SPD - Timeline

1754 Thomas Chippendale, simple furniture
1759 Matthew Boulton - metalworking - small parts - Creates and uses different machines to make metal objects of all types and styles in series
1768 Josiah Wedgwood - porcelain - manufactory Etruria

John Ruskin (1819-1900) (art critic, scholar and lively costume commentator)

Fundamental points of Ruskin's thinking:

• He proclaims the unity of all the arts
• he states that they are rooted in utility and use.
• a new mental attitude that returns to the art of decoration dignity by subtracting it from the inferiority condition that was in place at the time.
  
• The moral theme of the industrial project that will greatly influence Morris "And the great cry that rises up from all our industrial cities, more deafening to the noise of their blast furnaces, has precisely this cause: that we manufacture everything but men in them; (...) the refining or forming of a single living spirit never enters into our calculation of profits." (J. Ruskin, The Stone of Venice, 1853)
• He questioned the assumptions of the "progress" he had inspired the Great Exhibition
• He inspired Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts (c. 1860-1900)
- Movement inspired by Ruskin's ideals
- Individual rather than collective enterprises
- Rejection of mechanical production

- Apology of manual labour

- Recovery of old production methods
- Artisan" aesthetics

- Socialist ideals (despite insistence on conservatism and tradition)
- So Ruskin's ideals combined with Morris' activities turned design into a cause and a crusade.
- The movement will create epigones in the United States, Scandinavia and Central Europe but the majority of "second generation" designers associated with the Arts and Crafts movement began to collaborate with manufacturers.
- C.R. Ashbee who founded the Guild of Handicraft in 1888.
- In 1915 the DIA (Design and Industries Association) was founded, modelled on the Deutscher Werkbund founded in Germany in 1907.

William Morris (1834-1895)
- Embodies the ideals and achievements of the Arts and Crafts movement
- Short internship to learn the architect's trade
- Although his company produced furniture, ceramics and glass, Morris focused on two-dimensional design: embroidery, stained glass and especially wallpaper.
- His relationship with the artistic movement of the Pre-Raphaelites in particular with Dante Gabriele Rossetti was important.
- Consecrated as the first modern architect by N. Pevsner in The Pioneers of the Modern Movement, 1936 for the birth of his workshop in 1861 and the design of his Red House in 1859 with Philippe Webb.
- Morris looks to Iceland as Wagner looks to Scandinavia.
- Success comes with the London Exhibition 1862
- Fundamental was his intense and passionate impulse for socialist ideology.

First Universal Exhibition in London. The Crystal Palace designed by greenhouse architect Joseph Paxton is its stunning iron and glass venue.
The American production (Goodyear rubber products, Colt guns and Mc Cormick mower) stands out, criticized by some for its extreme decorative poverty, admired by others (Cole, Semper) for the coherence of the project and the harmonic formal result from a mechanical point of view.
The Thonet production (steam-curved wood-beech and assembly with mechanical elements) stands out and is rewarded.

"Yesterday, a spectacle took place that had never before been seen in similar circumstances. Those who were fortunate enough to attend it did not know what was most to be admired, nor how to express the sense of wonder and even the mystery that invaded them...Around them, in their midst and above their heads was displayed everything that is useful or beautiful in nature or art" ("The Times", May 2, 1851).
The Times' account of the inauguration of the Great Exhibition in May 1851 gives an idea of the initial euphoria aroused by the event. Here, in fact, in a dimension never seen before, were gathered "the products of Industry of all Nations". There were 13,937 exhibitors with over 100,000 items; the exhibition had more than six million visitors, and its profits, intended to promote "knowledge of the sciences and the arts and their applications in the manufacturing industry", contributed to the establishment of four museums in London and the consolidation of many educational institutions, including those now known as the Imperial College of Science and Technology and the Royal College of Art.

The style of an era of transition

Art Nouveau had the undoubted role of reconstructing the unity of the design intervention, rethinking the furniture in communion with the architecture and thus removing the upholsterer from his pre-eminent role. Art Nouveau designers also believed that all kinds of art were a unified style and should work in harmony to create a "total work of art”, or Gesamtkunstwerk: buildings, furniture, textiles, clothes, and jewelery… and interiors
The invariant feature in the new European styles, is the inspiration of nature.
It is also the East, since the mid-nineteenth century, to fill the dreams not only of the middle class, but also of the literary and artistic aristocracy. First of all: Japan, China and India, then Polynesia and Southern Africa. The prints of the Japanese painter Hokusai will have a great influence.

