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Week 7: Early 20th Century Modernists and Modernism

Updated: May 17, 2020

Inspired by a new machine aesthetic, the Modern Movement stripped away unnecessary ornament from the interiors, utilizing new material methods.


Characteristics of Modernism

o rationalization and standardization

o new materials and building techniques

o more spacious, functional environments


Pioneers of Modernism


- rejected the need for ornamentation

- succeeded in challenging the belief of

Art Nouveau designers that all surfaces

should be decorated

- argued the urge to decorate surfaces were

primitive; linked tattoos and modern criminals

and the case of graffiti as evidence




Visionary/Architect/Designer


Published 'A Home in Prairie Town'

-defined a different perspective in search for the vernacular in America in the late 1890s/early 1900s

-generated interests in Chicago


Prairie House Style emerged ~ reminiscent of American 17th century colonial houses


Residential Design

-opening interiors, flow of space from one to another

-inglenook or brick or stone fireplace--large part of contemporary/modern design; served as a focal point for the home

-covered exterior area-integration of interior/exterior spaces

- signature bold cantilever roofs

-inspired by Japanese interiors

-"break up the box"

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/frank-lloyd-wright-robie-house

https://news.wttw.com/2019/03/29/frank-lloyd-wright-robie-house-reopens-after-renovation


"Total Designer-" Frank Lloyd Wright designed the exterior and interiors to include the furnishings of the Robie House featured above. Notice the treatment of wood in the ceilings, the non-western aesthetics in angularity and cubic forms (above bottom right). Wright-designed furniture recently returned to the national landmark in Robie House, including a dining room table and chairs on loan from the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art (above bottom left).

Frank Lloyd Wright Robie chair created for the Robie House (right)

Inspiration, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (left)
















Frank Lloyd Wright's Influence in the Modern Interiors

https://nautilus-homes.com/portfolio-item/shifting-shores/style-lang-3copy-2/


Shifting Shores Home - Built in 2019

Frank Lloyd Wright Characteristics


-wood furnishings

-reminiscent Frank Lloyd Wright Robie chairs

-architectural detailing of beam-like linear forms

-integration of outside and indoor spaces

-earth tone, warm color scheme

-geometric forms

-flowing, open spaces

-cantilever floating ceiling light fixture


Frank Lloyd Wright's Ionic Fallingwater House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC9ipWcYnQc


Since Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater opened to the public in 1964, more than five million visitors have experienced this architectural masterwork. Fallingwater is one of the most unique houses in the world, and it needed people just as unique to help make this timeless treasure a reality.

1883 – 1969

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/454089574932516956/


Walter Gropius was chosen to be the Director of a new art and design school established in Dessau, Germany that would be called the Bauhaus. For the first time, inter-disciplines of painting, sculpting, architecture, and industrialization would formally receive educational training collectively. Females were also allowed to attend the school. The Bauhaus followed a utopian concept, a mission to completely design and define modern life.


The building was designed by the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, and commissioned by the city of Dessau. The plans were drafted in Gropius’s private office – the Bauhaus did not have its own department of architecture until 1927. The interior fittings were made in the Bauhaus workshops. The city of Dessau financed the project and also provided the building plot.


The most timeless quality of the Bauhaus movement was the lens of finding beauty in functionality. Placing the object in relationship to tradition, yet stripping away the unnecessary ornamentation was groundbreaking and emerged as “new objects” with a new attitude toward design. Standardization and mass production were accomplished through the prototype created in the school, that met the demands of the world's emerging economy, technology and form.


Bauhaus designs were defined by a lack of ornament, the use of clean lines, smooth surfaces and geometric shapes. They utilized materials that were new and revolutionary for the time (most furniture in the 1920s was made of wood) – tubular steel, glass, plywood and plastic, for instance.


It was shut under pressure from the Nazis in 1933. In the years between, its teachers synthesized a profoundly influential ethos of the well-designed, mass-produced object.


Modern Bauhaus-Inspired Furniture - 2019

Mariannne Brandt was the first woman to attend the Bauhaus; worked in the Metal Workshop

12. Marianne Brandt-inspired Tea Infuser and Strainer ca. 1924


Marcel Lajos Breuer, was a Hungarian-born modernist architect, and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair which is “among the 10 most important chairs of the 20ᵗʰ century.”


11. original Cesca Chair - created in 1928

early cantilever chair named after Marcel Bruerer's daughter


21. Wassily Chair - named after the Painter Instructor at the Bauhaus


Women were steered to working in the textile workshop

13., 15. Block style color with a horizontal patterns were used on textiles, largely influenced by the Deutscher Werkbund --German association of artists, architects,

designers, and industrialists. established in

1907.

http://catesthill.com/2019/02/28/get-the-look-bauhaus-interiors-24-bauhaus-inspired-designs/


Modern Connection - Interior Space


Today in terms of Bauhaus-inspired designs, we’re seeing lightweight furniture on impossibly thin, slender, straight legs, multifunctional designs that can adapt for different uses, and geometric shapes. The light fittings are not hidden, but are nicely done in a pattern as apart of the art of the design. This example was done in the original Bauhaus in Dessau.

https://www.ebaycollectiveblog.com/articles/the-history-of-bauhaus/

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