1. Design and Modernism
Le Corbusier
Contextualised
Andrea Peach

2. A Great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit.
Towards a New Architecture
Le Corbusier 1927

3. Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye 1927

4. Modernism
Dominant ideology throughout western industrialised world in art, design and architecture for most of the twentieth century

5. 19th century: Ornament & Decoration …
‘Ornament’ - or decoration - was a key feature of 19th century designed objects. The more garish the more desirable. The ornamentation had nothing to do with the function of the object, but was seen as a symbol of status.
Can perhaps draw some comparisons here with Greenberg’s writings and idea of FLATNESS here.
19th century: Ornament & Decoration …

6. If we challenge the past we shall learn that ‘styles’ no longer exist for us, that a style belonging to our own period has come about; and there has been a Revolution.
Towards a New Architecture
Le Corbusier 1927

7. Die Wohnung Stuttgart 1927
Die Wohnung - the dwelling - exhibition Stuttgart 1927
Examples of ‘modern living’
Presented model housing and modern household furnishings - mass housing for working classes
Prototypes using new construction techniques and materials: concrete, tubular steel
Involved many of the most progressive designers practicing in Europe
Mies van der Rohe was artistic director

8. Adolf Loos 1928
Essay on Ornament and Crime:
Evolution is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of everyday use
Progress and Evolution
Adolf Loos: What makes our period so important, is that we have outgrown ornament; it is no longer an expression of our culture
Again - parallels here with ABSTRACTION

9. Adolf Loos 1928
Steiner House - Vienna, Austria

10. A house has to fulfill two purposes
A house has to fulfill two purposes. First it is a machine for living in, that is, a machine to provide us with efficient help for speed and accuracy in our work, a diligent and helpful machine which should satisfy all our physical needs: comfort. But it should also be a place conducive to meditation, and lastly, a beautiful place, bringing much needed tranquility to the mind.
1923
Built environment also experienced the influence of the machine age.
Le Corbusier famously referred to the house as a ‘machine for living in’ a chair ‘a machine for sitting in.
Swiss born Le Corbusier started out by designing prefab housing systems which were a response to the devastation after the First World War. Wanted to to harness modern industry as a means of overcoming disaster.
Led to his 5 points of a new architecture
Use of columns to raise house off the ground - gave room for circulation of people and cars - eliminated basement which he saw as unhealthy and tubercular.
Flat roof to be used as a garden - recovering lost space and making a private space for sunbathing, exercising or taking the view.
Free Plan - made use of freedom created by structural frame
Free Façade - creation of windows and open terraces
Long Horizontal window to enable more light
Cook House embodied all of Corbusier’s 5 points of architecture - house raised on columns, ribbon windows running from edge to edge of the façade, partitions are freely shaped in response to aesthetic or functional requirements. Flat roof replaced by wall garden
Le Corbusier
Cook House, Paris, 1926

11. Machine Art exhibition at Museum of Modern Art in New York 1934
The beauty of machine art is in part the abstract beauty of straight lines and circles made into actual tangible surfaces and solids by means of lathes, rulers and squares
Official recognition of the transition of machine from industrial tool to aesthetic object came at MOMA exhibition 1934 ‘Machine Art’, which displayed engines, pistons, propellers and placed them on pedestals in the same way that a curator exhibits paintings or sculpture.
(MOMA - first museum dedicated to ‘modern art’ opened in 1929)
Catalogue pays homage to ‘a great new race of men in America: the engineer. He has created a new mechanical world’ (Catalogue designed by Fernand Leger)
Important that these objects were displayed as works of art
Through the idea of Machine Art, MoMA established its own set of requirements for design and art -
An aesthetic that contained: simplicity, purity, geometry and austerity and a method of production: machine manufactured, actual or implied, using modern materials, and an iconography: the machine

12. Le Corbusier - Towards a New Architecture
Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls on towards its destined ends, has furnished us with new tools adapted to this new epoch, animated by the new spirit.
Le Corbusier - Towards a New Architecture
And in the United States - Machine Age Exhibition 1928
Quote by Le Corbusier
This machine aesthetic, based on geometry, was felt across the world
Le Corbusier: ‘A chair is a machine for sitting; a house is a machine for living’
Ball bearings - poster by Ferdinand Leger

13. Russian Constructivist printed textile c 1920
This printed textile blends the geometric abstraction of the progressive Russian Constructivist movement
Potent political forms: mecanised tractor
Russian Constructivist
printed textile c 1920

14. Le Corbusier 1929
Article in ‘The Studio’ magazine ‘Wood or Metal’
Questioned ‘humanity’ of functionalism
Metal plays the same part in furniture as cement has done in architecture.
It is a revolution.

