Arts & Crafts / Mackintosh

During the era of Victoria of England, a reformer artistic movement has born, considered as the english equivalent of the French Art Nouveau.
The movement is about all the concerns of the artists through progress, the need of individualism, new values…

The main “names” of this movement:

John Ruskin (1819-1900): poet and writer, fascinated by medieval and Gothic eras. For him, the artistic ideal is born from the meeting of competencies and not their competitors.

William Morris (1834 -1896): manufacturer of furniture and art objects he designed them, but it is primarily a business leader

Walter Crane (1845 -1915): illustrator and promoter of Decorative Arts , he practiced his art in many areas : illustration, painting, ceramics , wallpaper , upholstery, etc.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 -1928): British architect and designer whose simple and functional style had a strong influence on architecture and interior design

For those artists it was urgent, not only to rehabilitate the handmade work, but to save and re invent traditional techniques. Soon they were the initiators of new schools to train artisans, tapestry, embroidery, printing on the board with enamelling, brassware, pottery, natural dyes woven textiles with the trades, the marquetry and cabinet.

Another of their ideas was that we couldn’t do a good job, if we live and work in a healthy and pleasant environment. In their works, arise plants and animals, symbols of nature, but more or less stylized. It is the Fine Art.

In Europe, many artistic movements were inspired by those ideas about the relationship between the arts and crafts, on simplicity and use of natural materials.

Arts and Crafts inspired movements such as the Viennese Secession movement and the Bauhaus movement. It can also be seen as an introduction to Modernism, where its pure forms, stripped of historical associations, have been applied to new industrial production.

Realisations:

According to Mackintosh furniture contributes to the unity of the room.

The furniture that we know the most was developed as part of interior design: Catherine Cranston teahouses, the House of Amateur Art, Hill House, his private etc. It is supposed to participate in this overall unit holds dear, without imposing individually.  

Mackintosh designs furniture with simple lines, stripped upholstery and a proliferation of expensive details in the Victorian era of the times. The furniture is lacquered white punctuated with a few buttons purple, green or silver on the ground. The lacquered furniture end up not standing the white walls, the space becomes immaterial. Mackintosh breaks completely with the overloaded style of his time.

Its high back chairs seem to represent thrones symbolic traces dear to Mackintosh. We also have to appreciate his taste for the system partition of the Japanese interior design because this high back gently separates us from our neighbors. For one of the teahouses of Catherine Cranston, he invented the curved mesh back chair. 

I can see at first in his furniture a skeletal appearance, vertical, straight and rigid compared with rounded shapes, welcoming and padded his time but I rather see those lines as a solution to the partition of the space, expression of an architect.

               

Modernism / The Ephemeral Pavilion

The modern movement was born in Europe after the First World War but it's a movement that was quickly organized internationally. The movement appeared as a result of a convergence of events. It was born in response to decorative arts. But it is a movement that emerged thanks to the growth of new technical possibilities of materials such as glass, steel and mainly reinforced concrete.

                                             
For modern architects facade should only reflect the building's function. « Form follows function. This is the law». This quote represents the spirit of the modernism.

Known as Le Corbusier, whose real name was Charles Edouard Jeanneret; it will be one of the leaders of this movement and one of its main theorists. Le Corbusier wanted to break with tradition by founding a consistent architecture with the needs of modern man.

                     

The Ephemeral Pavilion

From 1925, the modern movement took off; it is in fact this year that Le Corbusier designed the ephemeral pavilion of the new spirit, on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts held in Paris.

This building creates a scandal. Indeed, the pavilion is included in an exhibition that aims to promote the decorative arts. Within this building, no decoration is inserted just simple geometric shapes nested. Despite the harsh criticism made ​​to it, this pavilion will be a decisive influence or significant architectural production on the following decades.

Relegated to a corner of the Grand Palais, the pavilion is not understood in its innovative approach: transformation plan, standardization, and industrialization. "There is no architecture here," concluded the Vice President of the Jury Grand Prize of the Exhibition. At the opening of the Exhibition the building was cache by a fence on the pretext of its incompleteness, but it will be removed the next day by order of the Minister of Education.

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RICARDO BOFILL

Ricardo Bofill is a Spanish Architect, who assembled a multidisciplinary group in order to confront the complexity of architectural practice; architects, engineers, planners, sociologists, writers, movie makers and philosophers, conformed what is known today as the Taller de Arquitectura.

In Bofill’s work, History has always been present, in all its forms. First of all, in the form of the continuing analysis and interpretation of the culture and architecture of the past, but also by means of the strenght given to new tendencies, to involvement in the social movements of the day and the creation of alternative responses to contemporary problems.

