Expressionist architecture

Lore & Background

Expressionist architecture emerged in Europe, particularly in Germany, during the early 20th century, coinciding with expressionist visual and performing arts. The style was marked by early-modernist use of new materials, formal innovation, and unusual massing, often inspired by natural biomorphic forms or the mass production of brick, steel, and glass. Ephemeral exhibition buildings and scenography for theatre and films provided outlets for expressionist imagination.

Reader's Guide

Expressionist architecture's significance lies in its challenge to conventional aesthetics and its influence on later movements, though scholars until the 1970s commonly played down its impact on the International Style. The movement was individualistic and eschewed aesthetic dogma, yet recurring characteristics include distortion of form for emotional effect, subordination of realism to symbolic expression, a visionary pursuit of the new, and a profusion of works on paper. Themes drew from natural romantic phenomena such as caves, mountains, lightning, and crystals, and the style tended more toward Gothic, Romanesque, and Rococo than classical architecture. The major permanent extant landmark is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam. The movement's legacy has been re-evaluated in recent years.

Did You Know?

• Brick Expressionism is a special variant of the movement in western and northern Germany and the Netherlands, where it is known as the Amsterdam School.
• The major permanent extant landmark of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam.