Chicago School vs International Style
シカゴ派の商業建築 / インターナショナル・スタイル
Both sit in Modern Architecture, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Chicago School
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A language of late-nineteenth-century commercial high-rises in Chicago, making repeated floors and large windows legible on the facade. Chicago windows combine a broad fixed pane with narrower opening panes. Terracotta and concentrated entrance ornament coexist with this regular structure, distinguishing it from the later International Style.
International Style
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
| Chicago School | International Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1880s–early 1900s | 1920s–1960s |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A wide fixed window between two narrower opening windows / A repeated grid of piers and floor bands / Projecting window bays and large glazed areas / Pale terracotta or stone with ornament concentrated near entrances | Rectangular volumes / Glass planes / No ornament / The free plan |
| Best used for | Explaining early high-rise architecture through the relationship between windows and structure · Organising a commercial front through daylight, repetition and a distinct entrance | Corporate headquarters and civic buildings that must earn trust through proportion, not ornament. · Long life offices and galleries whose partitions move as programs change. |
| Type | Align signage with entrances and floors rather than covering the facade with a billboard. | Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall. |
| Composition | Repeat a three-part window unit between continuous vertical piers and floor bands. | Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free. |
| Material | Combine broad glass panes, pale ceramic cladding and dark metal, concentrating detail at the street entrance. | Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. |
| Caution | Not every glazed grid is Chicago School. Keep the early commercial tradition distinct from the later Second Chicago School and from the Chicago Imagists in painting. | A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position. |