{"id":35247,"date":"2015-02-13T17:52:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T22:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.pro\/?p=35247"},"modified":"2015-02-13T17:52:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T22:52:28","slug":"less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/2015\/less-is-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Design School: Less is More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love it or loathe it, we all know minimalism when we see it. A neutral palette comes to mind. Forms tend to be aggressively geometric. International Style buildings\u2026Scandinavian furniture\u2026deconstructed timepieces like our On the Other Hand Clock<\/a>. Some find minimalist designs thrilling in their integrity. Others find them stark\u2014even threatening. Whatever your reaction, one handy phrase comes to mind: less is more<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"On<\/a><\/p>\n

On the Other Hand Clock<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

A conceptual cousin to \u2018form follows function<\/a>,\u2019 this cool but cheekily contradictory aphorism is a close contender for the top modernist mantra\u2014a quotable bit of wisdom that may still be echoing through the lecture halls of many a school of architecture and design. But, like Louis Sullivan\u2019s<\/a> alliterative catch phrase, less is more deserves an investigation of its history.<\/p>\n

The phrase is most closely associated with the designer who embraced the association: architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe<\/a>. For Mies, it was an apt slogan for his pursuit of design purity. The intentional contradiction helps make it memorable, but essentially it means \u201cthe less complicated the design, the better.\u201d The less of less is more is apparent in the work of Mies and other midcentury modern designers, but the more means \u2018better,\u2019 with a note of pseudo-spiritual zeal.<\/p>\n

\"Barcelona<\/a><\/p>\n

The Barcelona Pavilion designed by\u00a0Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Much as Mies\u2019 cigar-puffing visage comes to mind when you hear the phrase, he had to admit that he didn\u2019t coin it. He credits his modernist mentor, Peter Behrens<\/a>. The young Mies, working in Behrens\u2019 studio, recalls that he showed his boss some design options for a factory fa\u00e7ade, to which the elder architect replied “less is more.” This set the tone for Behrens\u2019 elegantly minimal approach to industrial design, and Mies took up the banner for other types of buildings as well.<\/p>\n

But wait\u2014there\u2019s more (or is it less?) to this story. The phrase crops up before Behrens was born, in a poetic context: Robert Browning<\/a>\u2019s poem Andrea Del Sarto<\/a> (called \u201cThe Faultless Painter\u201d) of 1855.<\/p>\n

\n
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,\r\n (I know his name, no matter)\u2014so much less!\r\n Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Browning employs the phrase in an imagined diatribe by a B-list Renaissance painter who works in the shadow of the likes of \u201cMichel Agnolo\u201d (Michelangelo<\/a>). Hardly the heroic, modern origins you might expect.<\/p>\n
\"Bike<\/a>The Bicycle Encyclopedic Print<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Whether or not Behrens and Mies were aware of Browning\u2019s poem, the phrase got a modern makeover that puts a positive spin on minimalist aspirations. Not to be outdone, maverick architect Frank Lloyd Wright<\/a> quipped \u201cless is more, only when more is no good.\u201d Apparently, Wright wanted to indicate that he was hip to mid-century trends, yet wanted to keep his options open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some find minimalist designs thrilling in their integrity. Others find them stark. Whatever your reaction, one handy phrase comes to mind: less is more. Here\u2019s a brief history lesson to give you a little background on that well-known saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":35368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[742],"tags":[1482,557,37,1500],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}