Minimalist Design: Why is Less Still More?
The world of interior design has changed dramatically over the last 60 years. Trends in home improvements have come and gone. We’ve witnessed the garish opulence of the 1970s, with its plywood-panelled walls, shag pile carpets and liberal clashes of geometric patterns in bizarre colour combinations. We’ve had the neon, pink, grey, pastel, flame stitch, chrome and glass flash of the preppy 1980s. And we’ve seen mash-up re-runs of both those styles in the PoMo, anything-goes 1990s, where stylistic innovations in interior design slowed to a near standstill before the turn of the new Millennium.
One style, however, has outlasted them all. And now, as our lives become increasingly less encumbered by clutter in the digital age, it has never felt more relevant. It might be said to be a facet of the style we refer to as Mid-Century Modern (though it clearly exists as one of the most important movements of the 20th Century, in and of itself) and it is defined, somewhat ironically, by the very absence of stuff that makes it so desirable to us as consumers: Minimalism.
Untitled, 1966/68, by Donald Judd
A brief history of the Minimalist movement
Beginning in the 1960s, initially as a reaction to the Abstract Expressionism of the Modern era and its focus on the automatic in artistic creation, Minimalism turned its attentions to the exposition of technique and what it saw as the essential characteristics of practice – often in dramatic repetition and barely perceptible variation – in order to lay bare meaning in its most pure, unembellished state.
In the visual arts, it was represented by practitioners such as reluctant Minimalist Donald Judd who spent almost 30 years establishing a dialogue between simplistic forms by exploring the space within which they sat in various repetitions.
In music, practitioners such as avant-gardist La Monte Young explored the transformative power of drone music (which he called “dream music”), drawing on the meditative techniques of Indian classic music and presented as part of multimedia collaborations known as the Theatre of Eternal Music.
And in film, Minimalism came into its own in the films of French director Robert Bresson whose severe self-discipline resulted in films like A Man Escaped, which eschewed any semblance of the spectacular in order to place the viewer as close to the moment of action as possible by drawing out sequences and making the laborious actions of the characters equally hard work for the viewer.
The reception to these raw, naked expressions of technique was shocking to the media and the masses and had a revolutionary impact on culture, forcing post-War populations to re-evaluate their place in the world and how they interacted with it. And nowhere was it more immediately apparent than in the design and decoration of the buildings within which they chose to make their homes.
Gerrit Rietveld's experimental Schröder House, an icon of the De Stijl movement, a key influence on the Minimalists
Minimalist design and architecture
One major influence for Minimalist architecture was a Dutch art movement called De Stijl (tr. The Style) or Neoplasticism, which – in a rejection of the “Modern Baroque” style of Dutch Expressionist architecture – constrained architectural design to the use of straight lines, blocky geometric shapes and clear primary colours. Early Minimalists (many emerging from Japan, themselves) also looked to the sliding doors, sparse, fluid, shape-shifting interiors and Zen philosophy of traditional Japanese architecture for inspiration in an attempt to offset the ensuing chaos of post-War city life by returning upon it a more tranquil aesthetic.
It was the German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, however, who first adopted the phrase “less is more” in relation to the built environment (though it is said to originate in an 1855 poem by Robert Browning called Andrea del Sarto). As the last director of the Bauhaus (the seminal school in Modernist architecture), Mies van der Rohe’s approach saw him arranging only the essential components of buildings in order to create the effect of extreme simplicity and his tactic was to ensure that every element and detail of his designs served only to add functional value to the dweller, both externally and internally.
His famed Farnsworth house, with its elevated rectangular shape, set amidst a protective arboretum of maple, linden and walnut trees, may be said to have set the benchmark for Minimalist residential architecture, exploring as it does the relationship between people, nature and shelter in the sparsest, most functional manner possible. And subsequent practitioners who followed in his footsteps over the following decades, such as Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima and British architect John Pawson (who studied Architecture in Japan, uncoincidentally), looked to Mies van der Rohe’s relentless drive toward simplicity as they forged new solutions to the perennial architectural problem of establishing a connectivity between building, site and inhabitant.
