International style

The International Style is the dominant strain of architectural modernism, named by American critics Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932 in connection with an exhibition of modern architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is defined by radical functionalism, the rejection of ornament, skeletal frames of glass, steel and reinforced concrete, clean rectilinear volumes, ribbon windows, white or neutral surfaces, and compositions that are asymmetrical yet rigorously balanced. Its theoretical and practical foundations were laid by masters of the Bauhaus and the European avant-garde — Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. The slogan 'form follows function' turned architecture into a universal language suited to any place on earth, hence the name. After the Second World War the style spread to office towers, government buildings and housing estates across many countries, shaping postwar urban construction including that of Ukrainian cities. Critics later charged it with cold impersonality, opening the way for the postmodern reaction that followed.