rationalism (architecture)

A 20th-c conception of architecture which pursued the most logical possible solution to every aspect of building. Although to some extent inherent in a great part of 20th-c architecture, it is particularly associated with the work of most of the Bauhaus and International Style architects of the 1920s and 1930s, especially in Italy.

The intellectual principles of Rationalism is based on the old architectural theory.

Vitruvius had already established in his work De Architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. Progressive art theory of the 18th-century opposed the Baroque beauty of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.

Twentieth-century Rationalism derived less from a special, unified theoretical work as from a common belief that the most varied problems posed by the real world could be resolved by reason.