The Florida Home is a classic, distinctive and elegant style which has been explored and developed by architects such as Igor Polevitzky, Rufus Nims and Alfred Browning Parker in 1940s-’50s South Florida. The homes are based on international style and modern architecture, in an attempt to incorporate modern designs and elements in the styling. Florida house is famous for its comfortable and lively spaces in a warm climate. Screened outdoor living, sleeping and dining pool areas are typical characteristic features of any outdoor living space. To fight the elements while letting air pass through, the architects experimented with eaves, raised floors and the omnipresent jalousie windows. Cracker StyleFlorida cracker architecture is a style of woodframe homes that were hugely popular in the 19th century in Florida, United States, and are still popular with some developers as a source of design themes. These homes are characterized by metal roofs, raised floors and straight central hallways from the front to the back of the home. Floridian style house floor plans will rarely have a basement due to the elevation and water table. The exterior walls are usually be made of concrete. Cement block walls are sometimes replaced with ICF or Insulated Concrete Forms. Concrete is used because it is the best base strata for the stucco exterior finish. In fact, many homeowners have permanently covered their homes to allow for efficient air-conditioning and incorporate other modern needs as well. The designing is extremely sensible with different parts of the home divided into villas, separated into four corners connected by covered walkways affording privacy as well as allowing those imperative southeasterly breezes to drift through the spacious rooms. Well, above are some key features about the “Florida home” architectural style.
Posts Tagged ‘International Style’
Understanding International Architecture
December 18th, 2009The look of many high-end homes and building campuses is informed by International architecture. It’s a style few builders use to its full extent today, but one that still influences a variety of building movements, from art-deco to post-modern, and is preserved in many cities throughout the world.
International architecture has been widely studied and celebrated for introducing many innovative design aspects. Architects who developed the style also brought about new ways of thinking about design that re-shaped the building world, and modern art in general. The movement was founded on three defining principles: the expression of volume rather than mass, balance rather than preconceived symmetry, and the expulsion of applied ornament. These principles show up in features like exterior heating ducts, irregular but balanced building shapes, and architecture that takes its shape from the inside of the building, as opposed to the outside. Internationally-styled buildings are also generally more functional than other types, although new and avant building methods tend to make them seem more form-oriented. International architect Le Courbusier famously described these functional houses as “machines for living. “
Other characteristics of the International style include transparency (called the honest expression of structure), whether through glass or portals between sections of the building, adoption of steel and concrete as supplementary building materials, and use of mass-production building techniques.
Unlike other building movements that gained momentum over time, the International style has a definite and well-documented origin: the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture in New York City in 1932, which showcased only works done in the new International style. A book titled The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson recorded the exhibition, and identified the new movement’s three founding principles. While many architects had been working with various aspects of the style for decades, the 1932 exhibition and its accompanying book provided the outline and principles that identified the new architectural style.
International architecture was so-named because it was defined by such a broad base of architects from around the world. The style became more worldly as it grew, particularly in the late 1930s when many high-profile German International architects left their country for Turkey, France, Venezuela, Kenya, and India. International architecture’s lack of a central national or historic reference is also one of its strengths.