Mies Van Der RoheModernism

Late 19th Century/Early 20th Century

The Beginning of ModernismThe story of modern furniture begins in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

This was a time when machinery became a huge part of society and products and furniture could be mass produced instead of being made by hand. They could be manufactured in factories using machines and took a lot less time to produce than a handmade product.

Thonet was the producer of what is was considered the first modern furniture. This was in the middle of the 19 th Century.

Thonet perfected a steam process for bending hardwood by machine which is a process which is still used today. Inexpensive and well-designed, bentwood chairs and other pieces became popular in Europe both in the home and for use in public. Thonets company produced much of the world’s classic modern furniture.

Thonet’s company also worked with designers such as Le corbusier and Bauhaus faculty members.

The chair on the right is Chair No.14 which was designed by Thonet in 1855. He didn’t invent bentwood furniture but he perfected a process for mass producing it.

The Modern MovementThe Shakers in the US were precursors of the modern movement. It was their idea long before the Bauhaus that form must follow function. Their furniture became popular around 1860 and

is popular again today.

The Shakers were a religious sect founded in England, moved to

America and founded their first community in 1787. Their ideas of

furniture were to use clean, simple lines. They believed that “beauty

rests on utility”. Shaker furniture was functional embodying the

form-function idea later adopted by the modern movement. Shaker

furniture first became popular in about 1860.

The modern movement removed all ornament from design. It was a

protest against the intolerable ugliness of the 19th Century home.

Designers of the movement shared the thought that industrial products

and products made by machinery might be as legitimate a form of artistic

expression as those made with human hands.

Their idea was to simplify or eliminate decoration and to preserve the

natural qualities of materials. Before World War 1, modern designers

were becoming aware of the challenge of an industrialized society and

the vivid beauty of engineering. The celebrated monument of this was

the Eiffel Tower.

In 1919, the Germans opened a new school tutored by Walter

Gropius to teach experimental methods of design for the machine.

This was the Bauhaus.

ModernismThis followed the Arts and Crafts movement creating design with more functional forms. A step had been made towards the cleaner style of ‘fitness for purpose’ and Mies Van Der Rohe’s principle of ‘less means more’.

The theories were based on pure geometric shapes. New materials with different properties had a great impact on the designs of the modernist period.

After a while, the movement lost its rigid adherence to the original rules and became more rational rather than purely functional. This period also saw the birth of modular (unit) furniture.

The belief was that items that were well designed and made would be more likely to sell. The machine and mass production was a vital ingredient. The Werkbund was a place which bought German artists and manufacturers together. The British version of this was called the Design Industries Association.

The Bauhaus fitted into the ideas and theories of modernism.

Bauhaus StylesDesigner: Walter GropiusArmchair, 1923

Designer: Marcel BreuerArmchair, 1924

Designer: Marcel BreuerWassily Chair, 1925

Designer: Mies Van Der RoheMr Chair, 1927

Designer: Mies Van Der RoheBarcelona Chair 1929

Designer: Le CorbusierChaise Lounge, 1928-9

Mies Van Der RoheOne of the most significant architects of the twentieth century. He also left his mark on furniture design.

He was a German designer who started out as an apprentice to Bruno Paul (an Art Nouveau architect and furniture designer).

He later worked for Peter Behrens (Architect) and took over the directorship of the Bauhaus in 1930. In 1937, he moved to America to escape Nazi Germany.

After World War 1, he began studying the skyscraper and designed two innovative steel-framed towers encased in glass. One of them was the Friedrichstrasse skyscraper which was designed in 1921 for a competition.

By the 50’s, he had continued to develop as an architect and developed his concept of open, flexible space but on a much larger scale. Over this period, he realised his dream of building a glass skyscraper.

The Farnsworth HouseIn the 1940’s, Mies Van Der Rohe developed work in steel and glass. During this era, he designed one of his most famous buildings which is in Chicago.

It is a transparent box framed by eight exterior steel columns. It is a minimalist house and has become an icon of international style modernism.

It is a single room, subdivided by partitions and completely enclosed in glass.

The idea is based on continuous visual space