The furniture, which came up with the great architects Part 1
Like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Aalto and other architects-modernists created a modern design. In the beginning of XX century, there was design a new art discipline at the interface of applied and decorative art, mass production, and early modernism. New architectural doctrine rejected the decorative elements, ornaments and any redundancy required very careful attention to the interior. The spacious, light-flooded spaces, every detail was evident. The aim of the architecture was the iconoclastic cleansing. Instead of a stuffy Suite of rooms — open plan, instead of a thick brick wall — glass facade; replaced by smooth stucco plaster, parquet floor, linoleum, carved oak balustrade — chrome railings. As the market could not offer products worthy of the new architecture, the architects created furnishings themselves — so there are objects, which are now pretentiously called icons of design. These things are invented by architects in the twentieth century, determined the path of development of modern design.
The name of the Austrian architect Josef Hoffman is associated with the history of the Vienna secession and art Nouveau. In 1903, with the support of the industrialist Fritz Warendorfer he founded the Vienna workshops, combining artists, artisans and entrepreneurs: this cooperation was to stimulate creative experiment, to bring the daily life of the visually stunning and thoughtful things. In the production of the Wiener werkstätte felt the impact of the arts and crafts and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The ancient East and even Japanese art. If the architectural projects of Hoffman are the perfect example of European modernism, they invented things anticipated the start of the era of functional design. The Kubus armchair, created in 1910 for the International exhibition in Buenos Aires, for his time, clear and incredibly simple. Wooden frame and padded cubes, leather cushions obviously did not require any additional decorations. The motif of the square is a favorite and the most recognizable acceptance of the architect, for which he is often called the “Hoffman square” (Quadratl-Hoffman).
The famous expression Corbusier’s “machine for living” — the quintessence of the General attitude of the era of the 1920s, when everything is new, metal, shiny, machine, meet the requirements of modernity and progress was invested with the properties of an aesthetic object. Purist austerity advocated by Le Corbusier, at the same time demanded the emasculation of the medical office and simplicity of the monastic cells. Although in reality was a symptom of an aristocratic and inaccessible luxury. The first pieces of furniture designed by Le Corbusier together with the designer and architect Charlotte Perlin appeared simultaneously with the villas that he built for his friends. It happened with a series LC (the name comes from the initials of the architect), presented in 1929, at the Autumn art salon in Paris. Stand Le Corbusier has called “Equipment for living”, and the most notable piece, a chaise lounge chair LC4, the architect called “a machine for relaxation”.
The first sample of the lounger was created in 1928 for the library at Villa Barbara and Henry Church near Paris. A year later, a slightly amended version appeared in the banker’s house Raul Roche. The design was a metal profile coated with a thin leather mattress and is equipped with a roller. In those years, in the Paris newspaper often came across an ad anatomical adjustable seat, Dr. Pasco. Perian and Corbusier partly borrowed his idea of creating a chair, which takes virtually any slope.
The Director of a furniture company Knoll Albert Pfeiffer once said that the success of Mies van der Rohe coincided with the beginning of his collaboration with artist and designer Lilly Reich. With Reich, he had some of the furniture. In 1928-1929 Reich and van der Rohe worked on the project of the pavilion of the Weimar Republic at the world exhibition in Barcelona and the Villa of Greta and Fritz Tugendhat in Brno (Czech Republic). For these interiors were created by the eponymous series Barcelona chair Brno chair and the Tugendhat can be visited.
The project of the pavilion in Barcelona was intended to symbolize the prosperity of the young Republic and despite the brevity of the decisions was the personification of the “Golden twenties” of the German state. The thin smooth walls of gray marble, a soft glow of Golden onyx, a dark mirror of the pool behind the glass partition, and as if outside time, frozen above the water, the figure of “Morning” by Georg Kolbe. In this space, it is hard to make something prosaic commonplace, in particular, required for the pavilion furniture, but the light leather seats and clear the table does not distort the General mood. From slightly curved X-shaped metal legs borrowed from the curule chairs of the chair, or sell curls, a Roman patrician. According to custom, wore them for the highest members of the magistrates — the consuls and praetors. Roman monumentality was ideologically close to the new order, which opened to the global architecture Mies van der Rohe in the late 1920-ies.