International Style

American  

noun

1. the general form of architecture developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and others, characterized by simple geometric forms, large untextured, often white, surfaces, large areas of glass, and general use of steel or reinforced concrete construction.

2. (sometimes lowercase) any of various 20th-century styles in art, as cubism or abstract expressionism, that have gained wide currency in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and elsewhere.

3. International Gothic.

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International Style British  

noun

1. a 20th-century architectural style characterized by undecorated rectilinear forms and the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete

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Etymology

Origin of International Style

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

While much of this work may look wild or undisciplined — it certainly did to adherents of the International Style — it in fact required extraordinary craft and skill.

From Los Angeles Times

Popular with the public in its day, Art Deco was rejected by the art and academic community in favor of the International Style, a sleek, minimalist sensibility seen in the works of practitioners like Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson, curator of a landmark 1932 MoMA show on the subject.

From Los Angeles Times

Many of the International Style buildings in downtown L.A. inspired a handful of sketches providing a glimpse into Hockney’s first impressions of the city.

From Los Angeles Times

Their Palm Beach, especially the Dellacorte mansion, reflected the maximalist, international style of decorator Tony Duquette and his famed Dawnridge Beverly Hills estate.

From Los Angeles Times

Before becoming an architect at age 37, Johnson ran the architecture department at MoMA, and the spare, luminous building, which he inhabited for over half a century, embodies the Modernist International Style that he helped define in a landmark exhibition at the museum in 1932.

From New York Times