The Modern Interior

(Wang) #1

universalizing and rationalizing aspects of the movement, focusing


primarily on its architectural achievements. A second trajectory, more


visible in France than in Germany, emphasized the decorative aspects of


the movement and the quest for an appropriate modern form of decora-


tion for the modern age. A couple of decades later the Modernist architects


and designers were to reject decoration, however, seeing it as synonymous


with nineteenth-century bourgeois domesticity and social aspiration.


Ironically, though, given their clear and frequently articulated distaste


for the interior, several of them had begun their careers in that field. Le


Corbusier, for example, had worked as a decorator in his native Chaux-


de-Fonds, when he was still known as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.^11 The


salon he created for the Jeanneret-Perret residence in 1912 was highly


dependent upon the language of nineteenth-century bourgeois domes-


ticity featuring, as it did, patterned rugs and wallpaper, draped curtains,


items of antique furniture and ornaments on the mantelpiece. The


German Modernist architect, Walter Gropius, had also worked on a


number of interior projects in his early career, among them an advocate’s


consulting room in Berlin in 1910. His introduction of leather-uphol-


stered, padded furniture gave that space the appearance of a traditional 93


The living room in the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, designed by Le Corbusier (then Charles-
Edouard Jeanneret), 1912.

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