Sources of Modern Design

By Alex Brown

 

 1.0       INTRODUCTION 

After the Great Exhibition of 1851, a report by one of the Commissioners, Richard Redgrave, pointed to the problems of style which the Exhibition had brought into focus. He stated that: "......the ORNAMENTAL so largely prevails to the exclusion of the USEFUL. This is apt to sicken us of decoration and leads us to admire those objects of absolute utility (the machines and utensils of various kinds), where use is so paramount and ornament is repudiated, and FITNESS OF PURPOSE being the end sought, a noble simplicity is the end result"

So too, the Times of London wrote of some of the objects on display at the Exhibition that: "The only beauty attempted is that which the stringent application of mechanical science to the material world can supply; and in the truthfulness, perseverance and severity with which the idea is carried out, there is developed a style of art at once national and grand". 

Both these quotes show an awareness of the corrupting and "sickening" effects of decoration on the design of products and also show an increasing awareness that an attention to function and fitness for purpose could produce beautiful products. These and other similar statements suggest that there was now a growing desire for a change of approach in design thinking.

 

2.0       THE SEARCH FOR A STYLE 

Usually design theory is more advanced and radical than practice. However, due to the Industrial Revolution, this position had been reversed. Theory still refused to grasp the importance of mass production and the significance of a FUNCTIONALIST approach to design. There was a general desire to have a unified design style for all products but in most cases this simply meant some variation or other on Gothic or Classical decoration. 

Even until the end of the 19th century by which time industry and technology had affected all parts of society, ornament and more ornament was the solution for most designers of domestic or commercial products.

However, at the same time an increasing number of voices began to call for a new, simpler, more truthful and functional position in art and design. These prophetic voices referred again and again to the need for FUNCTIONAL DESIGN to be applied to all designed products - not just to industrial items, but to social and domestic products and for a unified design style centred on utility and simplicity of form.

3.0       THE EARLY MODERNS

Who were these radicals who called for a renewal of design along functional lines? They can basically be split into two groups: the first might be called the MORALISTS, and the second, the RATIONALISTS. 

The Moralists saw the issue of design in terms of truth, the power of art, the vernacular-craftsman tradition, a love of nature and a rejection of the brute force of industry. Amongst these groups we may include:

1.        The Arts and Crafts Tradition: (Theorists:John Ruskin, William Morris) 

2.         Art Nouveau : (Macintosh, Voysey, Victor Horta) 

The Rationalists saw the issue as a full acceptance of industrial power, rational design principles, functionalism and the teaching of 'good' design as a way of ensuring high design standards linked to the realities of industrial production. Amongst these groups and individuals we may include:

1.         The German Werkbund  
2.         Henry Van de Velde and the Weimar School

                       

Although both these groups saw the corruption of design (over-decoration, bad taste, lack of truth, and so on) which prevailed in the 19th century as the key problem,   each group proposed a different answer to that problem.  

Note:   1.         The Moralists saw the answer as a 'return' to earlier, simpler, pre-industrial values with the ARTIST taking a prime role.  

2.         The Rationalists, however saw the answer as an 'advance' towards new values and a full embrace of the potential of industrial power with the TRAINED DESIGNER as the key figure.

(Time was to prove that the Rationalists were correct in their judgement of the way that Modern society was heading).

4.0       THE POLITICAL DIMENSION OF DESIGN

It was in Germany that the Rationalist spirit was most strong. As a new industrial power - in military and industrial competition with Britain - it sought to harness industry and art in the service of the state. Having fought a successful war against the French in 1871, Germany consciously set out to be the most powerful state in Europe and sent delegations to Britain and to the United States to study their most advanced products which were later applied to German industry, design and society. Britain, although still a superpower in military-industrial terms was losing its technological edge. After leading the Industrial Revolution, Britain had, so to speak, 'run out of steam' and again turned towards tradition and the past as sources of authority 

5.0       REMEMBER (1)..............   

These arguments about design theory and practice were taking place in a truely revolutionary social situation. In Europe and to some extent in the United States, society was changing rapidly not only in terms of new inventions (electricity, telegraph, automobile, camera, steam ships, gramophone, and so on), but in the reality of everyday life:

1.                 Population growth: Existing cities doubled and tripled in size within the century as the population grew rapidly. New cities came into existance around factories, around coal deposits or along river or rail transportation routes. Cities became overcrowded, unhealthy and sometimes dangerous places with the mass movement of people from the country areas to the factory-cities, coal mines or shipbuilding areas to find work.

Society changed from being an agricultural to being an urbanized society. A whole new social class came into existence: the industrial Working Class based in the factories and living in the working class areas of the cities. In order to better their lives they organised themselves politically and formed new political parties to look after their interests. 

