Stripped Classicism
ストリップト・クラシシズム / 1920s–1950s / Style / Modern Architecture
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.
The rhythm of columns stripped of ornament / A strong axis and symmetry / Smooth planes of stone / Walls without large openings
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- 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
- Incised roman capitals, widely spaced, centred on the axis and stated once only.
- Composition
- Bilateral symmetry with the entrance on the axis, a tall base, an unbroken wall and a heavy uninterrupted cornice line.
- Material
- Large ashlar limestone or granite, honed flat, with joints fine enough that the wall reads as one continuous surface.
- Caution
- 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.
- Further study
- Interwar government architecture / Proportion as an expression of authority / The turns in its reputation after the war