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Staircase by Samuel Marx, House & Garden 1945

The New Look for interiors in the US started off in the late thirties with the Modern Style. During the recession architects and designers implemented new technologies into their designs. Especially the work of some Nordic designers like Aalto, Saarinen and Wegner became very popular in the US. In the forties the US Government promoted the development of large housing projects in the suburbs for the returning soldiers from the Second World War. Some developers took this opportunity to implement the Modern Style in the architecture and interiors. From there on the democratization of design headed off with the help of a lot of marketing efforts and a growing demand for low priced housing and interiors. We think that the significant features of the US interiors in the forties are the biomorphic forms, the graphic prints and the linear lay-outs. If you have a look the photo’s below you can see the similarity in the applied straight lines in which every lay-out has been formatted. Every part of the lay-out fits and there is no dissimilarity to notice. We like this usage of linear lay-outs for the sake of the serenity of a space. But we do miss the frivolity and the humorous tone of the European Interiors. And we come back in a later blog post with a description of our own favorite style. The next blog post is about the fifty interiors in Europe.

by Florence Knoll, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1949 Jens Risom Design. Interiors 1949