2.         The Middle Class who made money out of the new Industrial Age through invention of its products or professional services (lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc), became enlarged and much more powerful economically and politically. 

6.0       RUSKIN: THE STONES OF VENICE

For those, like the Moralists who rejected outright the new industrial society - the crowded cities, the factories, blast furnaces, the inhuman working conditions, child labour, the dirt and the squalor and the endless masses of industrial poor, what was the alternative? It could be found in the writings of the anti-industrial and basically Humanist ideas of the social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900). His book, The Stones of Venice became the 'bible' of the Arts and Crafts wing of the Moralists. Ruskin's influential views can be summed up as follows: 

1.       Freedom and creativity associated with craft workmanship. Every man a creative individual. The craft system and handwork as the basis for human dignity.

2.              Rejection of mechanization, standardization and mass production as de-humanizing.

3.                 "Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions". The Middle Ages/Gothic period as the Ideal Society. (non-industrial, small scale, craft production). Recovering lost craft skills and older methods of production.

4.                 Men before machines, morality before profit. Rejection of "Progress", design teaching. "Art made by the people and for the people, a joy to the maker and user".

5.                    Note that: Note that the Arts and Crafts Movement saw Craft work coupled with socialist ideals equals the humanitarian society. The Good Society.

7.0       THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

In 1861, heavily influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin, William Morris (1834-1896) set up a design and production company, the first of its kind: Morris and Company: "craftsmen of painting, sculpture, furnishings and glass" and dedicated to the craft and socialist ideals put forward by Ruskin. Morris also designed embroidery, stained glass, wallpapers, textiles, typography and book production. Together with painters such as Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ford Maddox-Brown (who also saw the pre-industrial age as an Ideal period). His description of the company is as follows:

"An association of artists has just been formed with the aim of producing crafts of an artistic character and at reasonable prices; they have resolved to devote themselves to the production of useful objects to which it is their intention to give an artistic value".

Other designers soon followed Morris's example and set up craft workshops - C.R. Ashbee, A.H. Mackmurdo, Lethaby, and others to provide an alternative to mass production industrial  methods - a more humane alternative they would say.

The Characteristics of Arts & Crafts Movement design were: 

a)     The pre-Industrial Revolution life in villages; Gothic vernacular; the usefulness and simplicity of peasant/rural products and designs; the natural world. Use of natural materials and colours, flowered patterns, `cottage style'

b)         Rejecting factory production it sought to return to a `hand made', craft-based approach to the design of products.

 
8.0       INFLUENCE OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

           

These Arts and Crafts companies were commercially successful amongst the newly enriched Middle Class. Their idea of liberating the industrial working class through craft production was doomed to failure. The working class could not even afford to buy most of the Arts and Crafts products.

In a sense Arts and Crafts designers were TOO SUCCESSFUL. Their influence in Britain as heads of newly established Design Schools meant that British design maintained a nostalgic, backward-looking, traditional and sentimental style full of 'gothicky', cottage images.

Design influence in Britain was seen in terms of the Craft tradition. In Germany on the other hand, design was seen in terms of industrial production. This was the policy of the German design schools and inspired by German government initiatives to become the major European industrial power.

The Arts and Crafts Movement, further helped Britain lose its competitive edge in Industrial Design by this snobbish 'anti-industrial', 'anti-trade' attitude to design.

9.0       ART NOUVEAU

There were basically two stylistic sources for the development of Art Nouveau style: The Arts and Crafts Movement itself. (Truth, nature, morality and anti-industrial) and French Rationalism (rigorous expression of structural forces, materials and forms). The Art Nouveau style can be understood as an extension and exaggeration of the Arts and Crafts, vernacular tradition. The simple 'peasant' furniture, graphics and products produced by Morris and others were elongated and stretched into more linear/organic forms. 

Art Nouveau was, like the Arts and Crafts Movement, a reaction against the overdecorative and fundamentally corrupt state of design at the end of the 19th century. So too the moral and craft ideas of William Morris had their influence. However, it was in mainland Europe - France, Spain and Vienna and in Scotland that the style achieved its most dramatic results. The characteristics of Art Nouveau were: 

a)         Uses natural forms of plants, stems, vines, flowers, etc. as source of decorative motifs. Linear emphasis of basically Arts & Crafts products, exaggerated and lengthened to give characteristic Art Nouveau `flowing' look.

b)         Special interest in furniture, product design and graphic illustration. (Ie. Total design), plus the use of complex and rich colour selections.

d)         Artists: C.R. Mackintosh (Scotland); Voysey (England); Horta & Guimard, (France); Antonio Gaudi (Spain), amongst others.

