EnglishDiscover design history with HART Design Selection: from classical styles to modern innovations, explore the movements, ideas and creators that shaped our visual culture and continue to inspire contemporary design.
At the turn of the 1990s, in a world saturated with postmodern ornamentation and decorative excess, a silent revolution was taking place. In Manhattan lofts, Tokyo galleries, and London studios, a new generation of creators was rediscovering the power of emptiness, the eloquence of spatial silence, the force of radical refinement. Minimalism didn’t emerge from…
The UP Chair by Gaetano Pesce: When a Seat Becomes a Revolution If you’ve ever come across it, it’s impossible to forget. But beyond its spectacular feminine form, the UP chair represents an unprecedented innovation in many ways. You know my obsession with all kinds of armchairs… After recently encountering “La Donna” again at the…
Cocoon, egg, bubble and capsule chairs vintage or contemporary The egg chair embodies the very essence of organic design and the spirit of the 1960s. With its enveloping forms and futuristic appearance inspired by the Space Age, this iconic seat has fascinated for over six decades. Passionate about designer furniture, I have always been captivated…
The Regency Style: When France breaks free from Versailles This silent but decisive revolution transforms our conception of French elegance. The first Régence curves already outline the future of rococo and Louis XV aesthetic, while the last Louis XIV symmetries testify to a still-present past. The Regency style “Régence” in french, revolutionizes Western art by…
Introduction The Biedermeier style embodies the refined bourgeois elegance of Central Europe in the early nineteenth century. Between 1815 and 1848, across German-speaking regions (Austria, Southern Germany, and Bohemia) a distinctive aesthetic emerged, reflecting the aspirations of a cultivated middle class seeking domestic comfort and accessible beauty. This style is defined by its elegant restraint and…
Los Angeles, 1949. In the hills of Pacific Palisades, Charles and Ray Eames complete their Case Study House #8, an architectural manifesto of postwar America. Steel, glass, and vibrant colors assemble into a lightweight structure open to the California landscape. While Europe laboriously rebuilds and the Bauhaus dissolves into emigration, America invents a new aesthetic…
Paris, 1925. The International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries unveiled a revolutionary aesthetic language to the world. Gone were the vegetal curves of Art Nouveau, replaced by geometric lines, precious materials, and assumed modernity. Art Deco was born, carrying the optimism of an era fascinated by speed, technological progress, and urban elegance. Art…
Florence, 1966. A group of young Italian architects found Archizoom Associati and begin producing provocative projects that question every certainty of modern design. While Good Design champions rationality and the Ulm School systematizes methodology, an Italian avant-garde radically rejects functionalism. Radical Design emerges—oppositional, conceptual, provocative. This movement, which dominates Italy from 1966 to 1975, does…
Ulm, Germany, 1953. On a hill overlooking the city, Max Bill inaugurates the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG Ulm), a design school that aims to reconnect with the legacy of the Bauhaus closed by the Nazis in 1933. But Ulm will not be a simple resurrection: it will radicalize the rationalist approach, develop a scientific methodology…
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1932. While the Great Depression paralyzes America and Streamline Moderne begins transforming the American industrial landscape, Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen founds an institution that will revolutionize American design: the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Far from the New York or California metropolises, in the affluent suburbs of Detroit, this school invents a unique…
(POST IN PROGRESS) Amsterdam, 1917. While Art Deco triumphed in Paris with its geometric ornaments and refined luxury, a group of Dutch artists and architects chose a radically opposite path. In a Europe torn apart by World War I, they founded a magazine that would give its name to one of the most radical movements…
New York, 1933. The “Century of Progress” World’s Fair in Chicago celebrated American technological progress at the heart of the Great Depression. While Europe sank into political tensions and Russian Constructivism faded under Stalin, America invented a radically new visual language: Streamline Moderne. This style, which would transform everything – from toasters to locomotives, from…
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