Interior Design Personal Notes

Rococó - Early Clasicism – 1720-1770

Intro: Time of poor Higiene, diseases were running across the world and the mortality
tax was very high.

Important Figure: Andrea Palladio (1504 – 1580)

Rococo was known as Louis XV in Europe and as Neopaladian in UK.

However Rococo and Neopaladian weren’t the same thing. In Europe Rococo was based
on doing things without a practical reason only for esthetics. In UK there was a more
practical approach.

Characteristics:  SHOW WEALTH

- White backgrounds
- Less gold & bright colour than in Barrock
- Plaster increased, more elaborate
- Staircases are expected, generous, welcoming guests
- Overwhelming decoration
- Symmetrical building layout
- NO CORRIDORS people should walk through all
rooms & big staircases in hall to show wealth
- Very high ceilings
- Height to do with sunlight: wall displays
- Creation & demonstration of wealth: vast amounts of
space used for staircases
- Poor heating (high ceilings)

Furniture:  Placed along the walls ≠ centre of room

- Doorways: curves still existed
- Tables: panels with intricate design
- Natural, (heavy) ornaments – finer than Barock
- Rounded legs, curves all through  fluent

Explanations: At this time there was no lights only candles.

Examples:
Louis XV and Louis XVI: Period between Rococo and
Classicism however it belongs to Classicism
Characteristics: round & column legs
- plants
- symmetric, symbolic
≠ playful
- straight lines framed,
- more rigid
- Curtain over bed for additional insulation, privacy, smoke
- Huge dimensions
- More geometric quality to furniture
- Mahogany increasingly popular
- Fluting developed as knowledge of ancient works emerged
- Ancient Greek design also became known
- The function of a decorator emerged
- Still plant symbols but symmetric and not so playful
- Symmetric
- Legs are straight and round like columns from Greeks

Examples:

Explanations: At this time there were electricity however it was very expensive to have
it therefore they used candles and the rooms were design in order to keep the light in the
room. Mirrors to reflect the light, light colors for the walls, etc.

Empire – 1770-1820
Explanation: -Move towards revolution in France caused much hardship.
-A reason for the revolution was the destruction of many jobs
- Revolution due to social imbalance
 - Craftsmanship age cam to and end  Machines
- Napoleon: centralized legislation implemented throughout the empire
- Napolean implemented trade rules for whole Europe  important for
design import/export  Code Napoleon

Important Figueres: Perciér & Fontaine: architects who worked solely for Napoleon

Characteristics: - Lots of ornaments still present

-More casual furniture settings
- Wall lighting
- Colour on ceilings
- Urban houses had corridors (compared to Rokoko houses)
because there was not so much space in urban houses – CROSS
DIAGONAL entrance to stairs
= impressive length
= wealth & functionality
- Not symmetric inside anymore (but still from outside)
- Unconstraint, much more liberal décor.
- No need anymore to have doors in centre
- Doors don’t have to be in the centre of a room anymore
- Curtains = decorative element, much more free than classicism

Examples:

Relief work:
- Plaster work still existed
- Flat ceilings & walls painted
- Painting on canvas then attached to the relief called
“Arabesques / Grotesques”. Pretend to have forms (see
next picture) = 3D wall paper painting
- Wall & ceilings covered in uninterrupted paintings
Examples:

Empire Furniture: = mixture between classicism & colonial influences

- Fantasy creatures as ends of arm rests & legs of chairs
- Chimera: winged lion
- Medusa heads
- Palmiers:
- Sphinx
- Lion’s foot as a support
- Egyptian elements in classic style  Napoleon
propaganda: he wanted to show he just beat Egypt

Examples:

Explanation: England = was on war with Napoleon & did not accept Empire style.
Mixed more with Chinese style but it was not authentic
Integrated Seliana in wall painting, reduced simple with classical elements
Scandinavia = poor countries  cheap materials, simple decoration
Late Empire
Explanation: -Empire period ends with the defeat of Napoleon
- Krakatoa erupts (1796): causes famine in Europe

Characteristics: Complete mixture of all styles, causing difficulty in unifying the whole
- Much more popular use of bathrooms
- Gothic style infused drapery & tracery on walls and
ceilings
- Comfort of new age combined with style of old age
- 18th century “the century of impeccable taste”
Bronze decorations in late Empire (not in Biedermeier):
- Real mastery
Silverware, Jewellery:
- Intricate designs
- Sauce boats, hand painted
- Cutlery
- “The” material to use
- Gold, brown, blue  Combination one would not
see before
- Bringing exotic world  Colonialism
 Matching of colours prolific
 Gold was dominant
Anything & Everything, overloaded with decoration
Empire and Gothic mix
o 3 D decorations but actually only painted
o Extravagance
o Telling stories of colonies
o Walpapers:

Examples:
Furniture: Mixture of colours & additions  blue & gold, brown
- Subtle elements / details added  black Sphinx
- Elegant combinations of colours, fabrics, and shades of
wood
- Textiles: beauty & extravagance
- Classic-Sphinx head = Empire lives with contrasts

- Palm leaves parallel to lines of fabric. Very good

- Craftsmanship. Joining element us same symbols.

