Chicago school

ARCHITECTURE

1. CHICAGO SCHOOL (1880-1930) Also Known as Commercial style, the Chicago school was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20 th century. They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL A "SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL" later emerged in the 1940s and 1970s which Pioneered new building technologies and structural systems.

2. EMERGENCE OF FIRST CHICAGO SCHOOL While there were many reasons for the emergence of this school one of the major once were: The 1871 devastating fire in Chicago that created the need of rebuilding the city and also Architects were encouraged to build higher structures because of the escalating land prices. Quickly, the low buildings constructed just after the fire were seen as an inefficient use of valuable space. By 1890 Chicago had a population of more than a million people and had surpassed Philadelphia to become the second-largest metropolis in the United States. So now Chicago was ready to experiment with daring solutions and would now be the place where the tall office building would be perfected . One of the keys to this development was the invention of the safety elevator.

3. INVENTION OF SKYSCRAPER The development of the skyscraper can be understood not only as an architectural style, but as the manifestation of the Chicago fire 1871 turned into redemption. Designed by William Le Baron Jenney, the home insurance building was an icon. He devised a solution to the problem of fireproof construction for tall buildings. What he did was substituting steel in the structural system for cast iron, which melts at high temperatures clad the building’s exterior with traditional masonry. This new construction, while costly, had overwhelming advantages. It was almost fireproof; the thin curtain walls hung from the steel frame allowed for more interior rental space; new floors could be added easily; and since the exterior walls were no longer essential to holding up the building , they could be cut away and replaced by ever larger expanses of glass, an important consideration in the early era of electrical lighting.

4. CHICAGO WINDOW The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a three-part window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash windows. The arrangement of windows on the facade typically creates a grid pattern , with some projecting out from the facade forming bay windows. The Chicago window combined the functions of light-gathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows that projected out over the street.

5. As early as 1873, Frederick Baumann had proposed that each vertical element of a building should have a separate foundation ending in a broad pad that would distribute its weight over the marshy ground. It was this type of foundation that Burnham & Root used for the Montauk Block (1882) on West Monroe Street. But Baumann's foundation occupied valuable basement space and could support only 10 stories . A decade later, Daniel Burnham and John Root incorporated this exact same idea in their Montauk Building But this type of foundation took up too much basement space and was only able to support a structure of 10 stories in height . The way forward was provided by Dankmar Adler who devise a foundation "raft" of timbers, steel beams, and iron I-beams. An idea used successfully in the construction of Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building (1889). Adler made a final improvement in 1894 when he invented a type of underground, watertight foundation structure for the Chicago Stock Exchange which quickly became the template foundation for skyscrapers across the United States. FOUNDATION

6. Chicago has about 15 feet of fill piled above the original ground level . The original ground was hard clay of varying depths. Below that are layers of soft oozing clay. About 100 feet down is limestone bedrock.   Post fire architects tried to rest their buildings on the hard clay layer 15 feet down . Many high rise buildings used a stepped stone mat for foundations . Stone mats had drawbacks.   Such foundations were so massive that they filled the basement and extended into the street.  They could weigh as much as the building itself, meaning the foundation was mostly holding itself up. Improvements were made. Oak timbers and steel rails embedded in concrete allowed for thinner, lighter mats. Short wood piles driven into the hard clay layer were supposed to provide superior support. Mostly these worked. The buildings sank a few inches and came to rest.

7. Three types of Chicago foundations from  Peck . The not always successful stepped stone foundation (fig.6), grill foundation(fig.7), and the very successful deep pile foundation(fig.29).

8. The first series of high-rises in both New York and Chicago had traditional load-bearing walls of stone and brick. Unfortunately , these could not support super tall structures, a problem which stimulated Chicago School designers to invent a metal skeleton frame - first used in Jenney's Home Insurance Building (1884) - that enabled the construction of real skyscrapers. A metal frame was virtually fireproof and, since the walls no longer carried the building's weight, enabled architects to use thinner curtain walls, thus freeing up more usable space. The same applied to the exterior walls, which could now be replaced by glass, reducing the amount of electrical lights required. An important European influence in the use of metal skeletal frames, was the French architect Viollet-le-Duc. Architect:William Le Baron Jenney STEEL FRAMES HOME INSURANCE BUILDING CHICAGO

9. Henry Hobson Richardson, Dankmar Adler , Daniel Burnham, William Holabird , William LeBaron Jenney, Martin Roche, John Root, Solon S. Beman , and Louis Sullivan. ARCHITECTS INVOLVED

10. RELIANCE BUILDING The Reliance Building is a skyscraper located at 1 W. Washington Street in the Loop community of Chicago, Illinois The first floor and basement were designed by John root of the Burnham and root architectural firm in 1890, with the rest of the building completed by Charles B. Atwood in 1895.

11. RELIANCE BUILDING Large plate glass windows make up the majority of its surface area. White glazed terra-cotta cladding. The steel framing on the top ten floors was completed over fifteen days, from July 16 to August 1, 1895. It was one of the first skyscrapers to offer electricity and phone service in all of its offices

12. RELIANCE BUILDING The Reliance Building has been called "proto-Modernist" in its lack of the hierarchy found in classical facades. Its stacks of projecting bay windows and terra-cotta cladding create an effect of extraordinary lightness. Its steel frame construction is physically light as well, being one-third the weight of an equivalent stone structure.

13. The Wainwright Building Designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan built between 1890 and 1891 Ten story red brick office building

14. The first floor of the Wainwright Building was intended for street-accessible shops , with the second floor filled with easily accessible public offices. The higher floors were for "honeycomb" offices , while the top floor was for water tanks and building machinery. The Wainwright Building

15. Aesthetically, the Wainwright Building exemplifies Sullivan's theories about the tall building, which included a tripartite (three-part) composition (base-shaft-attic) based on the structure of the classical column. The Wainwright Building A cornice separates the second floor from the grid of identical windows of the screen wall, where each window is "a cell in a honeycomb, nothing more".

16. ECLECTICISM   Eclecticism  is a 19 th & 20 th century architectural style. The name originates from a Greek word, which means “ choosing according to quality” It includes in which a single piece of work incorporates a mixture of elements from previous historical styles to create something that is new and original. In architecture and interior design, these elements may include structural features, furniture, decorative motives, distinct historical ornament, traditional cultural motifs or styles from other countries , with the mixture usually chosen based on its suitability to the project and overall aesthetic value.

17. The church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona designed by  Antonio Gaudi  is a notable example of eclecticism. Elements of the  gothic style were merged with oriental motifs and forms found in the natural world, resulting in a structure that was distinctive and original. Although it was designed during the peak of the eclectic period (1883–1926), it remains under construction today. Spires Rose windows Pointed arches Pinnacles