The result of this was the production of a very sophisticated and successful new style which at its best eg. the work of Macintosh in Glasgow, Scotland, achieves both the elegance and structural simplicity of design so close to the Modern Movement.  (It is also worth noting the work of the Americans: Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, who produced work similar in form to that of the Europeans. The similarity between Macintosh and Wright both in style and their 'Total Design' approach is quite remarkable).  Mackintosh’s work - so European in some ways - was certainly heading in the direction of the Modern  Movement style. In different circumstances it could have become an alternative to the Functionalist Modernism of Gropius and the Bauhaus. Mackintosh’s career failure and death prevented this possibility from happening.

Art Nouveau, like the Arts and Crafts Movement was based on craft approach to design and production. To this extent, they were both attempts to hold design back from being fully absorbed in the industrial process that had affected every other part of society. While the aims of these movements - individual dignity through craftsmanship and the importance of Art were understandable (and their products in some cases very beautiful), they were ultimately doomed to failure in the face of the overwhelming and unstoppable force of industrial power, and mass production.

THE WORLD HAD ALREADY CHANGED. Both movements faded away in history.

10.0     REMEMBER (2)

It should be remembered that the vast majority of designers and the public did not take up these radical positions. In some cases they rejected the 'drive for simplicity and utility'. For them, decoration was not corrupting or 'sickening' but ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Without it products and interiors would be characterless - like living in a prison cell or sanatorium. As for the Modern idea that everything had to be 'functional' or have a definite purpose, the French writer Marcel Proust, wrote:"To judge be the principles of this (modern) aesthetic, my bedroom was far from beautiful, for it was filled with things that were no use at all....but for me it was just those things that were not there for my convenience...that my room derived its beauty".

More directly, Proust states: "The only really beautiful thing is the one that has no use at all; all that is useful is ugly". And, if function is everything, then "the most useful (and beautiful) place in the house is the toilet".

From our late 20th century Postmodern attitude, there is a certain agreement with this position. Objects should not only be designed for utility but for visual and tactile pleasure, for fun and surprise. The work of Postmodern architects or the products of the Memphis design studio are attempts once again to move beyond the functional.

 
For designers in the 19th century the 'function' of decoration (apart from visually enriching objects) was to STYLISTICALLY link all the elements in an environment together. Their simple functional shape does not necessarily do this: a chair is a chair, and a telephone is a telephone. In order to achieve a totally-unified environment, another and secondary LAYER OF FORM  - called decoration -is used to make them part of the same visual family. 

11.0     THE RATIONALIST POSITION 

In a world of crowded cities, factories and mass-production and an increasing demand for more and more products, neither of the craft-based styles offered a realistic design alternative. The styles themselves and the techniques used to produce their products simply could not handle the pressure of numbers placed upon them. They ended up as decorations for a small, artistically-aware middle class clientele. They could not mass produce products for the urban masses - and nor did they want to.

The Rationalist (and German position) on this was different: industrial power was not a threat but an opportunity to harness the enormous power of industry with the conscious guidance of Art and Design. There was no point in trying to reverse the Industrial Revolution. The real issue now was whether it was possible to direct it towards aesthetic ends to create a TOTALLY DESIGNED ENVIRONMENT. 

Rationalism treats form as the result of a process or an activity. In the case of design, this activity is the use of the object - Its function. Functionalism is Rationalism applied to design and the result was a revolutionary event - the Modern Movement in design.

 
12.0     HENRY VAN DE VELDE - THE RATIONALIST DESIGN SCHOOL

Two significant things happened in 1907 in Germany that were to have a major impact on European design. The first was the founding of the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts by the Belgian designer, Henry Van De Velde and the founding of the Deutcher Werkbund (= German Work Group) in Munich.

Van de Velde - originally a painter - had earlier set up a 'factory of applied art' in Belgium inspired in part by the ideas of William Morris in the UK. Unlike Morris, however he was much more radical and not content just to look back into history for inspiration.

"A civilization can only claim to possess an art if the latter permeates it throughout, if it makes it presence felt in the most ordinary utensils". and "Utility can regenerate Beauty".

Not appreciated in his home country, he went to the city of Weimar in Germany, then in a state of rapid industrialization. He became Director of the Weimar Art School and later founder of the Weimar School Arts and Crafts His principle was: "to create the most advanced citadel for the realization of the idea - in Europe and in the world - of a return to truth, to the fundamental principle of rational design". Therefore, he did not allow students to study historical styles but required that in design they find the true and appropriate form of the object out of the function it had to serve.

Design education at Weimar was to be DESIGN FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES.

