“Expression- the action of making known one’s thoughts or feelings.”
In between 1910 and 1924 among a group of architects from European countries including Germany, Austria, and Denmark. Due to World War I many lives were affected, many architects had fought on the battlefield of World War I. Their experiences greatly impacted their work and what they created looked like nothing that had come before it. Expressionism is often defined by what is it not. It’s not often symmetrical. The architects who designed Expressionist buildings avoided traditional box shapes and resisted basing their designs on past historical styles. They tended toward abstraction, which means the designs weren’t based on objects or structures seen in the real world. The intention was to unify the materials in a building so as to make it monolithic.
Design elements
- Distorted forms.
- Symbolic representation of reality.
- Extensive use of Glass and natural material.
- Influence of Moorish, Egyptian, Indian and other eastern architectural styles.
- Architecture as a Art Form.
Earliest example of Expression Style is The Einstein Tower, designed by architect Erich Mendelsohn, was built between 1919 and 1921. The building, a solar observatory, is made of brick covered with cement. It’s all curving edges and undulating forms and seems almost to emerge from the ground below it like some kind of organic or scientific organism. And that’s not an accident because it was made to reflect Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which changed the way people thought about time and space. The Einstein Tower looks strikingly modern for a building that’s almost one hundred years old.
Expressionism is still active as it shows the reality and new ideas. Another mid-century modern architect to evoke expressionism was Eero Saarinen. A similar aesthetic can be found in later buildings such as Saarinen’s 1962 TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport. His TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport has an organic form. It was only in the 1970s that expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated in a more positive light.
Lotus Temple – Fariborz Sahba
The project for the temple inspired conceptually by this flower which symbolises purity and cleanliness in Hindu tradition. This concept had to be converted into defined geometric forms, such as spheres, cylinders, toroids and cones, which were translated into equations and later used as a base for the structural analysis and engineering plans.
Sydney opera house – Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon’s realisation that the form of the Sydney Opera House could be derived from the surface of a sphere marked a milestone in 20th century architecture. His competition entry contained schematic designs, clearly explaining the concept for the building but not how it would be built.
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