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ARCH 10012 - Global History of Architecture II College of Architecture and Environmental Design Kent State University Steven Rugare, Associate Professor

Paper - Departures from Orthodoxy Assignment Overview - For Module 10 we will be reading an excerpt from The International Style by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. This book was based on the catalog for an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—an exhibit that helped introduce European modernism to an American audience. For a number of reasons, the book also codified a set of defining formal principles of what came to be known as “the international style.” While this “recipe” (volume, surface, regularity, lack of ornament) for architectural modernism has been critiqued endlessly, it continues to inform interpretation.

Your first task in this paper is to read selections from Hitchcock and Johnson. In class, we will discuss some of the political and ideological subtexts to their writing, but for this paper you don’t need to worry about them too much. You should simply make sure that you understand the stylistic recipe they define. Once you’re clear on that, you’re ready to research and analyze one of seven buildings that, to varying degrees, do not conform to the recipe Hitchcock and Johnson lay out.

Universum Cinema and related buildings, Berlin (Erich Mendelsohn) Karl-Marx-Hof, Vienna (Karl Ehn) Viipuri Library, now in Vyborg, Russia (Alvar Aalto) Apartment Block on the Rue Vauvin, Paris (Henri Sauvage) Stockholm City Library (Erik Gunnar Asplund) Project for the Ministry of Heavy Industry, Moscow (Ivan Leonidov) Lovell Beach House, Los Angeles (Rudolph Schindler) I’ve included a picture of each building on Blackboard so that you can be sure you’ve got the right one. Your first task is to find at least three sources (either print or online) that describe the purpose and historical context of the building. You will also need to find more images, so that you can do visual analysis.

Your paper should accomplish four tasks:

1. Explain why the building was built, its purpose, and who designed it 2. Talk a little bit about the theoretical or stylistic position of the architect

3. Analyze the building visually, highlighting the ways in which its form departs from the Hitchcock/John- son recipe. 4. Briefly develop some interpretation of your own as to why the architect made the formal choices they made. (This will require some informed speculation.)

You can use online sources for this paper, but you should evaluate their quality carefully. A good way to do that is to start with a peer-reviewed academic source: a monograph on the architect or building, a journal article, or a discussion in a textbook on modern architecture. In fact, you are required to locate at least one such source. The staff at the Morbito Architecture Library can help you find materials, but a good way to start is simply to search by the architect’s name. The library web site provides access to numerous databases. For our purposes, JSTOR is the main one, but you may also want to try searching the Avery Index of Architectural Periodicals and the Humanities Index, each of which may be useful to you in the future. You can also search on Google Scholar, but be aware that links to resources will only work if the library subscribes to them. (Also, all searches should be done on a campus IP address).

Grading will be based on your success in addressing all of the kinds of knowledge listed in bold above. Here are the per- centages:

Subject matter knowledge 50% (how well you’ve learned about the building and architect) Genre knowledge 10% (how you talk about the visual characteristics of the building) Rhetorical knowledge 10% (how well you use examples and quotes to construct your argument) Writing process knowledge 30% (includes spelling, grammar, citation format)

The paper should be no more than 1500 words. Use a standard font and submit the paper in either .doc or .pdf format via Blackboard. All sources you consult should be listed under “References” at the end of your assignment. This bibliography should be in MLA format, as should any parenthetical citations within the text.

The paper is due via Blackboard on April 14.

(Honors Students: Note that you should not complete this assignment as described here. You have the option of doing a longer version of this assignment (2500 words) comparing two of the buildings. You can also select a topic that you wish to research. I’m happy to work with you to define a topic and locate sources.)