CHICAGO SCHOOL & WORKS OF

Lesson 6 INTRODUCTION TO SCHOOL

 The Chicago school was a style that developed as a result of the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871.  Before the fire, buildings were built of huge amounts of stone, and could not be very high.  Growing use of the elevator, and the steel skeleton, the buildings grew taller and taller. The steel structure also allowed windows to be made bigger.  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:  Isolated footing supported a skeleton of iron encased in masonry  There were:  fireproof floors,  numerous fast elevators and  gas light  The traditional masonry wall became curtains, full of glass, supported by the metal skeleton  The first were born.

• Chicago's is famous throughout the world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. • The style is also known as Commercial style. In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. • They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings, and developed a spatial aesthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to influence, parallel developments in European Modernism. • A "Second Chicago School" later emerged in the 1940s and 1970s which pioneered new building technologies and structural systems such as the tube-frame structure. • Some of the distinguishing features of the Chicago School are the use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass window areas and limiting the amount of exterior ornamentation. • The first floor functions as the base, the middle stories, usually with little ornamental detail, act as the shaft of the column, and the last floor or so represent the capital, with more ornamental detail and capped with a cornice. • Sometimes elements of neoclassical architecture are used in Chicago School skyscrapers • The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a three-part window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash windows. • The arrangement of windows on the facade typically creates a grid pattern, with some projecting out from the facade forming windows. The Chicago window combined the functions of light-gathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows, that projected out over the street. SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL

• In the 1940s, a "Second Chicago School" emerged from the work of and his efforts of education at the Institute of Technology in Chicago. • Its first and purest expression was the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951) and their technological achievements. • This was supported and enlarged in the 1960s due to the ideas of structural engineer Fazlur Khan. • He introduced a new structural system of framed tubes in design and construction. • The Bangladeshi engineer Fazlur Khan defined the framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from the foundation. • Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube. • Horizontal loads, for example wind, are supported by the structure as a whole. About half the exterior surface is available for windows. • Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable floor space. Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural integrity. SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL • The first building to apply the tube-frame construction was the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building which Khan designed and was completed in Chicago by 1963. • This laid the foundations for the tube structures of many other later skyscrapers, including his own and , and can been seen in the construction of the World Trade Center, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Building, and most other supertall skyscrapers since the 1960s. Some of the more famous Chicago School buildings include: •Auditorium Building • • •Gage Group Buildings • • • • •Leiter I Building •Leiter II Building •Marquette Building • • • • 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.  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.  The Chicago certainly contributed much to Illinois architecture, but hardly anyone knows about the great ideas and strong personalities of

• , • Louis Sullivan, • • John Root, • William Holabird , • , • . LOUIS SULLIVAN Louis Sullivan- was born in 1856.Sullivan thought that architecture should never be studied as a series of styles, because styles did not deal with buildings’ main design and construction.

An American architect based in Chicago and a member of Chicago school. 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 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 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; 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 publicly acknowledged a debt of influence in his career. He argued that the building structure should express its function and coined the famous phrase “” which became central theme. He mentored Frank Lyod Wright.  Louis H. Sullivan was probably the most important American architect of the 19th century and is still considered the “Father of the Skyscraper.”  Sullivan was born in Boston in 1856 and, at age 16, attended the fledgling Architecture School at M.I.T. At age 18, after working under architects Frank Furness in Philadelphia and William LeBaron Jenney in Chicago, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris for about six months, followed by a trip to Italy, where he was particularly impressed by the Sistine Chapel. Sullivan then returned to the United States and settled in Chicago. After working for a few years at Dankmar Adler’s firm as chief draftsman and designer, they formed the firm of Adler and Sullivan in May 1883. Sullivan was the primary design partner and Adler was the engineer. Adler and Sullivan’s buildings, including the Auditorium and Stock Exchange Buildings in Chicago, the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, and the Guaranty Building, were at the leading edge of American architecture and skyscraper design.  The Guaranty Building was Sullivan and Adler’s last collaboration; Adler withdrew from the firm as the building was under construction. Sullivan increasingly turned his practice from skyscrapers to smaller buildings in small towns. His career declined, and Sullivan died in obscurity and poverty in Chicago in 1924. 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.  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  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)  Highly decorated frieze.  Enriched foliated rinceau (an ornamental motif of scrolls of foliage, usually vine)  Porthole windows  Decorated terra cotta spandrels  Capital of pilaster strips  Guilloche (a pattern of interlacing bands forming a plait and used as an enrichment on a moulding) enrichment  Foliated and linear enrichments along jambs or entry