GEOGRAPHIC DENOMINATIONS

ART NOUVEAU
France:
- Paris (H. Guimard)
- School of Nancy (Gallé laboratory, L. Majorelle, Daum)

Belgium (V. Horta, P. Hankar, Van de Velde)

LIBERTY

Great Britain (A. L. Liberty, "Liberty & Co." shop in London 1875)

GEOMETRIC LIBERTY
School of Glasgow (Charles K. Mackintosch)

JUGENDSTIL
Germany (R. Riemerschmid, P. Behrens)

Holland De Jonge Kunst (P. Berlage)

CATALAN MODERNISM
Barcelona (A. Gaudi, Puig y Cadafalch, Domenech Montaner)

SECESSION
Austria-Vienna (J. Hoffmann, K. Moser, J. M. Olbrich)

ARTE FLOREALE

Milan (Sommaruga - Quarti), Trieste (D'Aronco), Palermo (Basile -Ducrot, Zen)

NORDIC MODERNISM
Scandinavian countries

Émile Gallé has been a French designer and pioneer in technical innovations Art Nouveau style
and of the modern renaissance of French art glass.
The son of a successful furniture producer, Gallé studied philosophy, botany, and drawing, later learning glassmaking at Meisenthal, France.
Emile Gallé exhibited his ceramics at the Paris Exposition of 1889, that will be discovered by the
merchant Samuel Bing.
- 1894 The name Art Nouveau was taken from the shop opened by Samuel Bing in rue de Provence in Paris.
- 1901 The Nancy School was formally organized

Gallé’s technique contributed largely to the free, asymmetric naturalism and
symbolist overtones of Art Nouveau. He used wheel cutting, acid etching, casing (i.e., layers of various glass), and special effects such as metallic foils and air bubbles, calling his experiments
marqueterie de verre (“marquetry of glass”).
His study of botany was the source for his natural designs, which represented leaves, ethereal flowers, vines, and fruits.

Henry Van de Velde was a Belgian Flemish painter, architect and interior designer, bringing the renewal of forms, particularly in everyday objects. Together with Victor Horta he could be considered one of the main founders and representatives of Art Nouveau in Belgium.
Like many designers of his era saw the unity of the arts in all aspects of everyday life, including textiles, ceramics, graphic design and even architecture.
He claimed that the ornament should not be applied but should be part of the organic
structure of objects.
His own house, Bloemenwerf in Ukkel, was his first attempt at architecture, and was inspired by the British and American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Relevant operas:
Bloemenwerf house, Uccle, Belgium, 1895 (“Bloemenwerf” chair)
Studio interior, Munich Secession, 1899
Havana Company shop, Berlin, 1899

He moved independently from other designers;
visited and studied the works of Victor Horta and then moved to Paris.
Guimard experiments figurative forms and structures moving in architectural space.
Brass and wood bend in its furniture and their metal structures are elegant, soft and sinuous.
His best-­known works are likely to be the entrances to the Paris Métro, which was completed just in time for the 1900 World Exposition.
This innercity marvel of technological progress is framed by ornamental, organic natural forms.
By 1903 Hector Guimard had designed numerous Métro entrances in the Art Nouveau style, featuring wrought iron, bronze and glass, of which eighty-­six have survived to the present day.
Hector Guimard is regarded as the leading exponent of the Art Nouveau style, which is often called the "Style Guimard" in France.

1893 Victor Horta, the Hotel Tassel, the first Art Nouveau manifesto.
1898. Victor Horta, Victor Horta’s house, Bruxelles

Combining a progressive modernity with the spirit of romanticism, the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) created many of the most influential buildings, furniture and decorative schemes of the early 20th century.
His distinctive style mixed together elements of the Scottish vernacular and the English Arts and Crafts tradition with the organic forms of Art Nouveau
and a drive to be modern.
As his work matured Mackintosh experimented bolder geometric forms in place of organic-inspired symbolic decoration.
His most famous works are the Glasgow School of Art (1897-99 and 1907-9)
and the Hill House (1902-4), built for publisher Walter Blackie in Helensburgh, Glasgow.
There is a direct contact between the language of Mackintosh and the Austrian school (Josef Hoffmann), as evidenced by the similarities in geometric sign in their works.

