Week 6: Birth of Modernism
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and his wife Margaret MacDonald were influential designers from Glasgow, Scotland, known for their unique style which blended organic elements of Art Nouveau, romantic notions of the Arts and Crafts movement, and geometric horizontal and vertical lines.
Mackintosh reacted against the standardized production prevalent in Glasgow, aiming to reconcile individualized modern design with industrial production to improve the quality of life through beautiful, harmonious design.
Mackintosh was an architect and interior designer, while MacDonald was a painter who created panels for his designs, forming an equal partnership.
Macintosh House
The Macintosh house (1900) demonstrates the gendering of spaces, with the living room designed as a masculine space featuring strong geometry and darker colors, while the bedroom is a feminine space with soft, pale colors and curves.
This gendering reflected societal norms where domestic spaces, particularly inner rooms, were associated with women due to limited public roles.
The bedroom features soft pale colors, curves, and a rose motif, contrasting with the rigid, darker living room.
Willow Tea Room
Mackintosh and MacDonald designed tea rooms in Glasgow, like the Willow Tea Room (1903), which provided safe social spaces for women, catering to a rising middle class with leisure time.
The tea rooms blended domestic and feminine aesthetics with social spaces, featuring high-back chairs that enforced posture and geometric designs that pushed Art Nouveau further.
Margaret MacDonald's symbolist paintings, characterized by geometry and negative space, adorned the tea rooms. Symbolist painters are in touch with the abstract, ethereal, natural natural elements, dreams, the subconscious.
Each space in the Willow Tea Room was conceived as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art), catering to different clients with distinct designs.
Hill House
The Hill House (1902-1904) in Helensburgh, Scotland, designed for publisher Walter Blackie, reflects a blend of traditional Scottish country house elements, Scottish castle features (turrets), and new geometric massing, signifying a move away from symmetry towards "free architecture."
Glasgow School of Art
Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art combines vernacular and modern elements, playing with shapes and forms, and integrating domestic elements into a public building.
The building features large windows to maximize light for art students and incorporates abstracted Celtic symbols in the wrought iron window trimmings, serving both aesthetic and practical purposes (form follows function).
is the idea, that the design of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.
The library's exposed architectural elements and rectangular motifs reflect the "Gesamtkunstwerk" concept. In 2014 and 2018 fires destroyed the library and the school, respectively, representing a significant architectural loss.
Vienna Secession
Mackintosh and MacDonald gained recognition in Vienna, Austria, influencing movements like the Vienna Secession. Their interior design was featured in the eighth Secession exhibition in Vienna in 1900.
In 1897, artists and designers, frustrated with established institutions, formed the Vienna Secession to promote modern aesthetics and elevate the design of everyday life.
Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau, combined Art Nouveau aesthetics with monumentality, aiming for something new and fresh.
The Vienna Secession Building, designed by Joseph Ulbrich in 1898, symbolized their ideals, proclaiming "To every art its time, to every art its freedom," and showcased simplified Art Nouveau elements.
Ver Sacrum, meaning sacred spring in Latin, was a publication that spread the design news and aesthetics.
Vienna Werkstätte
The Vienna Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), established in 1903 by Koloman Moser and Joseph Hoffmann, with the support of Fritz Warendorfer, aimed to artistically produce utilitarian items across various media, connecting craftsmen, designers, and artists with manufacturing.
The Pukersdorf Sanatorium exemplifies this with playful geometry, rhythmic patterns, and an emphasis on graphic elements, promoting a healthy and artistic environment.
Hoffmann's furniture designs emphasized geometry, monumentality, and negative space, prioritizing sanitation and health.
The chair here was from the Puckersdorf sanatorium, and the repeated elements are clearly communicated and speak with one another.
Hoffman liked to work in a reductive form. He liked stripping something into a more simplified form.
Palais Stoclet
The Palais Stoclet (1905-1911) in Belgium, designed by Joseph Hoffman, is a prime example of a "Gesamtkunstwerk", featuring geometric shapes, a flat facade, and strong vertical elements.
Gustav Klimt's murals, such as the Tree of Life and The Night, integrate art and design, harmonizing the interior.
American Architecture
The Great White City of Chicago's Columbian Exhibition in 1893 showcased nineteenth-century revival styles like neoclassical and neo-Gothic, influencing American city planning through the city beautiful movement.
Louis Sullivan, considered the father of the modern skyscraper, criticized the Beaux Arts style of the fair and sought a distinct American style.
Sullivan's style went against the grain of the Exhibition; he thought that the 1893 World's Fair would set American architecture back by forty years.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright, mentored by Louis Sullivan, designed the William Winslow House (1893), which would become his first Prairie house.
Wright spearheaded the Prairie School of architecture, characterized by long horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs, overhanging eaves, integration with nature, and minimalist ornament, reflecting the prairie landscape.
Wright style of architecture is meant to communicates with the landscape that it is a part of.
The B. Hartley Bradley House (1900) is considered Wright's first truly prairie style house. This is one of his more famous prairie style homes.
The Robie House (1906) in Chicago exemplifies the prairie style with its floating rectangles, cantilevered roof shades, and art glass windows.
Wright's floor plans disregarded typical room separations, emphasizing open spaces that connected the interior with the prairie.
Wright assembled teams to create total environments, designing homes, interiors, and furniture, aiming to improve society through design.
Wright's design program and embrace affected the whole of society, as far as design went.
Wright's intended for his designs to be available to the working class, but the expensive materials and custom builds made it difficult, similar to William Morris.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Wright tried to create a co-op neighborhood called Usonia in Upstate New York.
His geometric style speaks to the one of the Vienna Succession; the movements speaking to one another as modernism begins to be born.
The Toy Hill House (1948) demonstrates Wright's evolving style, incorporating organic elements and emphasizing integration with nature and open floor plans.
The design brought the outside in and the inside out.
There is a Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation which protects his work and sites.
Themes
Charles Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald were pioneers of a unique architectural style.
Vienna Secession and Vienna Werkstätte movements.
Frank Lloyd Wright and his prairie style architecture.
Themes included: Breaking tradition
Gesamtkunstwerk: Total work of art interior.
Book recommendations:
The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson which also tells the story of America's First known serial killer.
Movie recommendations:
A Woman in Gold. A story, about a woman who after, you know, she flees Nazi Germany as a little girl, but years later, she fights to get her family paintings back that were stolen by the Nazis and sold.
Gattaca features Frank Lloyd Wright's Civic Center in San Rafael, California.