New Formalism vs Stripped Classicism
ニュー・フォーマリズム建築 / ストリップト・クラシシズム
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.
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.
Stripped Classicism
The manner of government and memorial building in which classical architecture is shorn of ornament, leaving only proportion, axis and the rhythm of the columns. That it still reads as classical without ornament made it a cheap means of speaking authority. Important as a case in which the minimal and the intimidating live together.
| New Formalism | Stripped Classicism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1955–1975 | 1920s–1950s |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | 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 | The rhythm of columns stripped of ornament / A strong axis and symmetry / Smooth planes of stone / Walls without large openings |
| Best used for | Giving a cultural or ceremonial space a formal approach and colonnaded front · Creating a monumental exhibition entrance through an axis, repetition and patterned screens | Institutional identity for courts, banks and archives, where permanence has to be signalled with almost no elements · A cautionary reference in brand work: the devices that read as timeless minimalism are the same ones that read as state power |
| Type | Place a modest, orderly title on the main axis and relate its spacing to the columns. | Incised roman capitals, widely spaced, centred on the axis and stated once only. |
| Composition | Raise one rectangular volume on a base and organise its approach and colonnade symmetrically. | Bilateral symmetry with the entrance on the axis, a tall base, an unbroken wall and a heavy uninterrupted cornice line. |
| Material | Combine pale smooth stone or concrete, slender screens and a restrained reflective surface. | Large ashlar limestone or granite, honed flat, with joints fine enough that the wall reads as one continuous surface. |
| Caution | 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. | Reaching for it because it looks austere and expensive: the symmetry and the blank wall make a claim of authority whether or not you intended one. |