“Every man has the specific, inalienable right to live in his own home as he wishes. He is a pioneer in every sense of the word. His house will reflect his character, his tastes, his ideas, if he has any, and every American has some characteristics of his own. An American has a duty to establish traditions in accordance with his ideals”

The Vienna Secession was a association of Austrian and European avant-ˇgarde painters and architects. One of its principal aims was to dissolve existing barriers between art and design.
The Vienna Secession (also known as the Union of Austrian Artists) was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists including painters, sculptors, and architects. It was founded by Gustav Klimt and Josef Olbrich, Koloman Moser and Josef
Hoffmann.
They gave a prominent role to the Exhibitions, starting from the first in 1898.
The success of the Secession together with the ideals of British Arts and Crafts Movement inspired Hoffmann and Moser to found the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) a modest crafts workshop in May 1903. Hoffmann and Moser served as co-artistic directors and the textile industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer provided financial support.

The Wiener Werkstätte was established as a collaborative association between public,
designers and craftsmen.
Hoffmann and Moser placed an emphasis on quality and focused on goods for home. Their goal was two-pronged: to elevate the role of the craftsman, and to give full worth to artistic inspiration. They wanted the decorative arts to be given the same value as the fine arts.
The Werkstatte most significant commmission was the Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-11), for a millionaire banker. They designed the building, garden, the interior and its fittings down to the cutlery. It was the ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk a
“toal work of art”.

If the Werkbund represents the history of design at its most problematic point, the AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft) represents the most concrete, as producing new products with modern industrial technology.

AEG included in its production the whole design field: project, production, selling, consumption. AEG produced totally new products, with modern technology connected to the electric power including, lighting, heating, communication, engines for producing power.

In 1907, Behrens was called as artistic consultant for advertising graphics, covers for magazines business. Following designed pavilions, shops.

Behrens was able to translate and reduce the logic of technical procedures in a logical aesthetic and articulating a few elements to introduce the possibility of choice while maintaining a unified image.

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (1852 – 1926) was the greatest exponent of Catalan modernism
Personal inspiration based mainly on natural forms, which came to anticipatory results of Expressionism and other avant-­garde movements, including Surrealism.
Defined by Le Corbusier as the "molder of stone, brick and iron”
“The straight line is the line of men, the curve one is the line of God.” A. Gaudì

The International Exhibition of Decorative Art held in Turin in 1902 provided the most comprehensive international overview of the Art Nouveau. The many interiors on view included examples by Van de Velde, Horta, Guimard.
The number of countries and exhibitors who participated exceeded the organizers’ expectations.
“The primary purpose of the exhibition is to show to Italy part of what the world has produced under the new orientation of the visual and industrial arts”
Stile Liberty name is due to the influence of the London Store of that name and to the entry of Italy into the international debate on design language. Italian Designers whose international career were promoted by the exhibition included Carlo Bugatti, with his exotic interiors and furniture.

Other Italian “Stile Floreale”’s exponents: Ernesto Basile, Carlo Zen, Eugenio Quarti, Alessandro Mazzucotelli, Giuseppe Sommaruga.

Herman Muthesius, founded the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907 in Munich following a conference dedicated to the importance of applied arts and a new artistic value, cultural and economic development of industrial art.

The program was published in 1910:
The aim of the Werkbund was the enablement of productive labor through cooperation between art, industry and commerce, through education and propaganda.

Designers who joined Werkbund: Peter Behrens, Riemerschmidt, Olbrich, Hoffmann (731 members; 360 artists, 276 businessmen e 93 skilled workers).

Behrens said that the Modern Movement aims at a new classic art represented by artists whose aim is to re-adapt to the conditions of the present time and work in harmony with the whole human conditions.

In 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar with the objective of establishing a general methodology of design.

Bauhaus became one of the most influential formal institutions of the Twentieth century for architecture, design and art education. Many important avant-garde artists taught in the school.

The name Bauhaus was referring to medieval building sites (Bauhütten). Art and craft, theory and practice, should be unified into a work of art, construction.
New techniques had to be used, old craft skills had to be transferred to the production of the industrial age.

Bauhaus and Werkbund shared the respect of materials and their function; usability of products became the idea that had to drive design. The General Objective was to develop an art industry.
1. Preliminary course (Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Oskar Shlemmer, by Wassily Kandinsky '22, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy '23 by Josef Albers former student). The course lasted six months, its goal was to get familiar with the matter. It undertook a total of n. 250 students.

1. Three-year teaching. Students were required to attend one of the seven workshops, lectures, elements of legal regulations, methods of representation. The course was aimed at tackle the technical and formal aspects of design. At the end of the course the student acquired the qualification of CRAFTSMAN.

The seven laboratories were: stone, clay, glass, colours, wood, metal workshop, weaving workshop

1. Advanced course. With variable duration it allowed to refine the design experience. At the end of the course the student received the qualification of MASTER OF ARTS.

