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← Older: Inter-war functionalist
The inter-war functionalist style, which spanned the period between the two world wars, had its background in European modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. Modernism …
Newer: Post-war Melbourne regional →
After the Second World War, the international style put its stamp on cities throughout the western world. Sometimes it pushed regional architectural forms into the …
Post-war international
The modernist international style came to prominence again after the end of the Second World War. Unlike the classicism employed in Nazi prestige buildings, it was a style with no undesirable political connotations.
In the United States in particular, architects such as Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe who had emigrated there during the 1930s were able to further develop their modernist ideas in the immediate post-war period.
There was surprising continuity in the ideas and forms of the international style from the 1930s. With new materials and construction techniques, reinforced concrete and glassy facades became symbolic of post-war capitalism.
In Australia, the post-war international style increased in popularity during the 1950s through the curtain-walled, reinforced concrete office block and the flat roofed, cubiform glass walled house. Such houses were considered radical when they first appeared in Sydney. Harry Seidler and Sydney Ancher had several well publicised battles with Sydney councils, who were vehemently opposed to houses with flat roofs. These early examples by Ancher and Seidler were characterised by their extensive use of steel, glass and open planning.
Several Canberra examples of post-war international architecture are of national importance: the Bowden House, by Harry Seidler (1951-52); the house at 10 Gawler Crescent by Alex Jelinek (1956); and the Northbourne Housing Group by Sydney Ancher (1959).
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