- see main article Brick Expressionism
The term Brick Expressionism (German: Backsteinexpressionismus) describes a specific variant of expressionism that uses bricks, tiles or clinker bricks as the main visible building material. Buildings in the style were erected mostly in the 1920s. The style's regional centres were the larger cities of Northern Germany and the Ruhr area, but the Amsterdam School belongs to the same category.
Amsterdam's 1912 cooperative-commercial Scheepvaarthuis (Shipping House), is considered the starting point and prototype for Amsterdam School work: brick construction with complicated masonry, traditional massing, and the integration of an elaborate scheme of building elements (decorative masonry, art glass, wrought-iron work, and exterior figurative sculpture) that embodies and expresses the identity of the building. The School flourished until about 1925.
The great international fame of German Expressionism is not related to German Brick Expressionist architects, but to German Expressionist painters like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Vasily Kandinsky and his German friends in Munich around 1908, and so on.
Read more about this topic: Expressionist Architects
Famous quotes containing the word brick:
“Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He’s got an idea the skyscraper of the future’ll be built of steel and glass. We’ve been experimenting with vitrous tile recently... crist-amighty some of his plans would knock you out... He’s got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he’s found New York of brick an that he’s goin to leave it of steel... steel an glass.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)