In a real sense, he had started the first Modern Design School. It became a model for all future Design Schools and led ultimately to the founding of the BAUHAUS. However, Van De Velde, athough radical in his educational thinking, still saw the ARTIST as the prime mover in all design issues and quite independent from industry.

 
13.0     THE WERKBUND: JOINING ART AND INDUSTRY

In October 1907, a meeting took place in Munich, Germany between a group of artists and a group of industrialists. They founded an association - the Deutcher Werkbund  - for the joint purpose of bring quality design into industrial production. The group was also meant to be a reference point for all those who had the ability and desire to make quality products and to THINK IN TERMS OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY. Here in the Werkbund was the first real attempt to link ART and INDUSTRY together and possibly for the first time - the Artist became a Designer. That is: applied his formal and visual skills to the design of mass-produced products.

The difference was that it was not enough to design the product in isolation but necessary to have a full understanding of the process of their production BEFORE they were finally designed.

Design was no longer craft art but INDUSTRIAL DESIGN.

14.0     WEIMAR VERSUS WERKBUND = BAUHAUS

By 1909 in Germany there was a conflict of opinion between the educators of the Weimar School led by Van de Velde and the leaders of the Werkbund industrial design group led by Herman Muthesius. 
The problem was this:

a)         Muthesius wanted a complete integration of artist-designer with industrial production. It was only through standardization of product designs that the artist could establish reliable standards of taste. And for German nationalistic reasons products must be designed which can be exported to as large a number of countries as possible. Therefore, there was no longer any justification for solitary creation (the artist as individual designer).

            (It is worth noting that Muthesius had been a German government official at their embassy in London between 1896 and 1903. For him, industry, art and design should exist to directly serve the needs of the state).

 b)        Van De Velde completely rejected any system which would exercise control over the creativity of the artist particularly the idea of standardized  type of product to make things easier to mass produce. He said, "In his very essence the artist is a fiery individualist, a free and spontaneous creator. He will never submit to a discipline that would impose a model or standard upon him".

For Van de Velde, the role of the artist-designer was to independently create functional products which industry would them mass produce. For Muthesius, current industrial techniques would dictate types of product that the artist-designer would design and design education would be geared to this idea. Both however, wished to lay down the foundations of a new style relevant to the age they lived in.

Supported by a group of young architects and designers, Van de Velde won the argument and design education continued along the road he had mapped out for it. He ensured this would continue by appointing Walter Gropius as head of the Weimar School when he retired.

In 1919, the Weimar School of Art changed its name. From then on it was called , the BAUHAUS.

To some extent, history has shown that Van de Velde was correct. The primitive industrial techniques available at the time would have severely limited the range and diversity of products which could have been produced. The consumer or market-led and competitive forces of the late 20th century demand a wide range of different products of the same type.

Modern industry is now geared to this flexible kind of production where the designer generates creative ideas for the market) and design education in this case was that dveloped and taught at the Bauhaus.

15.0     PETER BERHENS: INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER

A founder member of the Werkbund, Berhens (1866-1940) was trained and practiced as an architect and designer. His style along with many other German designers of the time was the German version of Art Nouveau - called 'Jugenstil'. Later Berhen's style developed towards the straight line, geometric look of the early Modern Movement. In 1907 he was asked to go to Berlin to become artistic director for the giant AEG electric company. Apart from designing a significant early Modern building, (the AEG Turbine Hall), his importance for industrial design was this:

He was responsible for the form and appearance of the majority of AEG products. These included, posters, brochures, arc lamps, fans, clocks, electric kettles and teapots. In other words, Berhens designed the company's consumer products and some of them - particularly the kettles and teapots - are "among the most beautiful objects of the 20th century". As far as design was concerned his tasks were as follows: 

1.         Coordinate the aesthetic form of products with the the company's manufacturing process, use of machines and the materials employed.

2.         Ensure the greatest amount of standardization of component parts as possible.

3.         Give AEG products a unique and unrivalled aethetic form consistent with the image of an quality-driven company.

The majority of Berhens' designs conformed in their precise and simple shape to the technique and economy of production. Aesthetic concerns were secondary and derived from the logic of the production process. In 1910 he wrote that his product design forms: "to some extent emerge by themselves from the machine and from mass production and are suited to them".

Berhens is the best example of the WERKBUND artist-designer required by Muthesius. That is, the artist who voluntarily submits his artistic consciousness to the objectivity of the machine and to perfectly rationalized mass production.

His work is no longer that of the solitary artistic imagination, but rather that of the rationalist DESIGNER/ORGANIZER coordinating the functional design of products with the organizational needs of INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION. One must be clear however, that Berhens' aesthetic control was of a very high order. Under his guidance the factory produced beautiful products. Other designers may not have been able to achieve this.

