Germany became the meeting place for experimental attempts to unite Art and Technology.  Walter Gropius explained that Modernism was an idea not a style. It was based on the notion that quality could be separated from preciousness:

‘Quality is potentially available to everyone and does not need to be expensive . . . No longer must the isolated individual work continue to occupy pride of place but rather the creation of the generally valid Type.’

This idea is the exact opposite of the Art Deco designer Ruhlmann’s call for design for the elite.  Modernism and Modernists were for Progress. Modernists aimed to be popular, communal and egalitarian.  But Modernism can also be seen as a threat to local identity as seen in Le Corbusier’s development at Chandigarh in India, and in general it had no place for nature. Modernists had a linear scientific approach to design. Modernist design can be generally characterised by:

1. Uncompromisingly ‘modern’ forms, unlike anything that had been seen before.
2. Use of new materials.
3. New ways of thinking about structure, construction and production.

Books on Modernism spread the ‘Designer as Hero’ myth.  Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936) started this gospel of Modernism by trying to prove that it was the only legitimate style of the 20th century. Modernist texts can be seen as propaganda for Fordist standardisation. Le Corbusier said ‘A great epoch has begun . . . There exists a new spirit.’  Engineers were the heroes of the Modernists and the Modernist vocabulary resounds with echoes from ship and car design.

Separation

One conceptual model in Modernist architecture and design is connected to separation.  Elements were separated out according to function. Modernist architecture separates support from enclosure; roof from wall e.g. Reitveldt’s Schröeder House.  Such sorting out (particularly in town planning schemes) sacrificed the ambiguity, multiplicity and richness of natural development. Modernist architecture encouraged separation and specialisation of elements for efficiency, but a thing made for only one purpose can suppress individuality e.g. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. Standardisation, anonymity and repetition can be seen in the great American skyscrapers – temples of corporate America – by Mies van der Rohe. 

Furniture

Early experiments in furniture design were in wood but when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 the ‘Carpentry’ Department became ‘Furniture,’ with a wider range of materials and techniques and with an engineering aesthetic.  Key figures were Breuer and Mies van der Rohe. The machine aesthetic was used, with an emphasis on line, plane and transparent structure rather than mass. But if we compare two icons of Modernism, Breuer’s Wassily Chair (1925) was a real point of departure, using machine folded tubular steel and suitable for limited mass production. 

In comparison, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair is a one-off – not suitable for mass production because he had not solved the problem of joining two plates of metal. It may look boldly ‘modern’ with its metal and leather, but it involves many different construction processes and in particular a notoriously difficult joint at the cross of the leg sections, making it impossible to mass produce in its original state. Moreover it was made for a one-off occasion, the visit of the King and Queen of Spain to Mies van der Rohe’s Spanish Pavilion.  It was not intended for the masses.  The ’standardised’ catches Le Corbusier used on his pavilion L’Esprit Nouveau at the 1925 Paris Exhibition look like car or aeroplane handles, but were individually made.  The chairs by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand were also on-offs to broadcast a design message e.g. Le Grand Comfort Cube has 18 welds and three different materials. Like Haute Couture dresses these designs were not mass produced, cheap or functional.  They embody a machine aesthetic but involved craftsmanship and expensive materials.  They are Modernist myths.

The imagery of Modernist furniture and product design is the imagery of technology, from car styling and ships. The USA entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of Modernism. The commercial value of this modern machine imagery was enormous. Electrical products adopted the same progressive imagery found in aeroplanes and cars. Chrome trims and other details produced images of cleanliness, hygiene, health and progress.  In the USA Streamlining and related motifs were seen as modern and healthy by the public, and were relatively easy for designers to imitate. Streamlining added style i.e. added value to form.  It disguised the complexity of technology and distinguished the product in market place.  Raymond Loewy was one of the first true industrial designers.  He designed cars, trains and electrical goods e.g. the Coldspot refrigerator for Sears.  Consumerism and capitalism consumed Modernism and its Utopian populist vision seemed lost; and yet mass production has improved the standard of living in the west, so perhaps we can argue that the early utopianism of the Modernist designers is not entirely dissipated today. 

In general Britain ignored Modernism, but Frank Pick’s scheme for London Underground is the work of a Modernist who believed that design could change life and bring it to a higher spiritual plane. It represents Modernist design at its best and shows that the Modernist notion of universal, even eternal solutions to design problems is not entirely mistaken. Where Modernism failed was at the point where such solutions became canonical rules never to be broken.  Modernist design denied our need for variety and individuality.