Episode 35
2003minutes.

Design - The Wassily Armchair

Synopsis

The Wassily Chair came out of the great crucible of art, design and theory that was the Bauhaus.
The Wassily Chair came out of the great crucible of art, design and theory that was the Bauhaus. Feininger, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, Breuer, Albers and Bayer were among the famous artists who worked and taught at the Bauhaus. Like all great innovative movements in the history of ideas, Bauhaus attempted to bring theory and practice closer together and to rediscover connections between art and other human activities. The Wassily Chair No. B3 was designed in 1925 by Marcel Breuer for Wassily Kandinsky's flat. Breuer was trying to create disconnected, aerial shapes which appeared to be sketched in space, but he also aimed to produce "styleless" objects which were essential to modern living. The series of chairs begun with the Wassily were to revolutionise Western furniture. They were inspired by the handlebars of a bicycle, and used nickelled tubular steel for the first time in the history of furniture design. In 1928, at the same time as Gropius, Breuer left the Bauhaus in protest at the absence of architecture from its teaching programmes. He subsequently settled in Berlin, where he devoted himself to architecture, before leaving Germany for England and the USA. The Wassily Chair and the statements it makes about form are astonishingly close to the theories set out by Kandinsky in his book Point and Line to Plane - or perhaps not so astonishingly, given that the chair was designed with Kandinsky in mind.

Available Versions

Audio

French, German, English

Subtitle

French

Transcription

None

Episodes of the series

Thumbnail for Design - The Corbusier Lc16 Desk
26min

Design - The Corbusier Lc16 Desk

Thumbnail for Design - The E1027 Table By Eileen Gray
26min

Design - The E1027 Table By Eileen Gray

Thumbnail for Design - The Swiss Army Knife By Karl Elsener,
25min

Design - The Swiss Army Knife By Karl Elsener,

Thumbnail for Design - The Compas Table By Jean Prouve
26min

Design - The Compas Table By Jean Prouve

Thumbnail for Design - The Black Lamps Of Serge Mouille
26min

Design - The Black Lamps Of Serge Mouille

Thumbnail for Design - The Sacco
26min

Design - The Sacco

Thumbnail for Design - The Arco Lamp
33H28

Design - The Arco Lamp

Thumbnail for Design - The Imac
26min

Design - The Imac

Thumbnail for Design - The Fiat 500
26min

Design - The Fiat 500

Thumbnail for Design - The Bic Cristal Ball-Point Pen
26min

Design - The Bic Cristal Ball-Point Pen

Thumbnail for Design - The Algol Television Set
26min

Design - The Algol Television Set

Thumbnail for Design - The Sofa Bubble Club
26min

Design - The Sofa Bubble Club

Thumbnail for Design - The Hoover 150
26min

Design - The Hoover 150

Thumbnail for Design - The Ds 19
26min

Design - The Ds 19

Thumbnail for Design - The Lounge Chair
26min

Design - The Lounge Chair

Thumbnail for Design - The Akari Lamps
26min

Design - The Akari Lamps

To go further

Thumbnail for Design - The Paimio Armchair
26min

Design - The Paimio Armchair

Thumbnail for Architectures
66 episodes

Architectures

Thumbnail for Design - The Corbusier Lc16 Desk
26min

Design - The Corbusier Lc16 Desk

Thumbnail for Design - The Sacco
26min

Design - The Sacco

Thumbnail for Architectures - The Dessau Bauhaus
28min

Architectures - The Dessau Bauhaus