The professional progress of the Taller de Arquitectura, marked by the stimulus and the conception of life, the vital vision of Ricardo Bofill, has undergone a series of practical and theoretical changes closely linked to the political and social transformations of recent years. 
An analysis of Bofill’s work as a whole reveals a tremendous degree of coherence and a continuity of thinking that are the product of a history and a language that are uniquely personal. 

Because of the necessity to approach major projects, Bofill’s team conceived a methodology based on the geometric formation of elements in space, developed in a theoretical manner with the project The City in Space, and made it concrete with the construction of Walden 7. 

WALDEN 7

Ricardo Bofill wanted to create a landmark in contrast relashionship with the industrial area where Walden 7 was located. The colors from the post modern architecture are fundamental to evoke feelings and sensations inside and outside the buildings. 
Walden 7 represents the realization of the research work done for other previous projects of the Taller de Arquitectura.
The project of The City in Space was eventually able to take shape on a suburban plot formerly occupied by a cement factory. Walden 7 embodies the concept of architectural magnitude as well as a new, enriching feature into the suburban environment which surrounds it. 
It attempts to provide a solution to the problems of life in today’s cities where there is a lack of community, of collective activity, of public space placed at the disposition of the individual.
Exterior windows have a pelicular semicircular shape and their distribution is uneven in each facade while they maintain a certain symetry.
Walden 7 creates a distinguished space in contrast to the mediocrity of its surroundings, stimulating in this way an animation of community life in its interiors.
Walden 7 consists of 446 apartments, grouped around five courtyards, in top of which are two swimming pools. 
With few exceptions, each apartment face both outside of the block and into one of the courtyard, at many levels, there is a complex system of bridges and balconies.
The exterior facade has the appearance of a huge fortification completely painted in red, which is opened to the exterior through large overtures like urban window.
The courtyards have a lively treatment because of the intense blue and yellow colored facade. The main courtyard, at the building’s entrance, is a recovery of the street and the plaza for the benefit of the inhabitants, which generates an interior world apart from the exterior chaos.
The dwellings, a combination of square 30 m2 modules, come in different sizes, ranging from the single-module studio to the four-module apartment, either on one floor or duplex.

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MEMPHIS GROUP

Presentation

The Memphis Group was an Italian design and architecture group founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass in 1981 that designed Postmodern furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass and metal objects from 1981 to 1987.

The Memphis group’s work often incorporated plastic laminate and was characterized by ephemeral design featuring colourful decoration and asymmetrical shapes, sometimes arbitrarily alluding to exotic or earlier styles.

-  Drawings and designs in bold colors with futuristic shapes
- Decorative styles of past years

Ettore Sottsass organised a meeting with some designers and formed this design collaborative named Memphis. 
They drew inspiration from such movements as Art Deco and Pop Art, including styles such as the 1950s Kitsch and futuristic themes.

The group produced and exhibited furniture and design objects. The result was a highly acclaimed debut at the 1981 Salone del Mobile of Milan, the world’s most prestigious furniture fair.


The group’s members included Alessandro Mendini, Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Michele de Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Matteo Thun, Javier Mariscal, Luciano Paccagnella, George Sowden, Marco Zanini, Ettore Sottsass. 

They always kept in mind the aim to create controversy with their objects and openly criticize what was considered good design.

This is activity known as "anti-design"

Displayed products achieved much fame and caused much criticism in society of that time.

Alessandro Mendini

  

Martine Bedin

The group was aware that they were part of a fad, that's why Ettore Sottsass decided to disband the group in 1988 when the movement began to wane.

The theory of design was placed against the design itself, the foundation of the activities of the Memphis Group consisted of that, the "Anti-Design"as a banner of his theory.

ETTORE SOTTSASS

"For me the design is a way to discuss life"

Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. His designs included furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting and office machine design.

Navigating between architecture, industrial design and experimental design, Ettore Sottsass occupies a very important place on the Italian establishment. 
Committed intellectual, free-spirited and non-conformist, he has to be at the heart of cultural movements of his time, ensuring continuity until the creation of Memphis in 1981. 
Alternately designer, architect, ceramist, photographer or designer, he explored the creative fields with great freedom.

After the trauma of war, Ettore Sottsass participated in the reconstruction of the social housing programs. 
Convinced that architecture can not be decreed from above, he stopped for a time to exercise architecture. Failing to realize the architecture of his dreams, he prefers designing architectured objects.
With his curiosity, he worked for a lot of fields as painting, as graphic design, furniture design, jewelery and ceramics; these practices feeding each other according to the principle of «cross fertilization». 