Approach
1. Presence of theoretical and practical training
During the three-year two masters (craft and design) are alternated.

1. Contact with the reality of work
   School allowed students to gain money wthin laboratories, the relationship with industry, patent registration were supported.

2. Creative teachers
   Great importance was given to the selection of teachers for their personal qualities and technical skills.

Important exponent of Art Nouveau Parisian,
especially for furniture of fine cabinetry.
Rhulmann is the most important furniture maker
of the period, heir to the best tradition nationwide.
In his furniture he associated simplicity of the geometry and use of fine woods.
He shares with Le Corbusier the emphasis of the
broad masses supported by thin stems.

Hoepli Planetarium (1929-1930)
Casa Crespi in corso Venezia (1927-1930) and palazzo Crespi in piazza Crispi (1928-1932).
Albergo diurno Venezia in piazza Oberdan a Milano(1924-1926)
Case Radici-Di Stefano in via Aldrovandi, via Jan a Milano (1929-31)
Portaluppi restored the church Santa Maria delle Grazie between 1934 and 1938, and was then charged with the reconstruction (1944-1948) and restoration (1958-1959) of the sacristy designed by Bramante
Villa Necchi Campiglio (1932-1935)
Casa e Studio Portaluppi, in via Morozzo della Rocca a Milano (1935-1939)
Casa Corbellini-Wassermann in viale Lombardia a Milano (1934-1936) - Now De Carlo Gallery

Impossible to condense Gio Ponti’s complex and creative activity and his contribution to the history of design, architecture, manufacturing, ceramics, interior decoration, graphic and magazine.
We can report some remarkable topics:

1. Richard Ginori artistic direction 1923 (ceramics/porcelain)
2. Establishment/foundation of DOMUS magazine 1928
3. ‘Domus Nova’ furniture for Rinascente* 1927
4. ‘Littoria Tower’ 1933 (see Triennale Palace)
5. Furniture for Transatlantic produced by Cassina 1950 (cooperation with Piero Fornasetti)
6. Production as architect (see Villa Arreaza, Caracas)
7. Compasso d’oro award 1954 sponsored by Rinascente
8. Pirelli Skyscaraper 1954
9. His house Via Dezza 1957
10. ‘Superleggera’ chair by Cassina 1957

Son of a carpenter of humble origins. It was at his father's carpentry shop that Rietveld had his first work experience, which proved to be particularly formative as it allowed him to come into contact with the world of building materials.

After Rietveld continued his training by attending evening courses in architectural design at the Museum of Applied Arts in Utrecht, even opening his own workshop in 1918.

The famous Rood Blauwe, the red and blue chair, was made during this period, between 1917 and 1918. This artefact was particularly close to the poetics of De Stijl, a movement to which Rietveld adhered in 1919.
Admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, it was not until 1924, however, that the architect created his authentic masterpiece, the Schröder house, a building in which the most pregnant principles of the Modern Movement were crystallized.

Born in 1898, he graduated from the Polytechnic School of Helsinki in 1921, and married in 1924 Aaino Marsio with whom he began an intensive work collaboration.

His training as a cabinetmaker/carpenter was initially characterized by an eclectic and historicist taste (reinforced by the knowledge of different cultures figurative retrieved when traveling in Europe) with a strong enthusiasm for crafts and design.

In 1929 he won the competition for the Sanatorium in Paimio, opened in 1933, In 1939 he went for the first time in America and designed the Finnish Pavilion.

In 1935 he founded with Aaino and Marie Gullischen
Artek for the production of wooden furniture.
The company is located in Helsinki.

The streamline is a representative style of the history
of American industrial design in the Twentieth Century. It started at the end of the Twenties with the research on aerodynamic shapes.

The most representative designers of the streamlining are Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes.

Speed was the essence of the modern age and the shape which was most conductive to speed was the ovoid, or tear-drop.

The aerodynamics in Streamline also affects the range of goods, household products and consumer goods; modernity, progress, efficiency, cleanliness and glamour.

In addition to the best-known designers, many others experimented with the Streamline in the commercial world, sports, home and leisure.

Henry Dreyfuss began in 1923 his professional career as a designer. In 1929 he opened his own design studio, working with Bell Telephone.

His work is characterized by sculptural forms,
which will become models for the American streamline, the aerodynamic restyling that will be distinctive of the '30s, a great success with the American public, obsessed with social immobility produced by the economic crisis.