Berhens is the classic industrial designer and represents the first real integration of art and mass production industry in the 20th century.

The simplicity demanded by mass production processes here becomes the basis of an aesthetic - a new style.

 
16.0     THE STRANGE CASE OF CHRISTOPHER DRESSER

There are individuals who seem to produce work which is well in advance of the common style of their time. Christopher Dresser, (1834-1904) the British product designer was one of these. In the midst of the most vulgar and overdecorated period in European design history, Dresser's work shines out with an individual brilliance.

He was influenced by the ideas of his tutor Gottfried Semper - a German designer-educator who held that design should EVOLVE through fitness of purpose. Dresser's product designs for metalware, ceramics, glass and textiles were quite remarkably modern, functional, geometric and undecorated. He was not an artist, nor an Arts and Crafts traditionalist. He was, what he himself called: "a commercial designer".  There were two things that set him apart in his thinking.  

a)         That design was a scientific and objective process and that in design it is necessary to resort to "an analytical method".

b)         His interest and love for Japanese art and products. He visited Japan and found it to be a revelation about purity of design. It fundamentally affected his thinking about design. 

16.0     TOWARDS MODERN DESIGN   

It is possible to view the development of Modern Design at the beginning of the 20th century as a fusion of the different styles and movements described above. Progressive designers had begun to experiment with a simplified functional style which incorporated:

a)         The orthogonal grid and rationalism of Classicism.

b)         The flexibility and simple functionalism of the Arts and Crafts.

c)         A more 'geometric' Art Nouveau (stripped of decoration).

d)         The rationale of industrial process and mass production (simplicity of form).

Now backed by the anti-historical, functionalist and workshop-based teaching in the new design schools a generation of designers began to emerge who saw design as an exercise in rational thought  applied to the making of form.

This new TOTAL DESIGN style became known as  the Modern Movement in Art and Design.

END

The Modern Movement

By Alex Brown

1.0       INTRODUCTION

"First of all we have to analyse carefully the essence of an object, why it functions correctly, and then it has to fit perfectly with its purpose, in other words, fufil its practical function, be easy to handle, economic and beautiful". (Walter Gropius, Director of the Bauhaus, 1927).

Modern Design begins in  real sense after the First World War (1914-1918). The forces of the Industrial Revolution, the theories and practice of the engineers, Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, the Rationalism of the Classical Tradition, the endless mass production of the factories and, unfortunately, the catastrophe of the First World War brought about an emergence of a new, non-historical design approach - Modern design or its essence, Functionalism.

The arguments about design philosophy raged on but it was clear that the Past - in the form of historical styles - could no longer offer a model upon which an industrial society could base its products. 

Modern Design in this sense can be seen as a merger of all these traditions - 

STRIPPED OF THEIR HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS.

2.0       THE EFFECT OF THE WAR

The reason for the massive casualties in the First World War was very clear: TECHNOLOGY in the form of massed artillery, machine guns, planes, gas shells, tanks and submarines. At home whole industries were turned over to war production: guns, shells, tanks, planes, and so on. Women, who used to live a purely domestic life, were now working in large numbers in factories while their men went out to the battlefields. Society changed. It became clear that industrial production (ie. mass production) was the key to winning the war, NOT individual heroism.

This war COORDINATED and rationalized the industrial forces of Western Europe and the United States. Every part of society was organized to contribute to the war effort. When the war ended, that same mighty industrial power would finally change the face of Western societies. There was no going back. Western societies were now thoroughly INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES. Those societies had learned that massive production increases can be achieved by coordinating all the different parts of a society, the material and the cultural. Design, as an aspect of production, was drawn inside this new more-highly organised state.

Design in the broadest sense had become integrated with Industry in the cause of the war. It was a relationship which would deepen and strengthen with time. In a way, design lost its original ideal of the application of art and beauty to functional products. Design became part of production.

3.0       MODERN DESIGN EMERGES

After the War, the various pieces of the Modern Design model were already in place waiting to be brought together. Three things should be remembered: 

a)         The link between Industry and 'art' & design had already been established by the formation of the German Werkbund in 1907 (an association of designers and industrialists).

b)         In Western Europe and the United States, the war had forcefully brought together all parts of production - design and industry  - in a coordinated effort to win the war.

c)         Technology and industrial production had developed rapidly in order to cope with war production needs. The war forced Western society to move more quickly towards becoming fully industrial states. 

Although Germany had lost the war (unable to break the combined military forces of Britain, France and the United States), it had established a lead in the development of Modern design concepts (Weimar School of Art & Werkbund), while Britain remained trapped in the Arts and Crafts myth. Although suffering considerable economic and social hardships after the war, it was in Germany that the new style finally emerged in the 1920s in the form of the BAUHAUS. It was there and in the other defeated country - the new Soviet Union - that the most recognizably Modern design was produced.