Mies van der Rohe's early Minimalist masterpiece, Farnsworth House, 1945-1951, Plano Illinois
Minimalist interiors
Step inside a Minimalist house and one of the first things you’ll notice, ironically enough, is the outside. Elemental sparsity and characteristic directional use of clean lines often drives the dweller’s view to open, semi-open and exposed spaces – windowed walls, glassed atriums and internal gardens – allowing the full tranquilising effect of nature to enter the building.
The Minimalist aesthetic does not eschew decoration, per se, but it does demand a rejection of formal opulence – both in terms of product design and use of space. Minimalist objects are defined by their functional value and spatial Minimalism demands that those objects are arranged in order to maximise utility and minimise interruption. Exotic decoration, rough-hewn fabrics, floral decoration and neoclassical cartouches are rejected in favour of the smooth Mid-Century curves and clean lines of factory engineered objects that help to maximise peacefulness and bring an austere sense of seriousness to the environments within which they sit.
Arguably, the most famous Mid-Century Modern industrial designers are Charles and Bernice ‘Ray’ Eames. A husband and wife team, based in Los Angeles, CA, and active between 1943 and 1988, the Eameses designed a pair of products that have come to define our vision of the ultimate Minimalist interior (even though they were technically the least ‘minimalistic’ pieces in their portfolio), the famed Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. Now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY, these pieces of furniture, made of moulded plywood and leather were first brought to market in 1956, targeted at the luxury market and devised by Charles and Ray Eames as a Minimalist response to the English Club Chair of the Art Deco period.
Production of the chairs ran for almost 40 years, ending in the early 1990s, both demonstrating their perennial desirability and validating their functional value – Minimalism doesn’t just look beautiful; it should also function beautifully. (Ironic, really, considering the self-doubting letter Ray Eames wrote to her husband, criticising the functional aspect of the Eames Lounge Chair, which she said looked, “comfortable and un-designy.”)
The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, probably the best-known example of Minimalist industrial design
Minimalism in the digital age
Whilst Minimalism never disappeared from the respective practices of architecture and interior design after its first appearance in the 60s, it has, in the 21st Century, attained a new relevance that reinforces its semantic presence in our homes, thanks to rapid advancements in technology over the past 20 years.
Technology has increasingly come to define the way we live. Our lives are simultaneously both fuller (in terms of our ability to more easily conduct our day-to-day lives and access cultural products, thanks to the Internet, SMART technology and the Internet of Things) and emptier (in the literal sense – our books, CDs, magazines, multiple remote control units, multiple media players from TVs to DVD players to CD players and even our lighting, heating and cooking implements are all smaller, all more hidden away). And, so, our homes have had to adapt to the changing nature of the way we go about the everyday.
21st Century architecture and interior design has responded, en masse, by re-embracing the minimalist aesthetic as the dominant mode of practice. So it’s not just in the design of buildings like the National Museum of Qatar, the Colección Jumex in Mexico City or the Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan that we now see outstanding examples of simplistic, clean, linear architectural distinction. There has also been a distinct turn at all levels of residential architecture back toward the oblong, reinforced concrete and steel frames of Le Corbusier’s signature Minimalist style.
Le Corbusier's Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, Germany,
Interior product design has also re-established itself, perhaps to an even greater degree – and across every room in the house. Space is at a premium in the Digital age, as the population grows ever larger and larger. So the things we fill our smaller and smaller homes with simply have to work that bit harder so as not to make us feel trapped in our flats and houses. Handleless drawers, hidden compartments and expanses of white lacquered wood and solid surface are our friends as we attempt to bring beauty without imposing unnecessary embellishments that disrupt our sense of tranquillity. Our kitchens are geometric labyrinths of hidden cupboards and compartments. Our bathrooms and shower rooms and wet rooms are sparse, multi-purpose and blur the physical definitions between functions with Minimalist fixtures, fittings and furniture that wow by their simplicity. And our living spaces are geared towards our sense of tranquillity with a focus on beautifully designed essentials and only the scantest decorative elements, enabling us to better feel the space that surrounds us.
It might be argued than never has less given us more. Which makes Ludwig Mies van der Rohe not just a philosopher of Modernity, but a prophet, to boot.
Riluxa's own paean to Minimalism, the Lofty Black bathtub by Galfia