Functionalism and IKEA

After the discussion we had in class about the definition of functionalism and the questioning of IKEA as functionalist design, I decided to write an essay as a response to this discussion. I will do so by tracing functionalism back to William Morris and explain how it eventually led to the interpretation of IKEA as functionalist design, and why IKEA doesn’t actually fit into the definition of functionalist design Bauhaus had, and in some sense IKEA rather is what Morris fought against.

From William Morris to the Bauhaus, functionalism has evolved, some aspects of it have changed, and the original form of functionalist design emerged. However it is interesting that in today’s world the definition of functionalism have many different interpretations which depend on personal opinions; this eventually shifted the true meaning of functionalism and led to the conception of IKEA as if it inherited the functional design of the Bauhaus movement which I completely disagree with. I find it amusing because IKEA’s designs actually oppose Morris’ idea of functionalism. There is an important difference in the overall concept of the Bauhaus and IKEA and we can see this by going through the steps of functionalism.

Even though in today’s world people have many different conceptions of what functionalist design is, in reality there is a pretty solid definition of functionalism. As Nikolaus Pevsner mentions in “Pioneers of Modern Design”, Morris laid the foundation and with Gropius its character was ultimately determined. George Marcus defines functionalism as: “the notion that objects made to be used should be simple, honest, and direct; well adapted to their purpose; bare of ornament; standardized; machine-made, and reasonably priced; and expressive of their structure and materials - has defined the course of progressive design for most of the century.” People in today’s world have different thoughts about functionalist design because they have probably never heard of the original form of functionalist design like Marcus’ definition above. So these people classified IKEA as functionalist design because they only had a vague idea about the topic and they do need better understanding of the roots of functionalism to critique IKEA.

Looking back to the root of functionalism, we can observe Morris’ thoughts to comprehend how the whole functionalism notion started out. Morris’ hostility to machinery combined with his questioning “What business have we with art for at all unless all can share it?” can give a sense of the aspects that can be identified in the definition of functionalism today: What this means is functionalism was actually founded as a view against industrialization and supported having designs within reach. Moreover, he was not against all machinery but he was fighting against the poor quality of mass produced designs those were done by machines. Unfortunately, achieving good quality mass produced designs which were economically accessible without industrialization was untenable because all the designs Morris provided ended up being quite expensive. So, Morris is the one who put the ideas for functionalist design on the table but he couldn’t really resolve the issues concerning him about the topic due to the fact that even though his firm made beautiful handmade products, they were expensive so they were not designs within reach. Morris posed the question and thought about the solutions the problem and the next generations transformed the notion of functionalism just a little bit so that the problem could be resolved.

Morris first inspired the Arts and Crafts movement with his thoughts and then Deutsche Werkbund who followed the same path by promoting the alliance of artists, craftsman and mass production. These lead to the Bauhaus. Bauhaus is the time when functional design was ultimately transformed and determined to become the definition we know it by in today’s world. (It is Marcus’ definition which I quoted in the beginning of my essay) The Bauhaus responded to Morris’ idea of functionalism by trying to create the most intimate union possible between art and industrialization. In Bauhaus, they stripped the ornamentation and made use of machines and manufacturing techniques to create durable, good functioning designs that are mass-produced and economically accessible. So they have basically achieved everything that Morris was asking for. However, it is interesting to see that if Morris’ work and Bauhaus are compared stylistically, anyone can see that they don’t look related. There is nothing similar about them. That is because “Morris’ designs for hand-crafted objects inspired by medieval prototypes and Bauhaus designs for mass-produced objects inspired by Euclidean archetypes. A theoretical link can be identified between them in their shared functionalist notion that beauty results from the truthful representation of construction, materials, use. But Morris’ apprehension of the machine is antithetical to the Bauhaus anesthetization of the machine.”1

After going through the foundation of functionalism, I don’t feel comfortable putting IKEA anywhere in the functionalist design category. Because, IKEA is NOT functional! First of all, IKEA is not a good quality product, it breaks apart and that was what Morris was fighting against and that’s what made him bring up the idea of functionalism. Morris was frustrated that all these machines were creating these bad quality mass produced designs, which is exactly what IKEA is doing. So, after this point it doesn’t matter if IKEA products are economically accessible or not; then Morris could have done poor quality cheap designs too, but that was not the goal of functionalism. People always get the feeling that IKEA is functionalist design because it is very similar to Bauhaus in “style” but while ‘form follows function’ in Bauhaus, in IKEA nothing in literally “functional”, they just resemble Bauhaus designs. Form and style do not relate to the notion of functionalism in the sense that not every functionalist design has to look alike, we know how different Morris’ and the Bauhaus designs are.

Going through the history of functionalism, I realized how many things we have to keep in mind during a design process and I realized I have to find a good balance between some aspects of design in order to reach a conclusion. Since Morris wouldn’t open his mind to new technology, he couldn’t solve the problem he had in hand. Bauhaus was open to new techniques and it managed to balance everything so it was a successful design revolution.


Bibliography

Weingarden, Lauren "Aesthetics Politicized: William Morris to the Bauhaus" Journal of Architectural Education

Marcus, George “ Functionalist Design an Ongoing History”