The International Style was inspired by German and Dutch ideas in the 1920s, including the so-called Bahaus School, and embodies extremely minimalistic concepts.  The Bahaus emphasis was that function dictated form.  Steel and glass predominate.  It flourished primarily on buildings constructed from 1930 through 1980.  The term "International Style" is attributed to the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibit of European architecture.  It is marked by the flat roof, glass wall and rectangular shape.  One of the criticisms is the manner in which the form seems to have taken over the city, resembling the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  However, the examples in these pages, containing some of the leading International style buildings, indicate a diversity even within that "rigid" form.

   The Seagram Building in New York was completed in 1958.  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson were the design architects, and Kahn & Jacobs the associate architects.  It is 38 stories, located at 375 Park Avenue, New York City.  It was the first bronze-colored skyscraper and the first skyscraper with wall-to-ceiling glass.  Viewed face-on, it exemplifies Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" philosophy.  

    A plaque in the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Centre states "designed by Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in association with John B. Parkin Associates, the Toronto-Dominion Centre is located in the heart of Toronto's financial district . . . The complex is arranged around a granite-paved pedestrian plaza and originally consisted of three buildings: the 56-storey Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower (1967), the one-storey Banking Pavilion (1968), and the 46-storey Royal Trust Tower (1969) . . . The buildings are steel structures, clad with bronze-coloured glass and black-painted steel, with steel I-beam mullions attached to the exterior.  A leading example of the International style in Canada, the Toronto-Dominion Centre altered the Toronto cityscape and influenced many buildings throughout the country."