International Style vs New Formalism
インターナショナル・スタイル / ニュー・フォーマリズム建築
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.
International Style
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
New Formalism
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An American architectural style of the mid-1950s through the 1970s that recast classical order in modern structures. Symmetrical masses, colonnades, raised bases and patterned screens make ceremonial fronts for civic and commercial buildings. Its monumentality comes from modern proportions and repeated slender forms rather than a literal reconstruction of an ancient order.
| International Style | New Formalism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1920s–1960s | 1955–1975 |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Rectangular volumes / Glass planes / No ornament / The free plan | A symmetrical single volume on a raised base / Repeated slender columns or arches / A broad flat roof over geometric screens / Smooth stone or concrete with sculptural thin structures |
| Best used for | Corporate headquarters and civic buildings that must earn trust through proportion, not ornament. · Long life offices and galleries whose partitions move as programs change. | Giving a cultural or ceremonial space a formal approach and colonnaded front · Creating a monumental exhibition entrance through an axis, repetition and patterned screens |
| Type | Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall. | Place a modest, orderly title on the main axis and relate its spacing to the columns. |
| Composition | Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free. | Raise one rectangular volume on a base and organise its approach and colonnade symmetrically. |
| Material | Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. | Combine pale smooth stone or concrete, slender screens and a restrained reflective surface. |
| Caution | 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. | Symmetry alone is insufficient. Look for classical order translated into modern construction, and distinguish this architecture from pre-war Stripped Classicism and the literary movement of the same name. |