Expressionist Architecture - Characteristics

Characteristics

Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways eschewed aesthetic dogma, but it is still useful to develop some criteria which defines it. Though containing a great variety and differentiation, many points can be found as recurring in works of Expressionist architecture, and are evident in some degree in each of its works.

1. Distortion of form for an emotional effect.
2. Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner experience.
3. An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary.
4. Profusion of works on paper, and models, with discovery and representations of concepts more important than pragmatic finished products.
5. Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept.
6. Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains, lightning, crystal and rock formations. As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close contemporary art nouveau.
7. Utilises creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.
8. Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical. Expressionist architecture also tends more towards the romanesque and the rococo than the classical.
9. Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is as eastern as western. It draws as much from Moorish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art and architecture as from Roman or Greek.
10. Conception of architecture as a work of art.