explain with

street view images of the city.

2. Write short notes on Welwyn City in terms of planning. Explain with

street view images of the city.

3. Write short notes on Letchworth City in terms of planning. Explain

with street view images of the city.

4. Write short notes on Art Nouveau movement. Give an example of at

least one prominent Architect of that era with a building designed by
him/her. Also explain the important features of the design.

5. What is a Garden City? Write about its inception and the features of
the planning proposed by Sir Ebenezer Howard

Last date of submission of the Assignment: 09-02-2017.

Further Reads

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgDiP5F7Bs

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radburn,_New_Jersey

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letchworth

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welwyn_Garden_City

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau

• https://www.geni.com/projects/The-Garden-City-Movement/15255

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclecticism
Further Reads

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0agil9-b3M

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WnMUQck-
BE&index=3&list=PLm38RbKnrb8b5dpmTMMD38RRx5I0Khqqm