Garden City vs International Style
田園都市 / 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. One is layout and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Garden City
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Howard's diagrammed proposal for self-contained towns of planned population joining the advantages of town and country. The concentric diagram materialized at Letchworth and became the template for suburbs and new towns worldwide.
International Style
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
| Garden City | International Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1898– | 1920s–1960s |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | Concentric diagrams / Separation by green belt / Planned population / Work near home | Rectangular volumes / Glass planes / No ornament / The free plan |
| Best used for | Setting the frame of a new residential district from green space first · Proposing regional plans built on jobs near homes and a capped population | 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 | Draw the scheme as concentric rings, zone names and populations equal in size | Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall. |
| Composition | Public buildings at the center, industry outside, housing and farmland between | Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free. |
| Material | Treat the green belt as a building material, fixing width and planting first | Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. |
| Caution | Borrowing only the concentric picture while dropping the green belt and the population ceiling leaves a leafy subdivision with no self-sufficiency left. | 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. |