Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow International Style: Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free.
- Type
- Set in International Style's manner (Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall.), and let Italian Rationalism's lettering (A geometric sans set to the same module as the bays, with the leading derived from the same proportion.) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in International Style's material (Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass.); bring in exactly one thing from Italian Rationalism (White render against polished marble and plate glass, with reveals deep enough to cast a real shadow line.).
- Colour
- Build on #eeece5, #9ca3a5, #252729 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Modern Architecture, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- International Style 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.
- Italian Rationalism Keeping the white box and dropping the proportion: without the underlying ratios it is generic modernism, and the whole argument of these buildings was that the ratios were still present.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from International Style (Style, 1920s–1960s) and its accent from Italian Rationalism (Style, 1926–1943). Structural cues: Rectangular volumes; Glass planes; No ornament; The free plan. Accent cues, used sparingly: White volumes and a regular rhythm of bays; Deep overhangs and bands of shadow; Marble set against glass; Classical proportion, translated. Composition: Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free.. Type and lettering: Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall.. Let one material quality come from the second style: White render against polished marble and plate glass, with reveals deep enough to cast a real shadow line.. Mood: Trust, Calm, Futurism, Luxury, Technology. Color: build on #eeece5, #9ca3a5, #252729 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- International Style 1920s–1960s / Style / Modern Architecture
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
- Italian Rationalism 1926–1943 / Style / Modern Architecture
An Italian movement that set out to make the abstraction of modern architecture and the classicism of the Mediterranean hold at the same time. What looks like a white box is in fact carrying ancient proportion in the rhythm of its bays, the depth of its overhangs and the planes of its marble. A textbook for refusing to set the modern against the traditional.
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