Dreyfuss is a versatile person, he also designed a train and a particular vehicle, a hybrid between a car and a plane.

The major theoretical contribution of Dreyfuss to the discipline of industrial design are the Studies on anthropometry, branch of anthropology that deals with the measurement of the human body and its parts.

Bel Geddes opened an industrial-design studio in 1927, and designed a wide range of commercial products, from cocktail shakers to commemorative medallions to radio cabinets.

His concepts are futuristic: a teardrop-shaped automobile. The pavilion he designed for General Motors at the fair in New York in 1939 was important. He remained idealistic and independent designer.
His office closed after the Second World War.

In the book titled Horizons (1932) he presented a dynamic concept of progress, the idea of creating an environment for all, improved physically and aesthetically. His research contributed greatly to the spread of the style through projects of aerodynamic futuristic aircraft, ships and vehicles , compact and linear volumes.

Bel Geddes produced many proposals for models of Chrysler vehicles, for color studies, with renewed forms and patterns. Bel Geddes also designed an innovative product gas cooker by Standard Gas Equipement Corporation SGE in 1932: around 100 models were replaced with twelve basic unified elements.

During the ’30s, Bel Geddes office developed the consumer research: surveys on products preferences of consumers and dealers through interviews and questionnaires.

General Motors pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1939 by N.B. Geddes

3,300 m² Futurama exhibition transported fair visitors over a huge diorama of a section of the United States that was designed with a stunning array of miniature highways, towns, 500.000 individually designed homes, 50.000 miniature vehicles, waterways, and a million miniature trees of diverse species .

French designer (1893-1986), active mainly in the United States. He was born and studied in Paris. He moved to New York in 1919.

In 1929 he got the first real working commission as an industrial designer: then worked for the Hupmobile (Hupp) and the Coldspot refrigerator for Sears-Roebuck.

In the mid-30's he opened a design studio in London. In 1937, Loewy was contacted by the Pennsylvania Railroad, to work for the modernization of some locomotives streamline style.

Loewy designed for the PRR:
  - The K4 Pacific (aerodynamic shell);
  - Broadway Limited (1938, luxury train: Loewy designed carriages);
  - The experimental S1 locomotive
  - Restyling of Baldwin diesel locomotives (giving a snout shark);
  - The interior, stations, brochures and other products for the PRR

W. D. Teague was born in 1883, studied typography and lithography in New York, and later worked in the field of graphic design.

After visiting the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925 he decided to abandon its traditional style and to undertake the design of consumer goods and mass production, according to him, it was more appropriate to the “era of the machines”

In 1926 Eastman Kodak Co. asked Teague to redesign the “Box Brownie” camera.
Teague created an innovative camera body with soft, plastic, for the first time gave a clear identity to the “modern” photographic equipment.

One of the many aspects of the career of Teague is his activity in the field of corporate identities, with clients such as Kodak and Ford Motor Company.
In 1945 he began fruitful cooperation with Boeing, which includes the interior design for many of the models.

The name comes from Art Deco comes form Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925.
Within the exibition the Pavillion de l'Esprit Nouveau by Le Corbusier and the Hotel du Collectionneur by Pierre-Emile Rhulmann were shown, among others.
The style includes works very different from one another, from creations
By designer René Lalique to modernist works by Robert Mallet-Stevens.
The style was very successful in America and influenced the design of Skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building in New York (1928/30)

Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture.

Charles Eduard Jeanneret was born in Switzerland at the Chaux de Fond in 1887.
He worked in the Perret’s studio and then in the Peter Behrens’ one.

Since 1929 he directed the magazine titled Esprit Nouveau, founded in 1920, in which the theories of Purism were set. Purism proposed a hierarchy based on geometric shapes corresponding to the golden section and color scales.

With the Esprit Nouveau pavilion, in the heart of the Great Exhibition of 1925, Le Corbusier marked the more evident breaking point with the Art Nouveau.
He theorized and declared a new trend also
in the way to organize domestic interiors.
He designed, in a small sized space, a domestic interior furnished using the maximum available space, as much as possible components and fittings unified serial production.

His intention was to show how, by virtue of the selective principle (standardization applied to mass-production), industry creates pure forms; and the result of it was to stress the intrinsic value of this pure form.

Secondly to show the radical transformations and structural liberties reinforced concrete and steel allow us to envisage in urban housing - in other words that a dwelling can be standardized to meet the needs of men whose lives are standardized.

And thirdly to demonstrate that these comfortable and elegant units of habitation, these practical machines for living in, could be combined in long, lofty blocks of villa-flats.