- Order. Fabric & Chinz

- Make cotton look like silk

Examples:

Biedermeier
Characteristics: = modest style  Napoleon/Europe lost wars(Louis Philip):
- Modesty the order of the day
o Less disposable income
o Less availability of materials
o Form was kept but deco was gone
o Still palm leaves but reduced to 3 leaves
o No richness of colour & fabric
o Emphasize on real line of furniture, simplicity &
reduction of elements (comes back in 20th
century).
o Eg: Bed of full timber, no metals
 o Timeless furniture: firm clear lines, solid
o Shaping was more moderate = clearer
o Influence returns from Philip Sheraton & other
English furniture makers
o MAIN REASON FOR THIS STYLE
 ECONOMIC
Crisis

Historism: 50 years of Irritation

Characteristics: = copy ≠ translation
o People have more money but no education
o Gothic mixed with everything, nouveaux riches
o Too much mix – tries to resemble times that
don’t exist anymore  bad copying, overloaded

Victorian times
- Revivals:
o Baroque
o Gothic
o Neo-Palladian
o Colonies & Nouveau riche
o Mix of colours
o Picture from USA: pink chairs, overburden
carpet, too heavy

1870-1900 Aesthetic (arts & Craft Movement)

Explanations: Automobile, temporary convention/fair buildings
- Microbiology, heating , lighting
- Medical care improved:
o Development of invasive surgery
o Laboratory medicine, vaccinations
- Industrialization of the population
- Electric light: very influential in development of styles
- No more disease like TBC – new ways of healing
 -
Art: link real live & nature
o Abstract
o Impressionism
Rooms Characteristics: Too much furniture
- Edges of ceilings detailed
- Still an issue with lighting
- Density of materials an issue:
o Walls & rooms filled up. Joining rooms again
o Furniture moved into the centre – no logic
- Contrast comes with space – too dense an area ruins
balance
 Usually a large neutral colour against a
design

Example:

Arts & Crafts Furniture Characteristics: Unity begins in matching colours of different
elements, if not patterns & shapes, simple, more natural elements
- Japanese influence begins
o Proportions
o Straighter lines
- Movement towards a freer shape
- Producers of curved chairs
- Industrialized production
- The typical café chairs
- Why still successful today?
- String relation between health, living & interior design

Explanation: Atmosphere & Expression, Light & Openness by bending wood with
steam  new technol.
Thonet was granted a patent for his process for bending wood laminates in 1842, having
produced chairs in his workshop in Austria since 1819. They are still popular for both
traditional and modern interiors and used extensively in cafes in Europe and Australia, in
Australia we called them "Vienna" Chairs. Le Corbusier and Josef Hoffman used Thonet
chairs in their interiors from the 1920's.

Japanese Influence means: “An empty space is not a void.”

- CHARLES MACINTOSH: tall chair
- Brings Asian craft to Europe
 Uniformity
 Elegance
- Lighting
- Clarity of Japanese space into furniture
- Art Nouveau: Integration of natural shapes with natural
elements (plants in abstract form)
- From curtains to chairs, all is Art Nouveau
- “Tiffany” style
o Bright colour schemes
o Japanese wall papers
o French Art Nouveau: Extreme light, Geometry

Example:

1890-1910 End of Century hotels Lac Leman

Characteristics:
H-design
-Fashionable to place hotel on lakeshore, with maximum # of rooms facing the
lake
- Accentuated plan
- Followed contours of hill to give all guests good view
- Poor design in terms of logistics
- Single corridor system
- Rooms only on one side
- Classical facades
- Columns
 - Greek elements
- Dense facades
 Eg: Montreux Palace:
 Many elements that all belonged
to same period
- Standard materials (eg: wrought iron railings)
contrasted with precious materials
-

Example:

