Modernism in Industrial Design
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Tijmen van Gurp
Contents Motivation ............................................................................................................................................... 3 Impact of modernism .............................................................................................................................. 6 Pictures of modernistic structures and objects....................................................................................... 8 Reflection: ........................................................................................................................................... 9 Henry Ford ............................................................................................................................................. 10 Ideology ......................................................................................................................................... 12 Taylorism ............................................................................................................................................... 13 Fordism .............................................................................................................................................. 14 The Industrial Revolution ...................................................................................................................... 15 Bauhaus ................................................................................................................................................. 16 Oskar Schlemmer .............................................................................................................................. 19 Wassily Kandinsky: ................................................................................................................................ 23 Dieter Rams ........................................................................................................................................... 27 Streamline ............................................................................................................................................. 30 Raymond Loewy .................................................................................................................................... 32 Norman Bel Geddes............................................................................................................................... 35 Van Abben museum .............................................................................................................................. 47 Light space modulator ....................................................................................................................... 48 El Lissitzky .............................................................................................................................................. 49 Rietveld Schrรถder House ...................................................................................................................... 53
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Motivation
I choose this assignment because several people said that it would be a good choice. They told me what I would learn more about the history of industrial Design. I learned already a bit about the Industrial Revolution and several art streams on high school but never before in context of Industrial Design. Learning about earlier designers would be good because understanding their vision and work can improve my work.
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Introduction The first day of this assignment we saw a lot of pictures related to modernism and we were asked to give our opinion why something is modernistic. This was more difficult than I first expected because I didn’t knew what is key for something modernistic. My feeling told me that something could be modernistic but I wasn’t sure all the time. In our discussions we said modernism is something time related because it has its origin a specific time span.
One product that we discussed was this chair, it is called chair nr8 and is designed by Michael Thonet ((2 July 1796 — 3 March 1871). It was the most produced chair ever. This chair is very timeless and simplistic. It could easily be assembled, and is very low in costs. The next pictures are examples of products shown in the first presentation, we had a discussion about whether they are modernistic or not.
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Marianne Brandt This product is Modernistic because of its geometrical shapes and choice of material.
Peter Behrends This product is also modernistic, but you can still see the influence of the First World War in this product.
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Marcel wanders This product is Modern because the form and how it is made is more important than its function.
After discussing several modernistic and modern objects such as these pictures above I can make a list that can define modernism.
Timeless Simplistic Easy to assemble geometrical shapes Rhythmical patterns Uniform look Form and function go hand in hand Concrete and glass Bricks with layer of cement (so it looks like it hasn’t got bricks) Durable
After the fifties modernism became very different and more focused on technology.
Impact of modernism I think that the most products created in the modernistic period have had an influence on the products nowadays. The roots of industrialization began with the production line of the T-Ford. The mass production caused that people began to think about the combination of arts and crafts within the industrialization. Products had to be more than just functional. Form and function had to go hand in hand. Between the two world wars people wanted to express themselves and they all thought of a better future which brought a lot of visionaries and product developers. I think the examples I give in the rest of the rapport which compare the past products with the products of today are just a few of a lot of other examples which you can see while looking around.
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Modernism made certainly impact on me but I still think it is impossible to describe the qualities of modernism without having made things in the style. This assignment certainly helped to get a better feeling of the esthetics of products, and the motivations and thoughts about products. In the study Industrial Design we always have to write our own vision about design, reading about other designers visions helped me to better understand what I want myself in this design world. Seeing a lot of potential designs like the drawings of Norman Bel Geddes which where impossible for that time was very valuable to see. I think you can see the impact very well when you see this picture her. The first picture is the Model T Ford and then you can see the change from the streamline periode.
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Pictures of modernistic structures and objects To validate if we all understood what is modernistic we had to make pictures of what we thought is modernistic. While reviewing the pictures we saw the difference between modern and modernistic.
These objects or buildings can be called modernistic. The most important factor by the designs I choose is that they are timeless in a certain way. They fit in society and will fit in for long time.
