The Concept of Functionalism

The application of the term functionalism to 20th-century design and architecture does not denote any uniform, unequivocal style. This is probably why the designation is often found as a synonymous term for modernism, international style, new objectivity, etc. It may thus be useful to begin with a closer look at these alternative terms.

The rise of modernism in architecture began s often dated to 1910—the year in which Adolf Loos (1870-1933) expounded his views in his article “Architektur”—and is considered to have lasted throughout most of the 20th century. Loos's even more pioneering essay “Ornament und verbrechen” [sic] (Ornament and crime) had been published a few years earlier, in 1908. Also at about the same time, the Deutscher Werkbund, an organization for industry and design, was founded, while Peter Behrens (1868-1940) and Walter Gropius (1883-1969) began raising their architecturally epoch-making factory buildings. Retrospectively, Gropius came to regard the years around 1910 as the starting-point of the ideas that led to the establishment of the Bauhaus a decade later. In music history, these years were equally significant for modernist developments: Schoenberg's break with the principles of traditional tonality is usually dated to 1908.

The term international style is commonly attributed to Henry Russel- Hitchcock and Philip Johnson's characterization of new tendencies in European architecture evolving in the early 1930s. The adjective draws attention to the international element that came to be so closely connected to functionalism as a modernist form of expression. From the mid-1920s onward, Gropius had employed the terminologically related wording internationale Architektur. The international style emphasized the combination of artistic expression, function, and technology, and is considered to have led to the development of the modern skyscraper.

New objectivity is linked to the 1920s Neue Sachlichkeit, a term that gained substantial currency in several areas of art and culture. This term will be discussed more fully at a later point in this book.

Even though the term functionalism is not used in any consistent or incontestable way, there have been attempts to clarify its boundaries. In his book on 20th-century styles in Norwegian architecture and design, Kaare Stang defines functionalism as a term embracing stylistic tenets born and elaborated during the years 1930 to 1950.