AUDITORIUM BUILDING SULLIVAN DE CHICAGO (L')

COLLECTION "ARCHITECTURE"

of NEUMANN Stan

FRANCE, 2002, 00:26:00

Production : ARTE France, LES FILMS D'ICI, MUSEE D'ORSAY
Collection : Musée d'Orsay
Genre : Documentary
Keyword : Architecture, Orsay Museum, Inheritance, Town planning

Summary :
In 1871, a huge fire devastated Chicago: after the catastrophy, the whole city was to be rebuilt, and that was a unique opportunity for a generation of young American architects to break with the traditions of the old continent and to invent in Chicago the new forms of a specifically American architecture. Architect Louis Henry Sullivan is the most outstanding personality of the School of Chicago, and the author of the most famous quotation in the history of modern architecture: “form follows function”. The Chicago Auditorium Building, built in association with engineer Dankmar Adler, is his first large-scale work: it is a complex gathering in a single building a luxury hotel, offices, and an opera room. The sleeping partners’ idea was that the hotel and the offices would make up for the opera, that they wanted to be popular, hence loss-making.

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