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These buildings are more modern than modernistic.The buildings don’t use the space they take in effectivly, the form is above the function. They are not simplistic or minimalistic, therefor they are modern and not modernistic.
Reflection: I think that this was a very good practise to make pictures of what I thought was modernistic. It became clear for me what the differnce is between modern and modernistic, and by discussing these pictures more discriptions which are key for modernism became clear for me.
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HENRY FORD
Henry Ford Henry ford was born on the 30 July of 1863 in Michigan. He was the first of six children and on an early age he already showed interest in mechanical things. He followed his interests and went to Detroit when he was 16 years old to work as an apprentice machinist. His job was to operate and repair steam engines.
In 1896 he build his Quadricycle, a self-propelled vehicle with an gasoline engine. This vehicle existed from 4 bicycle wheels and even the steering was from a bicycle as you can see on this picture.
From this starting point he started his Ford motor Company in 1903. He was already been involved with Motor Company’s but these companies’ went bankrupt. In his new company he introduced a manufactory system where his cares could be produced fast and cheap. From the start of the model T-ford the production grew to a large scale. In 1927 all the materials and components where produced in one and the same plant. 11 | P a g e
In 1929 Ford was producing more than one care per minute, this mass production had a great impact on society. Because of the large number of cars that were manufactured they could hire more people and they needed fewer skilled people because the assembly job was divided into small simple tasks. Ford said about this:�‌ each man an each machine do only one thing the thing is to keep everything in motion and take the work to the man and not the man to the work�.
Ideology
Ford wanted to make the car more affordable for everyone. He succeeded in this by introducing the assembly line (read more in Fordism. That was not the only thing that he did, he paid his workers more than average. He believed in wealth and in sharing.
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Frederick Taylor
Taylorism Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 and was an American mechanical engineer. In 1890 until 1893 Taylor worked as general manager in a plant. It was in this period that he did his research to the working process. He evaluated his workers on rationalism, time and efficiency. He intruded work with standardization of process steps. He also noticed that workers who perform the same repetitive tasks tend to work on the slowest rate that is unpunished by their supervisor. When he observed this he wanted to do something about it. He compensated the workers linked to their output, if you would produce more you would earn more. He also introduced planned- in rest brakes so that the workers could recover from the working stress and would work more effective during the day. To select the right people for the job he assigned managers. Everything together he laid the basis structure for companies of today. He called his theory’s scientific management but later on it was also referred to as Taylorism.
Fordism Taylorism is sometimes also referred to as Fordism. This is not correct, it are 2 separate things that have a lot in common. Taylor had his ideas earlier than Ford but Ford didn’t know about the theories from Taylor. Ford introduced a new way of working as well, his workers stood on one place, and the components came to them, and not the other way around. In this way a lot of people could work together in an assembly-line and assemble each a different component to the total of the product. Next to this Ford also introduced a clock where you had to check in and out so that the managers could see how long you had worked. You would earn more of you would work longer. With the invention of the assembly line the time to produce decreased enormously, and less people could produce more. Ford was not the first to introduce mass production aspects, but he was the first who used it to the extent that was founded at the Ford Motor Company. Working on an assembly line and doing the same monotonous work over and over again was not a very pleasing work to do but Ford worked with bonuses to motivate his workers. If someone didn’t do his work properly there was always someone to replace the job because the jobs where never difficult.
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The Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the start of a new period. The most important aspect I think for this assignment to understand from this period is that there was a shift in how people created products. From arts and crafts it moved to mass production. This had as reaction that some people saw the opportunity to not only make a product could be mass produced but also would be estheticly pleasing. For example the first car had more function than form, there were some people who thought this was a pity and they made it better.
