The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art – Henry van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept

2 Hannes Meyer, “Co-op Interior,” 1926.
This paring down to essentials has important social repercussions in Meyer’s formulation.
“Because of the standardization of his needs as regards housing, food,
and mental sustenance,” Meyer argues, “the semi-nomad of our modern productive
system has the benefit of freedom of movement, economies, simplification
and relaxation,” while “the degree of our standardization is an index of our communal
productive system.” 18 The result, Meyer suggests, is “true community.” This
proposed outcome—community achieved through the provision of all basic needs
within a single unit intended to ease a condition of heightened mobility—is a similar
effect to what later occurred among the occupants of the Isokon Flats; it would
be echoed in numerous modernists’ designs, from the 1930s well into the postwar
period, including Archigram’s propositions for fully serviced, completely nomadic,
plug-in units.
Other texts published in same period, such as the Czech Karel Teige’s 1932 book
The Minimum Dwelling, show how widespread the issue was. He defined the “minimum
dwelling” as “the central problem of modern architecture and the battle cry
of today’s architectural avant-garde … it sheds light on a situation that has reached
a point requiring the radical reform and modernization of housing.” 19 Like Hannes
Meyer, Teige saw in “embryonic form a new conception in the culture of dwelling”
linking architectural form to social content, whereby “particular types of small
apartments, such as those with a live-in kitchen, a small kitchen, or a living room
68 Existenzminimum as Gesamtkunstwerk