 EXAMPLES

 GUARANTY BUILDING(PRUDENTIAL BUILDING), BUFFALLO  WAINWRIGHT BUILDING. ST LOUIS. WAINWRIGHT BUILDING The Wainwright Building (also known as the Wainwright State Office Building) is a 10-story red brick office building at 709 Chestnut Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.  The Wainwright Building is among the first skyscrapers in the world. It was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan in the Palazzo style and built between 1890 and 1891.  It was named for local brewer, building contractor, and financier Ellis Wainwright.  The building, listed as a landmark both locally and nationally, is described as "a highly influential prototype of the modern office building" by the National Register of Historic Places.  Architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the Wainwright Building "the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture. WAINWRIGHT BUILDING  According to the design the first floor of the building was intended for street accessible shops with second floor filled with easily accessible public offices.  The higher floors were for honey comb office while the top floor was for water tank and building machinery.  Based on structure of a classical column emphasizing the height of the building.  The base contained retail stores that require large glazed openings.  The made the supporting piers look like pillars.  Above it was semi public nature of offices up a single flight of stairs are expressed as broad windows in the curtain wall.  The building windows and horizontals were inset slightly behind the columns and piers as a part of vertical aesthetics to create a proud and soaring thing.  Apart from the slender brick piers the only solid of the wall surface are spandrel panels between the window.  They have rich decorative patterns in low relief varying in design and scale with each story.

PLAN SECTION  Considered first sky crapper to forgo normal ornamentation used on skyscrapers at theta point of time ORNAMENTATION  The ornamentation for the building includes a wide frieze below the deep cornice ,which expresses the formalized yet naturalistic celery-leaf foliage typical of Sullivan.  Decorated spandrels between the windows on the different floors and an elaborate door surround at the main entrance  The building includes embellishments of terra cotta a building material that was gaining popularity at the time of construction. GURRANTY BUILDING • The Guaranty Building, which is now called the Prudential Building, was designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, and built in Buffalo, New York • Sullivan's design for the building was based on his belief that "form follows function”. • The Guaranty Building, which opened in 1896, is recognized as one of Sullivan’s and is an outstanding example of his innovations. • While similar to his 1890 Wainwright Building, which combines masonry with terra cotta for ornament, the Guaranty Building makes ornament the focus through the use of terra cotta to cover two full exterior surfaces. • The piers between the windows form strong vertical lines that draw the eye upward to the dominant cornice. • His ornamentation for the Guaranty was inspired by flowers, seedpods, and, at the top of the building, the spreading branches of a tree. VERTICAL PIERS BETWEEN WINDOWS

Guaranty was inspired by flowers, seedpods, and, at the top of the building, the spreading branches of a tree.  While the exterior skin of the Guaranty expresses a new form for the steel skyscraper, its plan indicates those hard realities of function PLAN necessary to construct such a building and to sell it.  The building is essentially a U-shaped plan stacked upon a rectangular solid.  The interstitial spaces between wings of the “U” create opportunities to introduce skylights to the lobby below, and to cover the ceilings with stained glass.  The plan contained a single vertical circulation core with four elevators, a mail slot, and staircase. No fire-stair was provided or necessary.  The internal portion of the “U” faces south so as to collect light for the interior recesses of the building- light being a necessary commodity to attract good tenants.  Sullivan spared nothing to accomplish this end for: “In order to increase the amount of light to the interior, the stairwell and the light slit facing the inner courtyard were lined with white glazed terra-cotta that was more costly than normal tiles.”[  The first and second floors are united both spatially and visually through additional staircases and the intention of retail occupation.  Mechanical systems were relegated to the basement, including the motors for PLAN the elevators, boilers, and electrical “dynamos.”  Entrances were provided on both Church and Pearl Streets. A concierge desk offered services to tenants and guests including mail delivery.  Above the “base” of the building were a series of office floors of identical plan were placed.  These floors featured private lavatories in reconfigurable office spaces.  The halls were defined by wood and glass partition walls, intended to give the interior a bright and “club” like feeling.  The elevators and staircases were enclosed not by walls, but metal cages permitting southern light to penetrate through the circulatory systems and into the hallways.  The only exception to the rise of offices was the seventh floor with lavatories and a barbershop, and the top floor with a US Weather Service Bureau office and spaces for building attendants.  He and Adler divided the building into four zones. The basement was the mechanical and utility area. Since this level was below ground, it did not show on the face of the building. The next zone was the ground-floor zone which was the public areas for street- facing shops, public entrances and lobbies. The third zone was the office floors with identical office cells clustered around the central elevator shafts. The final zone was the terminating zone, consisting of elevator equipment, utilities and a few offices.  The supporting steel structure of the building was embellished with terra cottablocks. Different styles of block delineated the three visible zones of the building. Sullivan was quoted as saying, "It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.

