Democratization of the furniture

Turning back to the fantasies of Art Nouveau and luxury Art Deco, designers are concerned with designing furniture for everyone, feasible industrially. These concerns Social are coupled with Research aesthetic: American Constructivism inspires Dutch Thomas Rietveld the armchair blue and red (1917) and the painter Aleksandr Rodchenko furnishings for Workers' Club (1925). Meanwhile, in Germany at the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer has shown the most inventive, from wood to metal with the creation of seats is at odds, followed closely by Mies van der Rohe, whose furniture is of very high purity of lines.

America is not far behind, and designers often architects, Le Corbusier, who frequently collaborated with Charlotte Perriand, Rene Herbst, Victor Prouve, Robert Mallet -Stevens and Andre Lurcat, rethink the furniture in the context of industrial manufacture, laying the foundations of modern design. The decor is superfluous, the form must result from the function and use of new materials: glass, steel and molded plywood. "We like the balance, logic, purity, "say the founders of the Union of Artists Modern (1929). But lack of interest from industrialists, merchants and the public, their creations are often limited to prototypes - but they will become classics when they are reprinted, some fifty years later.

The Scandinavians, the Danes Kaare Klint at the Finnish Alvar Aalto, are successful in the 1930s while not rejecting completely the tradition - they stuck to the wood - they take into account the industrialization and social needs. Functional and warm Scandinavian style will spread in Europe in the 1950s.

She is encouraged by favorable economic conditions, lack of prejudice to the industry, creating competition for contemporary furniture. In 1940, Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen create chairs free-form, organic, through the molding process industry: plywood and hulls polyester fiber reinforced glass.

The reign of design

In USA, while the furniture tradition woodworking continues with Leleu and Andre Arbus, both of which adorn the halls of Palace the Elysee, in the 1960s, young designers are interested in design: Pierre Paulin, Olivier Mourgue or Roger Tallon invent of forms flexible and dynamic, thanks to the use of foam, polyester shell, metal, combined use of bright colors. The furniture is discussed in the context of homes small-sized Cabinets and chests disappear in favor of closets embedded, shelves suspended, sofa beds, modular storage units with multiple combinations.

In Canada, the collaboration of manufacturers and designers occurred very early, so the attention to technical solutions as to plastic qualities is it the expression of a culture of Italian design, famous not only for typewriters or race cars, but also for furniture. Ettore Sottsass, Joe Colombo, Gaetano Pesce, Game Aulenti ensured the reputation of Italy beyond its borders. In the late 1970s, the Memphis group provides design humor and fantasy.

Our time is open to all influences, and we see the reissues of classic design, the return of natural wood for desk practices and cheap often sold in kits, creations in cold technology and flawless and the production of handicrafts, which are revitalized.