Modernism reading

Modernism had a significant impact around the world of design changing the pathway of design history Modernism originated in the 19th century reflecting early 20th century beliefs pioneering advant-garde design circles with causing some backlash of people calling it “bad design” and others saying modernism is the “spirit of the age”.Modernists saw themselves as the creators of the ” machine ages” freed from the shackles of the past so they pushed design and art in new ways . Modernist appreciated aesthetic qualities and distances the design from any real sense of original context and function. The whole ideals of modernism design was to create a a design that was “neat” , ” clean” and “pure”. The first idea of this was represented in the Bauhuas school of design as seen in figure 1

The early stages of the bauhaus was linked to expressionism and contested the views of the past and design. This brought extreme pressure on the school by the nazi regime which lead to it getting shut down in 1934 along with most of the modernist movement. However other countries such as Denmark, Norway , Sweden used modernism to prosper their design and ways of unconventional thinking . The modernism idea of neat , clean and pure is utilised by companies in the present day such as “Ikea” seen in their furniture designs. This can be seen in figure 2 showing the simplistic, refined surfaces of the furniture that reflects modernism