At the beginning of her professional career she was acclaimed by critics for her Bar under the roof, exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1927 and constructed entirely in nickel-plated copper and anodized aluminium.

In the same year, when she was just twenty-four years old, she began a decade-long collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, at the famous design studios at 35, rue de Sèvres in Paris.
Her presence in the Le Corbusier studio is visible in all the furnishings designed with him and with Pierre Jeanneret.

In her creations she manages to animate the fundamental substance of daily life with new aesthetic values: in particular her talent and intuition in the discovery and use of new materials manifest themselves to their full extent.

In 1926 a group of architects, coming from the Politecnico di Milano, Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Gino Pollini, Carlo Enrico Rava, Giuseppe Terragni and Adalberto Libera, formed the “Gruppo 7".
The group was officially formed only in 1930, under the name MIAR (Italian Movement for Rational Architecture).

Principles:
Democratization of the Project - "Home for All"
Simplification and rationalisation of the project
Use fewer resources to distribute more: "Less is more" (Mies Van Der Rohe)
Industrialization and mass production as a means
Industrial Materials vs Custom Design Le Corbusier's "living machine" concept

Other major exponents: Edoardo Persico, Giuseppe Pagano, Piero Bottoni, Gabriele Mucchi, studio BBPR (Belgioioso, Banfi, Peressutti, Rogers), Ignazio Gardella, Franco Albini, Giancarlo Palanti

Albini is one of the leading figures in the development of rationalist thought in architecture, interior design and industrial design.

He graduated in architecture at the Milan Polytechnic in 1929, and joined the studio of Ponti and Lancia. Key to the development of his thought is the collaboration with the magazines Casabella and Domus: there is his definitive conversion to the rationalism of which he became spokesman in Italy.

In 1931 he opened his first studio in Milan and started to work on social housing. Such research will continue even after the war thanks to the opportunities offered by the reconstruction, working, since 1952, with Franca Helg.

By the Modern Movement draws an extraordinary capacity for synthesis practice, as applied to manufactured concrete reality as ethereal in conception.

In October 1939 Giuseppe Pagano wrote a long and passionate article in the magazine Casabella dedicated to the realization of Villa Pestarini (1938) in Milan by Franco Albini. Pagano captures in Albini's work that unique understanding between "the fantasy of art and the reality of the craft" which Gio Ponti would later call "fantasy of precision".

A game of balances between technique, form and poetry.

Albini's research towards the "substance of form" is the result of a rigorous design method and a deep knowledge of the materials used.
Wood, a natural and traditional material, will represent for Albini perhaps the most prolific means of expression given by a deep knowledge of the technical and formal properties of the material in a perfect balance between innovation and tradition.

At the end of the 1950s the research theme that the Albini-Helg duo were exploring was the reinterpretation of metal pipes inspired by prefabricated scaffolding. The metal tube became the support structure for fittings, as in the projects of the Salone d'Onore of the X Triennale (1954) or for lighting fixtures (lamps series AM-AS produced by Sirrah, 1968).

Research that finds its most recognized application in the great "programmatic" project of Line 1 of the Milan Metro in 1964, where the same curvature of the tubular "Tre Pezzi" returns in the design of the iconic handrail of the metro as proof of the breadth of Albini's design vision.

Interconnection between industrial design scale and architectural scale

Danish architect (1902-71).
In 1929 he won a Danish Architect's Association competition for designing the "House of the Future" which was built full scale at the subsequent exhibition in Copenhagen's Forum. In 1929 he opened his own design studio in Hellerup. Then he moved to Sweden where, during the war, he worked in the design of tapestries and fabrics. Then he returned home and participated in numerous competitions.

His early works were influenced by Le Corbusier, Gunnar Asplund and other great architects of the Modern Movement, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

His first major project was the architecture of the Bella Vista complex in Copenhagen (1934) and the house of functionalist Rothenborg Ordrup (1930)

The architect Arne Jacobsen was distinguished for knowledge of techniques of industrial production.
He began to deal with furniture already in the thirties.

Eero Saarinen was born in Finland in 1920 and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1923.

Son of the architect Eliel Saarinen (author of the most important railway stations in Helsinki) he studied sculpture in Paris and architecture at Yale before working on furniture design with Norman Bel Geddes and in architecture with his father.

At Cranbrook Institute of Architetcure and Design (Michigan, US), of which his father was a director, Eero met Charles Eames with whom he collaborated on several works of "furniture design". Like Eames, he was devoted to research on new technologies in the use of materials, particularly in the molding of glass fiber.