ORNAMENT  The most remarkable problem for those wishing to cast Sullivan exclusively in the camp of proto- modernist designers is his steadfast and adroit insistence to ornament his buildings.  Ornament is one of the most defining characteristics of the Guaranty as “The entire façade of this building is clothed in ornament, like hieroglyphs on the columns and walls of temples in ancient Egypt.” Sullivan’s ornament is unmistakably original, but it is not without precedents in the contemporary tradition of the English Arts and Crafts movement.  The Guaranty, for all its evocative general expression of tectonics is equally as evocative at the scale of its modular terracotta components. “Here the balance of interest between the individuals and the group to which they belong is precarious, and the sheer number of compositional elements makes it difficult to attend to the individually.  It is difficult to determine whether the ornament serves to reinforce the building or the building reinforces the ornament. The experiential effect of so much pattern and repetitive design is homogeneity in tension with the expression of individual components. reaching outward over the street below  Unlike the Wainwright building, where ornament is more directly patterned on historical forms and where spandrels are self differentiated, the Guaranty is almost brutal in the hierarchical treatment of and expression within its terracotta relief. Such conforming treatment is at odds with the supposedly democratic naturalism Sullivan claims for the design. Especially near the base, ornamental patterns reflect the span and connection of underlying steel members. As the components rise, a rigid pattern is followed, story upon story until the cornice where the pattern explodes into an umbrageous tangle of leaves and vines, encapsulating the windows and  The ornament tells the same story as the theory which created it: bottom, middle, top- light steel skeleton within. The modulating ornament of the Guaranty also indicates the evolution of the medium for Sullivan as an artist.  His initial explorations were inspired directly by contemporary work and historical precedent. Eventually his contact with Adler and work involving the “engineers aesthetic” led to more structurally expressive forms, and eventually to an art only his own, florid and organic.. His sketch for a column capital at the Guaranty labeled “finis” indicates the level of development with which his draftsmen began work.  While containing some specific information, the sketch indicates more a painterly composition than a design document. Curiously, the process of design used by Sullivan to create such innovation was precisely that which prevented him from evolving his conception of plan and section to something his “modern” successors would explore. “In embracing the French theories of plan and esquisse, Sullivan remained firmly wedded to his time and place.  By insisting upon the preeminence of plan, he could hardly have begun to imagine buildings with the spatial complexity of a Wright or a Le Corbusier.”

COMPARISON WITH THE WAINWRIGHT BUILDING  Comparisons with the firm’s first major success in tall buildings, the Wainwright are instructive insofar as the refinements of the Guaranty are more evident.  Although this building is considered by critics to be the “twin” of the Wainwright Building, the elegance of the underlying steel-frame construction behind the red terra-cotta tiles is more apparent here than in the Wainwright.”  Unlike its predecessor, the entirety of street facades on the Guaranty are shrouded with the same material- red terracotta.  Gone are the heavy corner piers of the Wainwright and in their place a constant rhythm of equal bays echoing the steel frame underneath.  The two do share many traits: Simplicity of form, richness of detail.  Red color not chaste white of renaissance typical buildings characterizes both buildings.  The site for the Guaranty building is smaller than the Wainwright, yet called for an equivalent number of offices, resulting in an additional three stories.  The Guaranty Building is a radical departure however from the masonry prototype.  The Wainwright building may fairly be said to have revolutionized the emergent form of the skyscraper, with ramifications felt for the next hundred years. The Guaranty Building is a refinement and perfection of the form which the Wainwright found, and its transfiguration into a spirit of design.