img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

From Bauhaus to greenhouse

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek

True to the ethos that ‘nothing is so good it can’t be better’, furniture company Thonet has released its classic designs for Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs and tables in, yes, seven colours. But before you join SOB (Save Our Breuers), buy them and get them re-chromed, consider that the firm looked to Bauhaus master Johannes Itten’s colour circle ‘as orientation’. Quite what the Mazdaznan-cult-worshipping vegetarian Expressionist would have made of this we’ll never know, but his resistance to Gropius’ aesthetics of mass-production prompted his resignation. Perhaps knowing that Breuer’s chrome is now being dipped in his ‘chocolate brown’, revenge is indeed sweet?

 

Latest

In east London, dRMM's Wick Lane development blends industrial and residential space. Its roof design and materials, which reference Hackney Wick's heritage, create both variety and coherence, explains senior associate Will Howard

dRMM's east London Wick Lane development blends industrial and residential space, and references local heritage via its roof forms

Learn more about why there has been an increase of damp and mould and how controlled ventilation can help

Learn more about why there has been an increase of damp and mould and how controlled ventilation can help

Lead the restoration of four war memorial sites, bid for a spot on a schools construction framework, design a riverside community hub and market square - some of the latest architecture contracts and competitions from across the industry

Latest: War memorials conservation project

Asked to comprehensively remodel the two upper floors of a Grade II-listed merchant's house, Carmody Groarke put living space at the top and added a striking aluminium pavilion

Remodelling a former merchant's house's upper floors, Carmody Groarke put living space at the top and added an aluminium pavilion

The parade of temporary interventions on our streets injects them with joy, colour and life – and has lessons for architects, argues Eleanor Young

Temporary interventions on our streets inject them with joy, colour and life, and have lessons for architects