15. Le Corbusier - Towards a New Architecture
John Gloag - British Art /Design critic and theorist
‘Brutal’ often used in conjunction with modernism - particularly with reference to modernist architecture
The machinery of Society, profoundly out of gear, oscillates between an amelioration, of historical importance, and a catastrophe.
Le Corbusier - Towards a New Architecture

16. If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the house, and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the
‘House Machine’
LeCorbusier’s New Architecture was completely radical - offering a machine age structure and
Promised to create new freedom by using machine age technology and industrial production in order to solve problems of lack of housing after ravages of WWI, enrich daily life by adding roof gardens, and improve health by allowing more light
Villa Savoye - Built in suburban Paris, weekend house which marked the height of Corbusier’s Purist period.
Organised as an ‘architectural promendade’ around a central ramp
Interior is an example of Corb’s philosophy on purism in architecture
Plays with sunlight and geometric form - aesthetic ideals
Worth pointing out that this is not a house for ‘the common man’!
Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye

17. We must create the mass-production spirit.
The spirit of constructing mass-production houses.
The spirit of living in mass-production houses.
The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.
Le Corbusier had utopian belief that world of happiness and equality could be arrived at through combination of social progress and reliance on technology
Unite d’Habitation was Corb’s first major post war building - anticipates ‘brutalism’ that is associated with 1950s and 60s modernism. Became model for urban housing
Architecture which is arrived at through scientific, rational approach - analysed needs and functional requirements to come up with a solution.
Communal living
Would have range of carefully considered socialised functions - kindergarten at ground level where parents could easily drop off and pick up children on way to work, shops, social areas
Le Corbusier
Unité d’Habitation,
Marseilles

18. architecture or revolution
It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of to-day:
architecture or revolution
Le Corbusier had utopian belief that world of happiness and equality could be arrived at through combination of social progress and reliance on technology
Unite d’Habitation was Corb’s first major post war building - anticipates ‘brutalism’ that is associated with 1950s and 60s modernism. Became model for urban housing
Architecture which is arrived at through scientific, rational approach - analysed needs and functional requirements to come up with a solution.
Communal living
Would have range of carefully considered socialised functions - kindergarten at ground level where parents could easily drop off and pick up children on way to work, shops, social areas
Le Corbusier
Unité d’Habitation,
Marseilles

19. Weissenhof Seidlung, Stuttgart 1927
Has had massive impact on social housing throughout 20th century
Rationalisation and standardisation - tenets of functionalism
Component furniture systems of wood, plywood and metal - all mass-produced and inexpensive
Walter Gropius / Marcel Breuer
Mies van der Rohe

20. Marcel Breuer 1931
Welded tubular steel furniture - most iconic artefact of this period
Shown at Weissenhof
Entirely new material - same manufacturing process as making bicycles - impression of being welded from one single piece of extruded steel
Rationalisation of components (use of same components for different types of furniture
Could be flat packed
Affordable by ‘broadest mass of people’
Not particularly ‘artistic’ or ‘cosy’ - instead mechanical and logical - but attracted a lot of interest by all public
This metal furniture is intended to be nothing but a necessary apparatus for contemporary life

21. Modernist Design Objects should be: Simple, honest and direct
Well adapted to their purpose
No ornament

22. Modernist Design Standardised Machine-made Reasonably priced
Expressive of their structure and materials

23. Marcel Breuer 1926 Nesting Tables Germany
Much of what we think of as ‘functionalist design’ is rooted in the 1920s and 1930s
Nickel-plated steel and lacquered wood

24. Mies van der Rohe 1927 Cantilever Chair Germany
Chrome-plated tubular steel, oil cloth

25. 1946
“Here is gay, sparkling furniture that brings new beauty and charm into your kitchen … it’s the kind that seems to stay new looking indefinitely”
Also had a revival in the 1940s
Howell ‘Chromasteel’ USA

26. Greta von Nessen 1952 ‘Anywhere lamp’ Germany
Also had a revival in the 1950s / 1960s
Aluminum and enameled metal

27. 2008 …
Influence continues today
Ocean - Bianco Table / Gamma Chairs - chromed tubular steel frame

28. Modernism
A term used to refer to the principle that nothing is included in a design that does not enhance the object’s purpose

29. Marianne Brandt 1924 Tea infuser Germany, Bauhaus
But functionalism was also symbolic - symbolically functional
Meaning that it represented function more that resulted from function. It looked functional more than worked functionally
Tea infuser
Germany, Bauhaus

30. Metal is cold and brutally hard... It gives no comfort to the eye
John Gloag - British Art /Design critic and theorist
‘Brutal’ often used in conjunction with modernism - particularly with reference to modernist architecture
Metal is cold and brutally hard...
It gives no comfort to the eye
John Gloag 1929

31. “Modern carpet designs may provide endless entertainment for your friends”
Heath Robinson 1936
Popular opinion was divided on modernism - particularly in domestic situations

32. “De Staalstoelophoon”
1934

33. The end of modernism…? The Titanic - Photomontage
By late 1970s modernism was perceived as a ‘sinking ship’ -
Tigerman’s photomontage of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall is emblematic of state in which functionalism found itself at end of 20th century
Seen as monotonous and tyrannical (Vincent Scully: ‘brought so many cities to the brink of catastrophe) - very little left of ideals and ambitions which has started it
The Titanic - Photomontage
Stanley Tigerman, 1978, USA

34. Alessandro Mendini 1978
Mendini adds painted decoration to Breuer’s chair - irregularity, colour, ornament: all the things that the functionalists deplored!
1925
“Redesign of Modern Movement Chairs” Wassily by Breuer, Italy

35. The end of modernism ... ? Is modernism still relevant?
Still remains a benchmark against which design is judged
Classic metal furniture designs still widely available