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Bauhaus Bauhaus was a school in Germany founded by Walter Gropius. This school gave lessons in crafts and fine arts. The idea behind the school was that in the end all the arts could be brought together. The school existed from 1919 until 1933 when it was forbidden by the national socialism. This stream is typical because of its time span between World War 1 and World War 2. People where finely free to express themselves and there was time and a need for creating new things. The biggest influence to the Bauhaus style was Modernism, ideas behind simplified forms, rationality and functionality where already form. In the beginning this was only in art graphic design industrial design and typography later on also in architecture. The Bauhaus style had a big influence on the modernist architecture and design. The early intention for the school as to be a combination between architecture and a crafts school and an academy of arts. In the beginning the school was started by Gropius along with a painter Lyonel Feininger and a sculptor Gerhard Marcks. The years afterwards the staff of the school grew and sculptor and designer Oskar Schlemmer and Russion painter Wassily Kandinsky joined the school.
Triangle Square Circle
In 1923 Wassily Kandinsky made a questionnaire at the Bauhaus asking respondents to fill in a triangle square and a circle with the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. He hoped to find a correspondence between form and color. With this questionnaire he found consensus and it inspired many 16 | P a g e
projects within the Bauhaus for example a baby cradle from Peter Keler.
I don’t know if this is just coincidence but I think this Bauhaus theory about color had a lot of influence on society.
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Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer Oskar was born in Stuttgart in 1888. During his live he was a Painter, Sculptor, Designer, and a Choreographer. I think his multidisciplinary attitude made that he fitted good in the Bauhaus school as a teacher. His parents died on an early age when he was 12 which made him independent when he was 15 years old. From these years on he worked at several places where he mastered his arts and crafts. This example of four figures and cube shows the Bauhaus stile very good I think. He uses 3 dimensions and open and closed spaces which is very typical for Bauhaus.
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The most famous work was his Triadisch ballet from 1923. Oskar Schlemmer became the head of the theater workshop and he worked together with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. His Ballet was a summary of what the capability’s where of this school, every workshop worked with him to create this piece of art. Different aspects as form and color where very important in his work. One typical assignment from the Bauhaus was to connect a point or a dot with a plane and a line. This dimensional aspect can also be found in the work of his triadisch ballet. His ballet had 3 different sets of costumes and 3 different colors. These colors are Yellow, Pink and Black. The ballet it begins happy and it ends serious. The first scene is cheerful, the second one is also cheerful but more formal, and the last one is more mystical. In this ballet you can see the dialog between the organic movements of a human towards the mechanical surroundings and the dancers feeling about that. By showing the alienation of the dancers, because they change more and more into mechanical objects he wanted to show the important aspects of space and movement.
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Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky:
Wassily Kandinsky was also a teacher at the Bauhaus school. In 1893 he followed a study economy law at the University of Moscow and became a teacher there in 1893. In 1901 Kandinsky started with a few other artist in M端nchen the art group Phalanx. Kandinsky traveled a lot between 1903 and 1908. In 1909 he became chairman of the Neue K端nstlervereinigung in M端nchen. Until 1909 he painted most of the time Russian scenes, portraits and landscapes in oil paint. In 1914 Kandinsky traveled back from M端nchen to Russian because of the first World war. In this time his work made a huge change, from landscapes he made a shift towards abstract paintings.
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In 1922 after the first World war he became professor at the Bauhaus School. This was the most productive period in the life of Wassily Kandinsky. In his paintings the search for connection between point line and plane stood central.
I noticed that his paintings are very rich in color and in especially his abstract works there is a lot of action in his paintings. He played with shapes and colors in various ways which made his works very different.
I think that the war had a lot of influence on his paintings. What he expressed in his paintings is almost an explosion of things that happened. Some paintings describe battles, or fights.
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Dieter Rams
Dieter Rams Dieter Rams was a German Industrial Designer who designed a lot for the company Braun. He studied Architecture and after his study he worked as an architect for two years before he started developing electronic devices for the manufacturer Braun. He wanted that his products where simple, and easy to use. And the products had to be in line with the environment with not too much color. The use of color was only to make the product more simple to use as you can see in this calculator where the most important button is made orange.
