Modern Furniture Design
Modern Furniture Design
Modern Furniture Design
What we usually see in the modern furniture stores these days, is an embodiment of the so-called modern style furniture design. But what does this term really represent? Where did it come from?
The period from 1930 to 1960 year was really revolutionary for the furniture design style. The old fashioned stereotypes about the furniture design were breaking apart. Lots of people were choosing an apartment building or a condo over a traditional full size house as a place of living. But what to do with the furniture? Customers were racing from store to store in a desperate attempt to find something fitting the size of their new homes and being still attractive (don’t forget functional). However, all they were able to find in the stores were old style “monsters”, which just would not fit in by all ways.
Of course, that new segment of the furniture market could be empty forever. In the middle of the 20th century, the Swiss-born designer Le Corbusier, revolutionized modern furniture design inventing, amongst others, clean cubical forms in his new collection. In this design, one can see some similarities with traditional furniture design like curled forms, puffy armchairs, etc. But the revolutionary part of it was really using the new type material to make all that, such as metal frames, glass or plastic. Also, heavy traditional forms were exchanged to lighter, airy, more open ones. His design trends still inspire modern furniture designers in creation of their new furniture collections.
But, global changes in the furniture design brought up a dilemma of getting a new, refreshed look and at the same time, not ruining the old traditions in furniture design and keeping the comfort ability of the furniture. Therefore, a new style appeared. These days, we call such furniture contemporary.
Contemporary furniture design invention was comparable to the invention of the aerodynamic tube, which lead to the revolutionary car shape change in the car making industry.
Of course, nowadays, lots of new materials come into the market to be used by modern furniture designers. Here is just a few: high tech foam, high tech water stain resistance fabrics, plastic glass, etc, etc, etc. But, nevertheless, modern style furniture designers mostly get their ideas from those revolutionary inventions of the middle of the last century.
Modern furniture design of our age is a low profile, simple but functional furniture, such as platform bed with clean lines, cubical wall units, TV stands, multi purpose entertainment centers, all of that being visually light and airy.