Modernist Design Complete, a book review

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Nargess

Modernism impacts on every aspect of our lives. This progressive aesthetic and philosophical movement, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century in the midst of modern industrial societies and rapid urbanisation, and the horrors of the world wars, continues to shape our lives. Modernism has set a powerful framework for how we think and create, how are homes are built and interiors decorated, and the way our cities are imagined.

Modernism, though, can be a touch complex to follow given its ever-evolving nature, and the various ideological fractions, sub-groups and sub-sub-categories that formed during the last century. World wars and mass exile, especially of the key Bauhaus members to the US and beyond, helped spread the movement worldwide, creating exciting regional responses and dialogue. And there were many diverse characters involved too, each adding their own flavour to the modernist movement.

‘Modernist Design Complete’ will help navigate the movement. Thames & Hudson’s latest book brings together most facets and scales of design under a single volume to present the vast breadth of towering and lesser-known figures within modernism. This lavishly-illustrated book (635 feature here) reveals unexpected connections and aims to form new insights too.

Written by design critic Dominic Bradbury, the format is logical and easy to follow. It is divided into two main chapters – ‘media and masters’ and ‘houses and interior’, with a final A-Z of modernist designers. The former is further divided to include furniture, lighting, ceramics and glass, industrial and product design, and graphics and posters, featuring designers who were most influential in each category – all of which are conveniently colour-coded.

There are profiles of nearly a hundred creators, including the main faces of movement – László Moholy-Nagy, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Eliel Saarinen and Walter Gropius, as well as lesser-known figures. Complete with commissioned essays by established academics and subject specialists, ‘Modernist Design Complete’ aims to be the definitive guide for those involved in the creative industries, and for anyone interested in design, design thinking and design history.

Images in order: Red & Blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld, 1918 © Wright20.com; Brno chairs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, 1929 © Richard Powers; Scarpa’s Bugne vase, 1936, © Wright20.com; 66 Air King Skyscraper radio by Harold Van Doren, 1933 © Wright20.com; ?Sonneveld House by Dutch Functionalists Brinkman/Van der Vlugt, 1933 © Richard Powers?Villa Savoye; Le Corbusier 1931 © Richard Powers; 114 Polaroid lamp designed by Walter Dorwin Teague © Wright20.com

Marvin Rand captures south California’s unique modernism

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Nargess

Los Angeles was a kind of utopian dream in the mid-twentieth century. The sunny southern Californian city had attracted an open-minded set – experimental filmmakers, independent artists, writers and patrons of design came here for it offered freedom of expression. This coupled with urban growth and industrial expansion led to a period of exceptional architectural innovation.

Marvin Rand was there to capture this spirit. Throughout the post-war period, the native Angeleno photographed the buildings of Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, John Lautner, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler. He also played a crucial role in helping shape the mid-century Californian modern style, as explored in a new book by Phaidon California Captured.

Rand’s career began in advertising in the 1950s, and it was his friend the design historian Esther McCoy who encouraged him to venture into architectural photography. He enjoyed a close friendship with many of these architectural greats including Craig Ellwood. Some of Rand’s best work includes Ellwood’s most celebrated projects.

The 240 illustrations in California Captured were chosen by the authors Emily Bills, Sam Lubell and Pierluigi Serraino who spent over five years analysing some 20,000 Rand photographs. Together they tell of a photographer who is an artist with his lens. Rand created abstractions out of lines and structures. He framed the clean and clear modernist structures with striking clarity carefully staging the buildings against a backdrop of LA’s dreamy, washed out, vast, open sky, sometimes the blue ocean in the backdrop. Ellwood was fond of sports cars and Rand brilliantly includes these symbols of modernity within the frame as an extension of the architecture.

He photographed high-profile projects like the Salk Institute and LAX Theme building, but also lesser-famed architects and more modest creations such as Douglas Honnold’s drive-in Tiny Naylor, shot at night skilfully abstracting light and shadow. California Captured reveals Marvin Rand as a significant chronicler of post-war Los Angeles and some of America’s greatest mid-century modern architecture.

Nargess Banks

All pictures © courtesy of the Estate of Marvin Rand

Cape Cod Modern

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Nargess

The story began with Walter Gropius. Finding it near impossible to further the cause for Modernism in politically volatile Europe, in 1936 the founder of Bauhaus accepted a professorship at Harvard’s new and progressive Graduate School of Design, and together with his wife Ise fled to America.

The following year they rented a holiday house not so far on Planting Island, near the base of Cape Cod. Here they began entertaining friends and fellow émigré Bauhaus members Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy and Xanti Schawinsky.

Gropius called the Outer Cape, ‘marvellous piece of earth’ where the reunited group cooked, ate, swam and talked of the future. As they settled in America, many returned renting and buying plots of land and within a few years, the area was a hotbed of European intellectuals.

They soon began designing and building holiday homes in the woods and on the dunes. These were almost laboratories for processing their ideas. By 1977, there were some one hundred notable houses here that fused European Modernism, Bauhaus concepts with the building traditions of this region of mainly fishing towns.

This was a hybrid culture, partly American partly European that gave rise to a new vernacular so that this remote area became highly significant in the evolution of Modernism in America.

Cape Cod Modern – Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape tells this story in depth. Beautifully captured by the photographs of Raimund Koch and illustrations of Thomas Dalmas, what adds further texture are the archival pictures of the lives of some of the most prolific names in the history of Modern architecture. We take a peak at their normal world as they prepare lunch, play chess on the porch, talk and laugh and enjoy one another’s company in these incredible homes.

As the authors write, it was ‘a lifestyle based on communion with nature, solitary creativity, and shared festivity.’ Their lives were as much about furthering the cause of Modern architecture as of radical thought and experimenting with new ways of living.

The former Bauhaus members brought to America their take on Modernism at the same time absorbing their new homeland’s hunger for change. This was an America so very different to now; a country that encouraged intellectual growth, championed creative thinking. Cape Cod Modern is a fascinating read.

Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape is written by Peter McMahon and Christine Cipriani and published by Metropolis Books.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Design Talks is published by Spinach Design

Design Talks

Observations on design

Tag Archives: American Modern

Modernist Design Complete, a book review

Marvin Rand captures south California’s unique modernism

Cape Cod Modern