45 Synthesis:
Typist and back office with 2 storage boxes
72 x 160 x 75 cm

Back 68 x 126 x 48 cm

In the 70s, convinced that we must work on a «desktop profile», Ettore Sottsass is attempting to redefine the face of the workplace. 
Considering as archaic or hierarchical distinctive signs, the differences are, he says, come from space and tools required by those who work. 
He developed a modular system of simple elements, which can vary in size, numbers and colors. 
45 Synthesis strangely akin to the principle of «Habitat profiles» imagined a year ago as part of the exhibition Italy : The New Domestic Landscape.

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MODERNISM

GENERAL INDRODUCTION

Modernism is the name given to the new forms that appeared in all of the arts-in painting, sculpture, architecture, music and litterature.

After the first world war, Europeans struggled to find a design direction that would be a true expression of the twentieth century a truly modern design. 
The leaders of modernism were revolutionnaries not directly connected connected with politics. 
Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world. 
4 Architects are regarded as pioneers of modernism in design as they defined new directions with such clarity and force that they can be thought of as the originators of the ‘Modern Movment’
- Walter Gropuis (1881-1969)
- Ludwing Mies Van der Rohe (1886-1969)
- Le  Corbusier (1887-1965)
- Franl Lloyd Wright
Their works were discribed as being in the intrnational style.

WALTER GROPIUS : 

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

«Architecture begins where the engineering ends»

It is a kind of mini-campus, students are housed on site.

The building has several entrances, there is never a single view of the building. We must go around the Bauhaus to understand its shape (reference to the Robie House by Frank Lloyd Wright) .

The building consists of two shaped body «L» giving it a dynamism, a form tending toward the rotation. This form rayon relative to a landscape .

There are principles of transparency but still mass notion .

The notion of dissolved angle , the angle is fully glazed .

The facades are detached from the structure that is internal. 

Circulation spaces are between the structure and the facade.

The windows of the building students also have shaped openings «L» , one always finds this concept of dynamism.

CHAIR BY WALTER GROPIUS

CHAIR BY WALTER GROPIUS

LE CORBUSIER

Le Corbusier, (1887 – 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. 
He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India, and the Americas.

Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Architecture

During his career, Le Corbusier developed a set of architectural principles that dictated his technique, which he called «the Five Points of a New Architecture» and were most evident in his Villa Savoye. The five points are:

Pilotis – Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the structural load is the basis of the new aesthetic.

The free designing of the ground plan—the absence of supporting walls—means the house is unrestrained in its internal use.

The free design of the façade—separating the exterior of the building from its structural function—sets the façade free from structural constraints.

The horizontal window, which cuts the façade along its entire length, lights rooms equally.

Roof gardens on a flat roof can serve a domestic purpose while providing essential protection to the concrete roof.

La Villa Savoye

It was Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929–1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis – reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free façade, and an open floor plan. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure.

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ART NOUVEAU 

GENERAL INDRODUCTION

Art Nouveau is an international artistic movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which highlights on the aesthetics of curved lines and organic forms.
It was seen in art, graphic design, architecture and applied arts such as decoration, jewellery, ceramics and glass.
The French term «Art Nouveau» has emerged in Britain, along with Anglomania in France has spread the form Modern Style in the early twentieth century,
Art Nouveau is characterized by the inventiveness, the presence of rhythms, colors, ornamentation inspired by trees, flowers, insects, animals, and introducing sensitive in the everyday decor. 
In art nouveau, we can find a lot of big names of Architecture: 

- Victor Horta, Brussels - The hotel Tassel 
- Domenech i Montaner, Barcelona - Palau de la Musica
- Antoni Gaudi, Barclone -  Palau Guell, Guell Pavilions, Casa Vicens, Belles Guard, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo, Segrada familia.
-Hector Guimard - Metro Station Paris

CASA BATLLO

Casa Batlló is one of the most renowned buildings of Antoni Gaudí. It is located in the very center of Barcelona. 

Like everything Gaudí designed, it is only identifiable as Modernisme or Art Nouveau in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work. 

There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles. The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. 

A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the lance of Saint George, which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.

Ceiling

Facade

Facade

Stairs

HECTOR GUIMARD 

When Hector Guimard was commissioned to design these famous subway station gates, Paris was only the second city in the world (after London) to have constructed an underground railway. Guimard’s design answered the desire to celebrate and promote this new infrastructure with a bold structure that would be clearly visible on the Paris streetscape.
The gate utilizes the sinuous, organic forms that are so typical of the Art Nouveau style, yet while it appears at first to be a single component, it is in fact made up of several parts that could be easily mass produced in Paris.
In effect, Guimard had concealed an aspect of the object’s modernity beneath its soft forms, a strategy that is symptomatic of Art Nouveau’s ambivalent attitude to the modern age. Ironically, perhaps, Guimard’s design was instrumental in popularizing Art Nouveau, and making the style an important early stage in the evolution of modernist design.