4.0       REMEMBER...........(1)

Remember that the ideas and theories of Modern Design already existed before the war began in 1914. While the war certainly disrupted the steady development of the Modern Movement for four years or so, it also 'forced' its various elements together afterwards. The essential Modern concepts were: 

1.         Truth to materials and to the idea of Functionalism (`form follows function`).

2.         Rejection of historical styles and decoration ( ie. `truth' to the 20th century)

3.         The idea of a DYNAMIC new and `modern' age: The Machine Age

4.         The search for a unified style for all designed items (Total design)

5.         Design driven by rational analysis of problems and by mass production techniques. The link with industry. In an industrial society the artist becomes designer.

The war forced the development of technology and central planning in Western societies. Industry became the key sector to which other areas such as social life, art and design had to adjust. The design ideas which had developed in pre-war and essentially craft-based societies were now integrated into the  new mass production world after the war. We can say that their time had come.

5.0       THE BAUHAUS  ( Germany 1919 -1932 )

Henry Van de Velde had founded the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany in 1907. On his retirement he passed the Directorship of the School to Walter Gropius. In 1919, Gropius arranged for the School of Arts and Crafts to be combined with the Academy of Art. This new institution was called the BAUHAUS and it was destined to become the most influential design school of the time (or since).

In other words, design, arts and crafts techniques (handicraft) and Fine Art were to be integrated within one institution. Pure Art education would be combined with Craft education to produce a TOTAL design approach to the environment. Thus, Applied art -DESIGN - would bridge the gap between the Technological and the Artistic.

The painters, architects and designers who taught at the Bauhaus were amongst the most adventurous and progressive. Klee, Feininger, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Mart Stam, Hannes Meyer. Guest lecturers from the DE STYL group  - van Doesberg, Oud and Rietveldt. The Bauhaus brought together the best Modern Cubist-Expressionist-De Styl designers of their time.

6.0       THE BAUHAUS PHILOSOPHY

The basic philosophy of the Bauhaus as defined by the architect Gropius and the artists Itten and Kandinsky can be outlined as follows:

1.         An integration of all the arts (to produce a totally designed and unified environment). 

2.         Design for mass production methods/standardization.

3.         The teaching of  'creativity', basic design principles and rational analysis.

4.         The integration of art/craft and industrial methods.

The integration of all the arts within one institution was a radical step. The idea was that there was to be no 'superior' art - that all were equal and dedicated to the creation of the total environment - like the anonymous humble stonemasons, carpenters and others who formed the Craft Guilds of the Middle Ages and built the great cathedrals.

A new design culture was to be formed by combining all the professions around a single idea.

"Let us create a new guild of craftsmen without class distinctions that raise a barrier between craftsmen and artist. Together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith" (Gropius. Bauhaus Director. 1919) 

7.0       THE BAUHAUS PROGRAMME               

The teaching programme was to take place in a WORKSHOP-BASED environment.

The key idea was: LEARNING THROUGH DOING. Even the painters who came to the Bauhaus, taught art skills in this situation: NOT 'high art' theory, but theories and practice of colour and geometry and analysis of form. The School was divided up into workshops dealing with different materials: wood, metal, fabrics, glass etc. and a 'workshop master' was put in charge of each. An 'elementary course' (foundation course) ran parallel to these workshop classes. It dealt with analysis of FORM, color contrasts, composition with textures. Students were trained in Craft, Drawing and painting and science and theory.

Craft training included: 

a)         Sculptors, stonemasons, ceramics, woodcarvers, etc.

b)         Blacksmiths, locksmiths, founders metal turners.

c)         Cabinetmakers, Painters and decorators, glass painters, mosaic workers.

e)         Etchers, wood engravers, lithographers, art printers

f)          Weavers

Drawing and Painting: 

a)         Freehand drawing, live models, landscapes, still lives & Composition studies.

d)         Ornamental design  and Lettering.

f)          Construction and technical drawing.

g)         Interior and exterior design, Furniture and Product design.

Science and Theory: 

a)         Art History (not as a history of styles) as a study of methods and techniques.

b)         Science of materials.

c)         Anatomy - from living models

d)         Physical theory of colour and Rational painting methods.

f)          Bookkeeping, contract negotiation & personnel.

g)         Individual lectures on subjects of general interest in all areas of art and science.

In line with the workshop/craft philosophy, students were called apprentices, journeymen, and junior masters and the general programme was based on: 'manual skills, avoidence of rigidity, creativity, & individual freedom of expression'.

