LOUIS SULLIVAN

INTRODUCTION•BORN : September 3, 1856Louis Sullivan was born in Boston.

• Regarded as the spiritual father of modern American architecture and identified with the aesthetics of early skyscraper design.

• Did more than 100 works in collaboration with Dankmar Adler.

• He was the second architect to receive AIA Gold Medal.

• “Form Follows Function” was his philosophy.

• At the age of 67 he died on April 24th, 1924 in Chicago.

His early Life• Louis Henry Sullivan was born to a Swiss-

born mother and an Irish-born father• Louis spent most of his childhood learning

about nature while on his grandparent’s farm.

• He would spend a lot of time in exploring the streets of Boston.

• This was around the time when he developed his fascination with the buildings and he decided one day he would one day become a structural engineer/architect.

• After graduating from high school, Sullivan entered MIT at the age of sixteen.In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan. A year later, Sullivan became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning of Sullivan's most productive years. In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan. A year later, Sullivan became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning of Sullivan's most productive years. They designed almost 180 buildings together.

HIS WORKS

Auditorium Building• Best known designs of Adler and Dankmar.• The building, which when constructed was the largest in the

United States and the tallest in Chicago, was designed to be a multi-use complex, including offices, a theater and a hotel.

• FLW worked on some of the interior design.• The entrance to the auditorium is on the south side beneath

the tall blocky eighteen-story tower. • The rest of the building is a uniform ten stories.• A tall structure with load-bearing outer walls.• When completed, it was the tallest building in the city and

largest building in the United States.• One of the most innovative features of the building was

its massive raft foundation. The resulting raft distributed the weight of the massive outer walls over a large area.

• In the center of the building was a 4,300 seat auditorium. On the exterior, Sullivan emphasized both massing and the rhythm of repetitive window patterns.The auditorium was designed so that all seats would have good views and acoustics.The building was equipped with the first central air conditioning system and the theater was the first to be entirely lit by incandescent light bulbs.Sullivan’s vision for the theatre was to create a space that was democratic, where the best seats were not reserved for the wealthiest patrons.The entrance was "compressed" by low ceilings in a way so that when patrons left the lobby to enter the theater, the impact of "expanding" into the towering six story auditorium, with its grand gilded arches and glittering ceiling, would be all the more dramatic.

PLAN OF AUDITORIUM BUILDING

ISOMETRIC VIEW

SECTION

FRONT ELEVATION

SECTION

SECTION

Wainwright Building• 10 – storey red brick office building.• Among the first skyscrapper in the world.• Built between 1890 and 1891.• Architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the

Wainwright Building "the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture.”• Height – 45m• First floor – street accessible shops.• Second floor – easily accessible public offices.• Higher floors – honeycomb offices• Top floor – water tanks and building machinery• The building includes embellishments of terra

cotta.

GROUND FLOOR

UPPER FLOOR PLAN

Carson, pirie, scott and company building

• Located in Chicago, Illinois• Built in year 1889• Commercial building• has been a Chicago Landmark since 1975.• The building is remarkable for its steel-framed structure,

which allowed a dramatic increase in window area created by bay-wide windows, which in turn allowed for the greatest amount of daylight into the building interiors.

• In between the windows were lavish bands of terra cotta• The lavish Bronze-plated cast-iron ornamental work above

the rounded tower was also meant to be functional• Both the use of bronze and terra cotta was important to

setting the building apart from others because it was essentially fire resistant

• To ensure this great building would last and be resilient against the threat of fire, there was a 40 ft water tower put on the roof to supply the sprinkler system with enough water.

• Sullivan designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that the ornamentation, situated above the entrance, would be literally attractive, which would give the store an elegant unique persona important to the competitiveness of the neighboring stores.The way this technique was used on the lower floors of the building were so elaborate that it used the natural lighting and shadows to seem almost as if it were magically floating above the ground.Mahogany and marble fixtures.Incandescent lightsLargest and finest display windows.This building had the most clearly expressed steel frame of any building in Chicago,Building had lavish foliate ornamentationEvery inch of the framework surrounding Carson’s bottom storey windows is covered in entirely original cast-iron, nature inspired embellishments.

Transportation building• Chicago, Illinois in 1893• Sullivan and frank llyod wright designed the

transportation building.• Sullivan’s Transportation Building has generally been

considered strikingly different from the buildings located around the Court of Honor.

• The Transportation Building was detached from the general ensemble of the Court of Honor and markedly different in appearance from the other fair building.

• The focal point of the building was the golden door , an awesome portal formed by layers of receding arches that featured golden leaf ornamentation.

• The exterior had allegorical figures and multiple colors,• Due to the Transportation Building with red, blue, green,

and gold against the ivory and white Court of Honor, the Chicago Fair became variety of color.

• The building spanned more than five acres• It was a long, low arcaded building with a large

polychromed archway entrance

Louis sullivan bungalow• The Louis Sullivan Bungalow was a vacation home for noted

architect Louis Sullivan on the Gulf Coast in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

• One storey bungalow• It was built in the early 1890s• Bungalow plan has a full width verandh facing south to davis

bayou • The main entry opens to a living room and a master bed room

each with its own fireplace.• To accommodate a kitchen , this plan is extended into a t beyond

the living room• Down the stem of t is a butler’s pantry with verandhas on either

side , servants quarters and kitchen pantry.• Along the front to the left is the spacious guests’ room.

• The wing of this portion terminates in an octagonal tower formerly used for the tank water-supply (later converted to library )

• The verandhas with their extension eaves provides shade on the south east and west

• The Sullivan House was destroyed completely by Hurricane Katrina.

THANK YOU