In his years as designer Dieter Rams developed ten principles for “good design”
is innovative
makes a product useful
is aesthetic
makes a product understandable
is unobtrusive
is honest
is long-lasting
is thorough down to the last detail
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is environmentally friendly
is as little design as possible
I think the last statement that he makes is the most powerful: “good design is as little design as possible.” I think that means that products must not be overdesigned with too many functions. A product must stand for his most important function and leave it to that.
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Streamline The streamline style was a late branch of the art deco style. The style has flowing forms and long horizontal lines as key aspects. Streamline was symbol of the American dream because it showed the utopian future. Streamline stood for mobility, speed, and efficiency. Important persons for this style which I will show you are Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.
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Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy Raymond Loewy was a designer whose vision about streamline had a great impact on society. A lot of designs are still visible in the world of today. He was born in 1893 and he immigrated from France to the United States in 1919. In his design career he made for almost every company something. An important work for streamline was the train he designed. He changed the look of trains to a look where you could not see the moving parts. Aspects where of course the streamline forms and the long horizontal lines.
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Other important works which he designed:
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Norman Bel Geddes
Norman Bel Geddes To study who Norman Bel Geddes was I have read parts of his book Horizons. He writes about his works and society in that time and what he wanted to achieve. He worked in 1913 as a draftsman in advertising industry in Detroit. There he designed posters for Packard and General Motors. Although his work as Industrial Design consultant was successful we remember him for his Design Propaganda. In 1932 he Published his book Horizon, in which he outlined the approach on industrial design and his belief in the supremacy of the teardrop. The following products are out of this book or closely related to his work in the streamline style.
His biggest work was the Futurama, a display where people could sit and be driven around to see how the world would be in 30 years in the year 1963. It was a speculative object wherein he showed an accurate prediction of how the future freeway system would be.
Nearly 45 million people attended this Futurama. 36 | P a g e
As well as Raymond Loewy he also designed trains. One was called the Geddes express, he said about it: “Speed will increase as weight and wind resistance are reduced. (…)” and : “In designing a train, I have utilized aluminum for the body of the cars, have lowered the height of the cars a foot and a half. This combination lowers the center of gravity, which lessens the possibility of tipping at high speeds. (…)” His Ideas about products stayed by ideas but with his vision he was far in the future of technology. He thought of streamline as more efficient but also more comfortable, more speed and luxury.
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Another design form Geddes was the design for an Air terminal. Her by he thought of, multiple airplanes landing efficiently in an organized setup. He thought of how people could walk in and out the terminal efficiently and this concept lies closely to how an airfield nowadays looks like. He even talked about takeoff and landings lanes.
This is what he himself said about it: “It consists of a landing field thirty-six hundred feet square, with a hard, smooth, dustless surface, which does not become soggy or slippery when wet, and can be readily cleared of snow. On four sides it is surrounded by repair and storage hangars, mail, express, and passenger slips.�
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One of Geddes most famous designs is his Air liner number four. This was an gigantic plane even for that time. This picture underneath was the largest plane at that moment it could fly a 150 persons.
The next picture which you can see was the design from Geddes. Geddes plain could fly a total of 606 persons, which is a number of people what we see today only in the largest Plaines.
In his airplane was from the inside more a luxurious cruse which we see nowadays. It had a bar cafĂŠ, solarium, game desk, dining rooms, foyers, and even baths. 39 | P a g e
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Besides to planes he also design a radio during the World War II with the colors of the American flag and called the Patriot.
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In his book he talks also about de development of streamlined cars. He says that an artist or designer should have the complete freedom taking into account that he doesn’t violates engineering requirements. The first cars were not especially esthetically pleasing, and that was something he noticed.
He came in contact whit Glenn Curtis who knew a lot about aerodynamics because he was a pilot. Curtis proved that the speed of the average automobile could be increased twenty per cent only by streamlining. Geddes worked with this concept and made a line of Cars which all looked more or less the same.
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He thought of other things than only the streamline, his cars also had to be comfortable. A lot of things he thought of are later in the future established so he was far ahead in his time. One thing for example which he says in his book is: “The two lamps are operated as a single unit. They are
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connected with the steering gear and turn as the car turns, so that in rounding a curve or corner at night the light is not off to one side� This is established +- 60 years later by BMW who promotes it in their cars.
