The Modern Interior

Lichtblau; a baker’s shop in Stockholm by Eskil Sundahl; and a shoe shop
by Jock D. Peters in Los Angeles. In private residences, however, tubular
steel was for the most part reserved for private bars, smoking rooms and
studies, a reinforcement of the material’s inherent masculinity. Only a
very small number of living rooms were graced by its presence.
As well as playing a strongly visual, material and spatial role within
Modernist interiors the emphasis of mass-produced artefacts in inter -
iors also reflected the ideological face of that movement. The Modernist
interior was proposed as a solution to the problem of the ‘minimum
dwelling’, that is to the possibility of low income families being able to
live their lives in a basic, utilitarian environment. 14 In that context the
inclusion of low-priced, standardized, mass-produced artefacts formed
part of many Modernist architects’ social agendas. A narrow line separated
object standardization in the interior from the standardization
of the interior itself. Indeed, in the context of the minimum dwelling, the
entire interior could itself be seen as a ‘model’ or a ‘prototype’ that could
be replicated. The British architect Wells Coates’s version of the ‘minimal
flat’ was not directed at the less well-off, however, but rather at people
with modern, mobile lifestyles who didn’t want to be tied down by an
excess of material possessions. The interior of the Isokon Minimum Flat
The Isokon Minimum Flat, designed by Wells Coates and exhibited at London’s Exhibition
of British Art in Relation to the Home, 1933.
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