ABSTRACT
What prevailed by the dawn of the 20th century is an acceptance of the machine’s necessity for furniture design and production. As the Modern style took hold what dictated is one of functional design for machine production and contemporary living. To understand modern furniture contextually it is necessary to have background on modern architecture and some of its early movements which had impact on other aspects of the built environment including furniture design. Between about 1890 and the 1920s a number of positions emerged which claimed ‘modernity’ as a chief attribute and by the 1930s it seemed as if a broad consensus had at last been achieved even if notion and significance of ‘modernity’ differed from place to place. However, the essential pre-conditions included the mechanization of the city, the introduction of new materials, experimental clients, and creative architects, intent on expressing the new state of things in spaces and forms are consistent. The “pictorial timeline” pieces focus on three movements essential to Modernism, Deutscher Werkbund, Bauhaus, De Stijl, International Style. After completing the chapter the reader will decide which pieces to document and using the Analysis of Form: Nine-Step Methodology will begin the graphic analysis for the chapter.