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I think that the influences of Norman Bel Geddes really good to see if you compare these pictures with the design of Geddes.
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L谩szl贸 Moholy-Nagy
Van Abben museum Light space modulator László Moholy-Nagy was a Jewish Hungarian painter, photographer and professor in the Bauhaus school. He had a strong avocation for integrating technology and industry into the arts. This you can see in his Light Space Modulator which can be seen in the van Abben Museum in Eindhoven.
Because it is a moving object it doesn’t look as nice in a picture which can see here, as when you see it moving. I think MoholyNagy was again searching for open and closed spaces aspect of Bauhaus. What I learned about it is that it was created with the intention to create light displays for theater, dance or other performance spaces. Which makes sense to me because the reflection and the shadows where as nice as the object itself.
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El Lissitzky 49 | P a g e
El Lissitzky El Lissitzky was an Bauhaus teacher and artist who lived from 1890 until 1941. Lissitzky was as well painter as photographer and architect. He was rejected at the art academy in Petersburg (now Leningrad) and went to Darmstad to study at the Polytechnical academy the study architecture. Later during World war I he went to Moscow. In 1919 Marc Chagall was a teacher of him who had a great influence on his later works. In 1919 Lissitzky began to work abstract geometric paintings that he named “Proun”, translated this means “project for the Affirmation of the New”. These works where very important for the constructivists art movement. Constructivism was an movement which rejected the idea of art for art’s sake. To make it a little clearer what constructivism it is good to read Jonassen 8 characteristics that differentiate constructivists learning environments. 1. Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality. 2. Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world. 3. Constructivist learning environments emphasize knowledge construction inserted of knowledge reproduction. 4. Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context. 5. Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learning instead of predetermined sequences of instruction. 6. Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience. 7. Constructivist learning environments "enable context- and content- dependent knowledge construction." 8. Constructivist learning environments support "collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition." Lissitzky became a professor at the state art school in Moscow in 1921, but that was not for long because he then moved to Germany because the Russian government was then against modern art. There he met László Moholy-Nagy who spread the ideas from Lissitzky further into the world through the Bauhaus School. 50 | P a g e
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Gerrit Rietveld
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Rietveld Schröder House For this assignment we had to go to the Rietveld Schröder house in Utrecht. This house is now nearly 60 years old and in my opinion it is an Icon for what Dutch modernistic architecture and design is. We had to look closely to the house and the products inside and make a product that could fit in this house as if Rietveld himself would have designed it. Gerrit Rietveld build the house for Truus Schröder. It is built in the principles of the “De Stijl”. Typical about this house is the use of space and the primary colors. Also black and white were used. In the house I followed an audio tour and there are some interesting things that I noticed. The house itself was a product for living, everything had multiple functions and of everything was thought to make living more easy and flexible.
An good example is this chair which has become an Icon for Gerrit Rietveld and “De Stijl”. When you see this chair you can see clearly the simplicity in form and function. He wanted to make a chair that could fit in the surrounding without closing anything in the background. The use of open en closed space in this chair is very good to see.
Bauhaus Chair Breuer I think this simplicity had a great impact on how we see things these day’s it is not more than normal to see such a
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chair.
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Rietveld had all kinds of new things in his house, a peg for the parents and the children. The room upstairs had a lot of light and could be separated with wooden walls to make there 3 separated 56 | P a g e
rooms. Above the stairs there was an window so that you could see where to walk. And everything could be closed at night, the house had 2 different states. The house stood for freedom and independency.
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I choose to make a bookshelf for in the Rietveld house because I noticed there was not so much storage room near the beds. There was a shelf especially for the watch of Miss Schrรถder and they had books but not near the bed. I noticed that in the house a lot of products where multifunctional so I decided to put a lamp in the shelve which is not visible on this picture above. The shelve can function for books and for reading light in this way. I tried to implement the open en closed aspects as Rietveld did but in the future I would make thinner and even more subtle.
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