Design for living: German and Swedish design in the early twentieth century.

摘要

"Home" conceptually contrasts Le Corbusier's maxim: "The house is a machine for living in." How does design for living navigate between necessary economic efficiency and human needs for home? Does the idea of home take a backseat to the concept of housing? Discourse surrounding design for housing and furnishings in Germany and Sweden, beginning with Gropius and the Bauhaus, moving through Ahren and 1930's Stockholm Exhibition, and later culminating in IKEA forms the dissertation's trajectory. As introduction, Heidegger's Age of the World Picture demonstrates how Functionalism renders people as objects in space rather than as living, and Herrnstein-Smith's Contingencies of Value and utility concept are brought to bear on design. Meanings and usages of "functionalism" and "functionalist" in design discourse are treated. Used pejoratively, designating building unworthy of the name Architecture, nonetheless "Funktionalismen" is adopted as a term for Swedish designs for 1930's Stockholm Exhibition. "Functionalism" in positive valence referred to design serving to improve everyday life through rationalization of planning, materials, and building techniques. Chapter 2 treats the revolutionary Bauhaus art instruction that Gropius instituted, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, their influence on students, and internal conflicts produced. Gropius's foundational rhetoric proposing unity of arts culminating in architecture is loaded with mysticism and longing for medieval craftsmanship, but by 1923 he espouses "Art and Technology, a New Unity." Chapter 3 examines 1923 Bauhaus exhibition objects: Keler's "Wiege," and Muche's "Haus am Horn." Chapter 4 treats Sweden's foundational design texts and Stockholm's Exhibition. Byggmastaren provides insight into architectural discourse, with accounts by Ahren and Markelius of the influential German 1927 Weissenhof Exhibition and Dessau-Torten housing. Chapter 5 inspects post-1933 architectural discourse, the Nazi's Bauhaus elimination, Mies van der Rohe's complicity attempt, wartime "Behilfsheim", and Social-Democratic Swedish debates regarding architecture and politics. Ahren writes 1942's Architecture and Democracy, abandoning Marxist rhetoric while maintaining Architecture implies political commitment. The "Folkhem" [people's home] concept guided Social Democratic architects; socio-economic need studies would yield Architectural democracy. IKEA concludes the dissertation, selling more than furniture in an idea of home. While German design retains elite connotations, Swedish design, in IKEA, retains broader democratic appeal.