In 1950 he opened his studio in Bloomfield Hills.
Among the many buildings for which he is known are Dulles International Airport in Washington DC, the United States Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, better known as the Gateway Arch in Missouri, and the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport in New York (ended posthumously in 1962).
He died in 1961.

Charles Ormond Eames, Jr. (1907–1978) and Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Kaiser Eames (1912–1988) are among the most important American designers of the last century. They are known for their innovative contributions to architecture, furniture design, industrial and manufacturing design, and the photographic art.

In 1946, they were involved in an exhibition of experimental moulded plywood furniture at the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In 1948, Charles and Ray Eames took part at the "Low-Cost Furniture Competition" at MoMA,

in 1949 designed and built their home in Pacific Palisades, California, as part of the Case Study House Program sponsored by Arts and Architecture Magazine. The particular project and the use of innovative materials, make this house one of the most important residences after the war in the world.

The influence of Charles and Ray Eames was fundamental to the development of the company Vitra. The activity of this famous design brand, began in 1957 with the production of the models of Eames.

Charles died in 1978, while Ray ten years later. Today the studio and the House still exist and are run by Lucia Eames, the daughter of Charles.

1769 James Watt first patents for the steam engine
In 1781 he developed the "second steam engine" with Boulton.
1777 first all-metal bridge, first metal boat
1782 Montgolfier's first balloon
1793 Appert develops a sterilization system to preserve food
1800 A. Volta tunes the battery
1802 Trevithick builds the first steam locomotive on rails.

The first sector to take the path of mechanization was spinning.
Introduction: economic power struggle
Indian companies vs wool industries
Importing beautifully varied and economical fabrics against in-house production of limited and expensive fabrics

• 1730 John Kay introduces the flying shuttle patented in 1738 on the manual chassis.
• 1733 John Wyatt the first mechanically spun cotton yarn
• 1748 Lewis Paul patents mechanical carding machine
• 1764 James Hargreaves (patent 1770) giannetta spinner (spinning jenny)
• 1769 Sir Richard Arkwright patents hydraulic spinning machine for cotton industry
• 1779 Samuel Crompton invents the spinning mule (mule jenny)
• 1785 Wyatt's "second steam machine" is applied in a spinning mill
• 1805 J.-M. Jacquard patents the perforated card frame

Industrial Revolution around the first half of the 18th century (1720-1740)

"Steam is an Englishman"

The first to talk about the Industrial Revolution were Friedrich Engels and the economist John Stuart Mill between 1845 and 1848.
But the expression was introduced by Marx and came into common use after the publication in 1884 of Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England.

Karl Marx: in the Capital: "When John Wyatt, in 1735, announced his spinning machine (the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century began)".

Fundamental dates:
1776 Proclamation of Independence of the United States.
1789 French Revolution
1803 Napoleon Emperor of the French
1815 Napoleon's defeat, Vienna congress

1750 J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur la science et les arts.

1847 D. Joy designed the Jenny Lind locomotive for London, Brighton and South Coast Railways, which had a bodywork that integrated the various components of the car.

from Winckelmann to Schinkel, last great unitary style

sign of: regional autonomies, curiosity and interest in different forms, cultural heterogeneity brought by market expansions – Victorian Style
1833 The architect G. Valadier published Opere di architettura e ornamento, a collection of architecture in style that contributed to the development of eclecticism for the vulgarization of historical forms

From Pugin to Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc.
Among the historicist researches, it is a proposal aimed at defining a rational and coherent project to make constructive. Definitely against eclecticism.
1827 In England the theorist and designer A. Pugin, designed furniture in neo-Gothic style for King George IV.
1836 and the polemical text Contrasts by the Englishman August Welby Pugin, architect of the London Parliament (1839), which is ironic about the confusion of the amalgamation of styles in an eclectic vision. For this reason, he proposes the Gothic style as the ideal one for aesthetic quality and coherence of the rational design of the building. In this work Pugin questions the functions of objects, and these rationalist theories were to influence William Morris and John Ruskin in England and Eugéne Viollet-le-Duc in France.

William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites
Handicraft for all

Jules Chéret (1836 – 1932)
Chéret can be considered the first of the modern poster designers, was a great interpreter of the
atmosphere of his time, developing a new relationship between the verbal and the iconic part
of the poster.
He exalts the grace and movement of the figures: the role of the text diminishes further and leads
the viewer to concentrate mainly on the visual aspects of the poster.

