Interior Design History
We continue our anthology on the most influential 20th century masters in the field of furniture design and thus interior design.
Alvar Aalto (1898 - 1976)
Born in 1898 to a Finnish engineer and a Swedish postmistress, Alvar began his work as a young architect in his father's studio. In 1924 he made his first trip to Italy and in 1925 he married Aino Marsio, his partner at the polytechnic. In 1929 he participated in the second CIAM in Frankfurt, where he met Sigfried Giedion and came into contact with various European artists. In 1934 his furniture was exhibited in Zurich and London. The following year, he and his wife and Marie Gullischen founded their own furniture production company, Artek. Years of great creative fertilityso much so that in 1938 it deserved the great honour of having its own exhibition organised by the MOMA New York. The following year, Aalto travelled to the USA for the first time on the occasion of the New York World's Fair, supervising the design of the Finnish pavilion.
From 1945 he began his dual existence, Finnish and American. In 1947 he was commissioned to build the dormitories of the MIT student house in Boston and was awarded an honorary degree from Princeton University the same year. Aalto is also famous among the uninitiated for his Y-legthen redesigned 14 years later to resemble a fan, consisting of a series of sheets of fine plywood. His work has spanned many decades and many styles, from early classicism he passed through rationalist functionalism and then moved on to a decisive organicism in the final phase of his life. His vision is well illustrated by this statement: 'One must always seek a synthesis of opposites. Almost all design assignments comprise dozens, often hundreds, sometimes thousands of different and contradictory factors, brought together into a functional harmony only by the will of man. This harmony cannot be achieved by means other than those of Art'.
Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007)
In 1939, having just graduated from Turin Polytechnic with a degree in architecture, he was called to arms and sent to Montenegro, where he was captured and held for 6 years in a prison camp. He returned to Italy and started working with his father in 1947 in Milan. In 1957 he became art director of Poltronova, a company based in Agliana, then one of the market leaders in Italy. In 1958 he began his collaboration with Olivettiwhich was to last almost 30 years, profoundly influencing not only the style of office products, but the entire Italian industrial design. Sottsass was among the first to understand design as a tool for social criticism, in advance of the themes that would later produce the 1968 movement. In 1979 he participated, together with the Alchimi group, in the Design Forum in Linz, presenting many objects that would become classics, such as Seggiolina da pranzo, the Svincolo floor lamp and the Le strutture tremano coffee table. Sottsass's production, in over 50 years of activity, has an impressive breadth, in terms of quantity and quality, he is also one of the most influential popularizers and writers on the subject of architecture and the impact of design on mankind. He has won an incredible number of awards and prizes, including no less than four Golden Compasses. Since 1986 his works have been part of the permanent collection of MOMA New York.
Florence Knoll Bassett (1917)
Co-founder, together with her husband Hans, of one of the most iconic companies in furniture design, the Knoll. She was herself a designer and visionary entrepreneur who always knew how to surround herself with the best talents of every era. We remember among them Mies van de Rohe, Saarinen, Risom, Bertoia, Nakashima, Gerrared. In 1946 he founded the Planning Unit, one of the first firms to focus exclusively on interior design, the right idea at the right time, given the gigantic rebuilding market that was opening up in the USA and Europe at the end of World War II. Today, Knoll is one of the giants in the furniture design industry, boasting an annual turnover of more than 900 million dollars.
Jens Risom (1916-2016)
Born and raised in Copenhagen, after graduating from industrial design school he found work in a small architectural firm in Stockholm, before moving to New York in 1939. In the dynamic American city he encountered some difficulties in adapting, but in 1941 the encounter occurred that changed not only his life but the imagery of furniture design as we know it today. The collaboration with Hans Knoll was immediately very fruitful and from Risom's pencil came no less than 15 of the 20 pieces that made up the inaugural collection of a company destined for a bright future. In the 1950s, he went out on his own, founding Jens Risom Designs with which he would sign dozens more masterpieces. Risom is the first designer to bring the Scandinavian rationalist style in the very rich American market, helping to create the modernist school that radically influenced the 20th century.
Source: Wikipedia.org
