Putting Modernism in Its Place: Design, Identity and Belonging

Scandinavian Modern — Newsletter 01

As consumers, we engage with an amalgam of art, design and craft to form social bonds. What we buy provides a sense of identity: we might describe ourselves through Nordstrom or Harrods, H&M Home or John Lewis. These choices help us comprehend and navigate daily life. Glass, ceramics and textiles can give us a visceral connection to the world around us. Seen in this context, design can be a stabilising force in unsettled times.

During the first half of the twentieth century, modernism searched for forms capable of travelling across borders. In architecture, the International Style proposed a shared visual language: angular structures, open plans and an economy of ornament that could appear in Berlin or Marseille, Chicago or New York.

Yet a universal language always risks flattening difference. Place, local materials and inherited skills do not simply disappear because a design is modern. They continue to shape the way an object is made, used and understood.

Today, globalisation and populism still influence our everyday experiences. Design—and the way we consume it—must respond. The question is how.

Emotion is central to our understanding of design. It takes us beyond two of modernism’s familiar foundations: function and materials. Through the alchemy of the designer, an immersive—even spiritual—connection with the user can be established.

To create a lasting bond, we need to understand the many languages, or styles, of modernism. This knowledge can inform the things we buy and help us recognise why they appeal to us.

A sense of place matters too. The invisible flows of information across our screens contribute to the feeling of a virtual, placeless world. Design often oscillates between the local and the global: between where something is manufactured and where it is eventually sold. Designers can reconnect us with place.

The purpose of these short pieces is to disentangle modernist histories across art, design and craft, and to reconsider how place and environment are embedded in creative practice. The journey will explore relationships between local culture and creativity.

In a Google-mapped, screen-based world, it is easy to miss the lumps and bumps of place. Even the symbolism of unfolding a physical map—a reminder of the three-dimensional and temporal nature of space—is being replaced by apps and sat-nav landscapes.

Across the coming articles, we will lay out a map—or perhaps a family tree—of modernism in relation to place and craft: ironing out a few wrinkles and, perhaps, weaving in some contours and creases of our own.