Henri de Toulouse-­Lautrec (1864 – 1901)
Toulouse-Lautrec, who was the first affichiste to approach this technique with the clear intention of making it a new independent art form.
His works are characterized by a strong interest in the female figure, which he portrays with a clear, fast, nervous sign, but always managing with a few essential lines to immediately define its essence. He takes from Japanese prints the use of large colour backgrounds and landscapes are just mentioned to bring out the central character in all its psychological and narrative dimension.

Alfons Maria Mucha (1860 – 1939)
Illustration of books and magazines, posters, posters and programs for theatres (those famous for Sarah Bernhardt, 1894) according to the taste of the Jugendstil.

The themes detectable in works of art of the Futurism Movement found in the Industrial Revolution their creative energy.

However, they do not show directly the technological innovations or changes
in formal and aesthetic environment of their age, instead they show the deep effects of novelty interiorized in society at that time.

Speed, light and movement are some of the main topics mentioned in the futurist works.
The representation of reality is based on the fragmentation of actions and elements from the logic of industrial production.

Kazimir Severinovič Malevič (1879-1935) in 1913 met a group of artists and poets interested in taking a more philosophical and theoretical approach to art.
The theory espoused by Krucherykh and Khlebnikov of the ‘self-sufficient world’ influenced Malevich enormously. The notion of ‘zaum’ was promoted, a state where experience occurs beyond the naturally perceived world. This concept and his work for the Cubo-Futurist opera ‘Victory Over The Sun’ (1913) propelled Malevich into the style of Suprematism.

Best shown by works such as ‘Black Square’ (1915) and ‘Black Cross’. Suprematism reduced abstract painting to a previously unheard of geometrical simplicity. His work at this time ranged from the austere with his ‘White on White’ series to the colourful such as in ‘Yellow Parallelogram on White’ (1917).

Novecento was an Italian artistic movement born in Milan at the end of 1922 and foundend by a group of artists composed of Mario Sironi, Achille Funi, Leonardo Dudreville, Anselmo Bucci, Emilio Malerba, Pietro Marussig and Ubaldo Oppi, all linked to the Pesaro Gallery. Than other artist adhered to the movement like Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico,  Giorgio Morandi and Arturo Martini.
These artists, who felt they were translators of the spirit of the twentieth century, came from different artistic experiences and currents, but linked by a common sense of "return to order" in art after the avant-garde experiments, especially Futurism.
This “order” derived also by a growing influence of the Fascist regime over the cultural and artistic context.

1776 Proclamation of Independence of the United States.
1789 French Revolution
1803 Napoleon Emperor of the French
1815 Napoleon's defeat, Congress of Vienna, the Restoration

Determining factors:

• Phantasmagoria of the commodity (Walter Benjamin)
• Exhibition as a department store
• (this will influence the emergence of large distribution centres)
• Meeting-competition of different production, technical and aesthetic levels of the different participating countries
• Exhibition of "exotic" goods from the colonies (great influence on taste)
• Great architecture in iron and glass

During the Great Depression, nearly 100 million visitors flocked to world’s fairs in six American cities: Chicago, San Diego, Cleveland, Dallas, San Francisco, and New York.

They experienced a golden future promised in displays that celebrated modernity, technology, and scientific innovation.
This breath-taking vision of tomorrow was made possible through an unprecedented collaboration among business leaders, architects, and industrial designers.

In the midst of the worst depression ever to strike the United States, the world’s fairs were more than spectacle.
Fairs helped to establish the tradition of mass marketing and consumer culture of the American life.

Chicago’s exhibition in 1933 was called “Century of Progress”

New York’s was “Building the World of Tomorrow” in 1939

1751 First volume of the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and D'Alembert. A total of XVII volumes up to 1772, accompanied by XI volumes of plates. Additional volumes were published until 1780.
The mechanical arts are illustrated in detail in a series of articles which constitute a rational and scientific treatise on the trades.
In 1818 it became the national and special school of drawing, mathematics, architecture and ornamental sculpture applied to the industrial arts.
In 1877 it became the National School of Decorative Arts.
1794 The Ecole Polytechnique was founded in Paris.

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical.

The Roaring Twenties was a decade of economic growth and widespread prosperity, driven by recovery from wartime devastation and deferred
spending, a boom in construction, and the rapid growth of consumer goods such as automobiles and electricity in North America and Europe.
The Lost Generation was composed of young people who came out of World War I disillusioned and cynical about the world.
The term usually refers to American literary notables who lived in Paris at the time.
Famous members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.
Cinema and Radio
Jazz Age and Dance