The workshops were used to produce and sell products. This, to some extent allowed the School to be financially independent of the Weimar City Council which was generally hostile to the whole idea of the school. It also reinforced the craft/work ethic - the practical approach - of the Bauhaus and the moral approach of anonymous, rational and humble design workers.

 
8.0       FROM CRAFT (IN 1919) TO TECHNOLOGY (IN 1923)

Right from the start the Bauhaus was in a constant state of change and evolution. The first phase up till 1922, was a mixture of social commitment, expressionism, and craft -  based mystical romanticism. During this period the workshop was seen as a 'sacred place' equivalent to a monastery in the Middle Ages with all craft workers (masters and apprentices) dedicated to a great creative harmony. The connection back through Van de Velde and the Arts and Crafts was still there in the Bauhaus in its early stages.

However, certain influences began to affect the thinking of the Bauhaus and these were:  

a)         The Dutch  DeStijl movement (Theo van Doesberg).

b)         Russian Constructivism (Moholy-Nagy)

Neither of these radical movements took a Crafts approach to design. Both were committed to PURE GEOMETRY as a way of generating the form of objects. Rather than the manual skills of the craftsman, De Stijl and Constructivism saw the process of design as one of FORM-MAKING derived from an analysis of function, AND that functions could in all cases be resolved into pure geometric shapes.

From 1922 onwards, the workshops were no longer seen as craft training places where design arose out of craft techniques. Under De Stijl and Constructivist influence, design and craft (the making of things) were split into two different processes. - The workshops now became  simply centres for the production of design prototypes - which were firstly designed in the studios.

The design studio became the  most important part of the Bauhaus teaching environment where FORM then PRODUCTION became the key sequence..

In place of the old 'unity' of craft design, the Bauhaus after 1922 split production of objects into DESIGN and PRODUCTION. In a real sense INDUSTRIAL DESIGN HAD BEGUN. Whereas before, the workshop had been the centre of the Bauhaus, NOW it was the design studio.

By 1924 we see the emergence of the 'functional aesthetics' that became the real trademark of the Bauhaus and the final image of Modern Design.

 
9.0       THE BAUHAUS MOVES FROM WEIMAR TO DESSAU

In 1925 as  a result of hostility from the citizens of the town of Weimar, the Bauhaus moved its premises to the other German city of Dessau. It was here in Modern buildings designed by its Director, Gropius, that the School achieved international recognition  as  centre for Modern Design in all areas: Marcel Bruer and Mart Stam's tubular furniture; Marianne Brandt's lamps and teapots; Annie Albers and Gustave Stolz's fabric designs. Graphics and typography and modern architectural ideas were also generated by Bauhaus teachers which made the clearest statement so far of how Modern design would evolve.

10.0     THE END OF THE BAUHAUS

The political situation in German during the 1920s was becoming unstable. The Bauhaus, its teaching staff, students came under increasing attack from right-wing or Nazi political parties, traditionalists, conservative artistic and academic groups who suspected the Bauhaus of having communist ideas. Bauhaus students were seen as dangerous, foreign-influenced radicals. Conservative politicians and academics also rejected Bauhaus (ie. Modern) design as 'un-German'.

These increasing attacks led in 1928 to the resignation of its founder - Gropius. His place was taken by Hannes Meyer, but for the same reasons, in 1930 he was also forced to resign and Mies Van Der Rohe, the architect took over as Director. The city of Dessau, now under the control of the Nazis, finally closed the School down in 1932.

The great experiment was over. Many of the Bauhaus academics left Germany altogether and emigrated to the United States were their influence was considerable. Both Gropius and Mies van Der Rohe took over as head of schools of architecture. Marcel Breuer set up in practice as an architect in the States and so on. Germany had to wait until the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 to recover Modern Design and recognize the contribution of the Bauhaus.

11.0     THE INFLUENCE OF THE BAUHAUS

Neither before nor since has any one institution had so much influence on design thinking as that of the Bauhaus. It was not just a matter of the STYLE of its products, but just as much, its teaching methods and programmes. Unlike traditional academies (which depended on copying and understanding historical styles and methods) teaching in the Bauhaus centred on:

Teaching individual CREATIVITY as a means of PROBLEM SOLVING. Another key difference from the past was the idea of the NEW. That is, that new forms, shapes and solutions could be created to suit new problems.

In this Bauhaus philosophy, the Form of objects is a result of a detailed functional analysis of the 'problem'. Theoretically, the form simply EMERGED from this functional analysis of purpose and materials. The designer simply brought all these factors together in a coherent way. Unlike the artist, the designer did not IMPOSE his/her personality on the problem, but rather acted as 'midwife' to the potential solution. This was the theory of FUNCTIONALISM - the Bauhaus legacy.

