ABSTRACT
The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century witnessed a new approach towards the design of the visual, material and spatial world. The growing dissatisfaction with conspicuous consumption on the part of an international group of progressive architects and designers, and their belief that the rationalism of engineering provided a better basis on which to move forward than the commercial pragmatism of the capitalist marketplace, underpinned a sudden and dramatic revision of the principles that had long determined the role of the decorative arts. The group increasingly disassociated itself from the concept of decorum that had governed social and cultural life in the west for several centuries and, in a search for a new language of design, many of them rejected the idea of decoration.