Rooms furniture:
o Few elements
o One main column
o Straight plaster elements
o Reddish brown furniture
o Rococo table & chair
o Empire impression
o Bathroom:
 Remnants of classical
elements
 At the same time it is
modern
o Curtains
 “ Easy Classical”
- Crystal chandeliers & electric
lighting
- Halogen lighting not yet present
 Straight lines of white walls & ceilings
off-set with disordered black curtains
 Screens blocking entrance: preserving
peace & quiet for diners & the balance
for other tables
 Steel frames
  Large windows
1890-1910 Art Nouveau & Gaudi
Explanations:
- Natural colours
- Natural shapes, round, curves
- Japanese influence
- Helped clear up space
- Light colours
- No gold,
- Only few elements within furniture is intricate
- Fashionable to have brick-work in living room
- Furniture is integrated in room
- Austria: Vienna Sezession style  back to essential,
clear room, straight lines (close to Mackintosh and
Glasgow school). Junction betw. rococo & art nouveau
- France: round shapes (Chez Maxime restaurant in Paris:
gold, fine hand crafts, symmetry & non-symmetry).
Style with consistency  romantic, elegance
- CONNECT FURNITURE IN A FLUENT WAY WITH
BUILDING BREAKING SYMETRY  Consistency!
Parisien Art Nouveau:
- More elaborate
- Different, not as independent as Austrian Sezessoin
style
- Slim lines opening to plant – like shapes on doors.
“Organic Influence”

Antonio Gaudi:
- Move into Gothic, classic shapes (Doric)
- Unique: never copied, renewed it = translate in own
style
- Take elements from a modern point of view
- Not related to time, dreamlike
- Ergonomic features – related to human body shape  L5
chair = 5th spiral need support
- Transaction between end of column and ceiling: this
part is new but still related to classicism & gothic 
Reference but NOT COPY!
- Expert in using contrasting materials: Metal & stone
work

-Lower balcony embracing building

 -Upper ones are individual, separate, with organic
features
-Roof: like a reptile: tiles set like scales

Important Examples: Casa Battlo------------La pedrera----------------Sagrada Familia

1910-1933 Bauhaus & De Stijl

-
Explanations: Germany, artistic initiatives ended abruptly by fascists
- WW1 & Spanish Pocks: 10 million lives lost including
many artists & painters, Great Depression -
Unemployment
- Chinese Flu: 10 million lives lost, old & young
- Golden twenties followed by the fascists, Black Friday
- Influenced by the new way of constructing houses:
Prefabricated elements
- Technology allows to make it simple & elegant (Marcel
Breuer chair)
- Reduction to the lamp – neutral situation
- Architecture influenced by Philosophy, Art,
Culture….

Important Personalities: Mies van de Rohe (Less is more = Bauhaus school)

** Members of the Bauhaus wanted make style & arts accessible to everyone!

Johannes Itten:
- Large influence on teaching & students at the Bauhaus
- Teaching concept like an onion: beginning outside with
elementary skills to learn shapes & space, and moving
inwards towards more complicated subjects
- Furniture & interiors are not static, they are influenced
by the people & events within the space

Itten also discovered that color harmony is quite

individual, and that an individual will, if given
free reign and a little knowledge; find his or her
own "subjective colors."  To prove his theory,
Itten first taught his students about color in
general, and then asked his students to develop
their own palette of subjective colors. He found
that there was great variety not only in the
colors chosen, but also in the ranges of colors. 
"There are subjective combinations in which one
hue dominates quantitatively, all tones having
accents of red, or yellow, or blue, or green or
violet, so that one is tempted to say that such-
and-such person sees the world in a red, yellow
or blue light. It is as if he saw everything
through tinted spectacles, perhaps with
thoughts and feelings correspondingly colored."

De Stijl & Bauhaus:

An art movement advocating pure abstraction and
simplicity -- form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and color to the
primary colors, along with black and white.

Piet Mondrian:
- Architect & painter
- Development of a constructionist framework
- Going abstract using nature as a base
- Wants to look at the essential

Gray Tree 1911

Mill in sunlight 1908
"Intense involvement with living things is
involvement with death. If you follow nature,
wrote Mondrian in 1920, you have to accept 'whatever
is capricious and twisted in nature'. If the capricious is beautiful, it is also tragic: 'If you
follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic to any real degree in your art.

“ Only balanced elements can contribute to the tragedy of today’s art.”

Rietfeld Chair by Mondrain:

Reduction to the plane

Berlin chair

Gropius House, Lincoln,

MA, 1938  1926, already had Control Air Exchange

Gropius: Bauhaus,
Dessau, 1925-26
Note on corridors:
- Rococo had no corridors
- Later there were many, with lots of traffic ways
- Bauhaus floor plan = centralized corridor, minimal
waste of space

Characteristics of Chairs: Purity

- Steel
- Consitency

three elements combined (connect with Arnie Jacobson)

- Compare to Rietfeld chair – connection of different

planes

- Flat steel, not only tubes

- Continuous line
- Stuffed tube with sand to bend it
- Barcelona chair – no L5 (Ackertslume knick)
- Barcelona Pavilion 1928

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