In fact this extreme functional position was seldom actually practiced at the Bauhaus because due to the influence of DeStijl and Constructivism, there was always a ready-made geometric form which could be made to suit the purpose and the form. In this approach - Form came first and shaped the functional end product. Function, in this case, followed Form. What today many people think of as the ‘functionalist’ sty;le of the period was really the geometric/formalist style of the  De Stijl influence. Is it surprising that so many different products ended up looking so similar? Yet even here there was a practical point: simple geometric shapes allowed for easier industrial production and standardization.

 
12.0  DE STIJL (the `Style' ): 1917-1931

The Dutch Modern Movement was centred around a magazine called ‘De Stijl’ (the Style), which first appeared in 1917. Later the name was used to describe the work of the whole of the Dutch Modern group.

De Stijl art and design was more radical in form than Bauhaus-inspired work. Its designs were very uncoventional and abstract. However its unique ideas eventually were merged and became influential within the Bauhaus and eventually within the mainstream Modern movement.

De Stijl was founded in Holland and was based essentially on the ideas of four men: The painters, Piet Mondrian; Theo van Doesberg; furniture designer: Gerrit Rietvelt and the architect: J.P. Oud. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright had an indirect influence on the geometric design style of this group. However, particularly under the direction of Piet Mondrian the group’s became  more abstract and radical. The ideas of this group centred on the search for and recombination of the most fundamental elements of design, namely the basic planes and cubic forms. Indeed, Mondrian’s painting style was sometimes called: ‘Elementarist’. The theories and aims of the group can be stated as: 

1.         The search for a universal language of art which could unite all designed objects.

2.         Essentially artistic in character and concerned with pure colours and forms in painting architecture and furniture design with right-angle geometry as the basis for all designs and in particular the right-angled grid as a unifying field.

3.         Limits the forms it used to separated surfaces and planes which define 3-dimensional space. Yellow blue and red colours (black was used to act as a 'frame' for coloured objects or planes).

4.         The key concept is one of ELEMENTARY, economic, functional and un-monumental forms placed in a dynamic and asymmetrical relationship to one  another.

De Stijl proposed a 'grammar of shape AND of colour' which would apply to all forms: painting, sculpture, architecture, furniture and interiors. The similarity of colour and shape between Piet Mondrian's paintings and Reitveldt's 'red and Blue chair' is not a coincidence. According to the group's philosophy, the world was at the beginning of a new age - a new world order - and therefore required a new and very abstract visual language.

Reitveldt's 'red and blue chair' is an excellent example of De Stijl design processes:

The basic chair forms: backrest, seat, arms and supporting frame are reduced to their most basic geometric cubic forms and 'colour-coded'. The other aspect is that the parts are clearly separated - articulated - from one another. Space is allowed to flow through and between the elements which float in space in a definite relationship with one another. The function or comfort of the chair is simply a starting point for an act of geometric abstraction.

13.0     CONSTRUCTIVISM  (1918 - 1932)

Very similar in its way to De Stijl, Constructivism (see lecture no.4) in design terms expressed the same very abstract concerns in a more radical way, perhaps than De Stijl and certainly more so than the Bauhaus. Both movements saw the way forward towards the Modern as a matter of FORM, GEOMETRY and ABTRACTION. This was equally true for their product and architectural design work as it was for their art.

After the Russian Revolution the new Soviet state established an institute for design: the VCHUTEMAS in Moscow in 1920, like the Bauhaus a merger between craft and art institutes. Right from the start, copying of historical models was excluded and was replaced by systematic teaching of spatial composition, colour theory, surface, space and volume. Applied to industrial design, the goal of the teaching staff was the production of ARTIST-ENGINEERS. The characteristics of Constructivism can be summarized as follows:

           

1.         Totally anti-historical, anti-art, and functionalist in character. 

2.         Dynamic expression of individual volumes, spaces, structure & transparency.

3.         Red and black colours predominate and diagonal elements are used to express dynamism.

4.         Large scale engineering  and construction emphasis in design. Supporting structures are emphasized around the volumes which they support.

Like the Nazis in Germany who closed the Bauhaus, In 1932 the Soviet government closed the Vchutemas and repressed any experimentation in art and design. A simplified Classicism was re-established (again like Nazi Germany) as the official state design style and re-named 'Social Realism'.

14.0     CONCLUSION

The 1920s were the beginnings of the Modern Movement in design.

The economic depression of the late 20s, the anti-Modern policies of German and Soviet dictatorships and finally in 1939 the start of the Second World War, prevented the mass application of Modern Design principles. They were available and after the War they would be applied on a global scale - as the only design approach and philosophy that suited the Modern Age.

End