Computation 4.661
Architecture + Urbanism 4.s52 4.s33
architectural style, developing a synthesis of classical and modern architectural vocabularies that helped lend a signature mode to a pragmatic architecture. By bringing together architectural and cultural markers of authority, timelessness, and grandeur with burgeoning experiments in modern construction, Cret’s building projects mark a compelling episode in the birth of the Modern movement of architecture.
Undergraduate Other
Opposite Left: Central Heating Plant: Interior view of the Central Heating Plant in Washington, D.C., designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Opposite Right: Central Heating Plant: Aerial photo of the Central Heating Plant with the Washington Monument in the background. Below Left: Masonry detail of the Central Heating Plant with a sculptural terracotta panel depicting the heating plant's machinery. Below Right: Central Heating Plant: Photo of the Central Heating Plant in Washington, D.C., designed by Paul Philippe Cret.
In large part, Cret’s influence was exerted through a series of winning competition entries and through collaborative efforts between Cret and teams of administrators, patrons, design juries, and associated design teams. In this paper, I seek to draw connections between the concours of the École and those of the New Deal to highlight how these simultaneously collaborative and distributed forms of design execution helped shape the ''period style'' of New Deal architecture through the analysis of four Cret-influenced projects. Using an in-depth formal and historical analysis of the New Deal ''period style'' Cret helped synthesize, I seek to bring to light how this style concretized École des Beaux-Arts teachings in America and how, in turn, these teachings were absorbed and reinterpreted by architectural and public audiences in the United States.
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