Most European languages have a word for furniture derived from the Roman ‘mobilis’, which means movable. In contrast to loose furniture, fixed furniture forms an essential part of the home. Together with the walls, they define the space of the rooms. Built-in furniture is usually placed against the walls, giving them a relief that will be relatively small in the case of bookcases, more pronounced with built-in sideboards, and more extensive with seating areas. Fixed furniture appears when domesticity and the unity of the arts take precedence. In this case, we are discussing the period from around 1890 to the 1930s, spanning the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, and Modernism.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Arts and Crafts became the most important movement in interior art. William Morris (1834–1896) reacted against the ‘soulless’ decorations of the neo-styles that overran interiors. He was against the machine and in favour of craftsmanship, taking old cottages as examples. During that period, architects such as Charles Francis Annesbury Voysey (1857–1941) and Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott (1865–1945) developed a refined art of interior design. By suppressing the customary parlour, a single, interconnected living room could be created.
In the dining room of a house in Crowborough by Baillie Scott from 1900, we see that an entire wall is composed of a door and panels with cupboards and bookshelves. On the left, it ends in an L-shaped seating corner. Characteristic is the wooden panelling reaching the height of a door. One advantage of built-in furniture was that no dust accumulated underneath or behind it.
.
Old cottages and halls had such finishes for insulating the walls. We also find them in the banqueting hall of Haddon Hall from 1370, with a gallery dating from around 1600.
.
Little Moreton Hall is constructed from a timber frame. Here too, for example in the great hall dating from the early 16th century, we find panelling. The benches by the bay window and the built-in cupboard served as inspiration for the architects of the Arts and Crafts movement.
The American Craftsman Style was a form of the Arts and Crafts. Here we mention the work of the brothers Charles (1868–1957) and Henry (1870–1954) Greene. In the dining room of their Gable House from 1908, we find the same panelling up to door height and a wall incorporating the sideboard. One of the reasons for the flourishing domestic culture of those days was the interest shown by educated women, which was nourished by the many magazines. They abandoned the division into separate rooms and the abundant decoration associated with the neo-styles, seeking instead more functional solutions.
The work of Frank Lloyd Wright should not remain unmentioned in this context. The largest and most decorated house he designed was in 1902 for Susan Lawrence Dana. The tension between the continuous space and the masses of furniture placed within it is best expressed in the bedroom.
Although Art Nouveau introduced a new formal language, some architects continued the tradition of built-in furniture, such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1886–1928) and his wife Margaret Macdonald (1864–1933) in their submission for the Haus eines Kunstfreundes in the Zeitschrift für Innendekoration from 1901, a house that has recently been built in Glasgow.
.
The Scottish Art Nouveau had a great influence on the Continent, first and foremost on the Wiener Secession. Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) believed in the complete unity of architecture, decoration, and furnishing. In 1905 he designed the Palais Stoclet in Sint-Pieters-Woluwe. The dining room is extremely rich, with marble wall cladding and mosaics by Gustav Klimt, yet at the same time geometric, with symmetrically arranged built-in sideboards.
In Brussels’ Art Nouveau, the built-in cupboards are best expressed in the more geometric yet still decorative architecture of Paul Cauchie (1875–1952). On one wall of the dining room in the first of the four houses he built, above the row of cupboards and bookshelves, we see the sgraffito drawings for which he was famous. He developed the interior in 1904, together with his wife.
Even the Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870–1933) was familiar with the English cottage style, as proven by this drawing for a dining room from 1899.
In his lecture Ornament und Verbrechen from 1908, Loos spoke out against any form of ornamentation. His Steiner House from 1910 is plastered white on the outside. Yet the dining area still contains homely elements such as the beams against the ceiling, the panelling, and the fitted sideboards. It is an early example of the transition from the cottage style to Modernism.
In Belgium, Antoine Pompe (1873–1980) was such a transitional architect. In 1904, drawings appeared of the entrance hall and a bedroom of Little Nest, a cottage he designed together with Adhémar Lener.
.
Many architects who later became known as Modernists went through a phase early in their careers in which they used elements of — mostly geometric — Art Nouveau. For example, Louis Herman De Koninck (1898–1984) designed in 1919 an interior for a room for himself and his wife, a project that was never executed. Next to the stove stands a chest used for seating, and in the corner a small cabinet with a door, a bookshelf, and drawers in various places.
A first statement, the ‘cubist’ one, in the development of interior art in those days can best be illustrated by the work of Huib Hoste (1881–1957). In 1919 he remodelled the house of Paul Vanneste and Maria Duyvewaardt, specifically the façade and the space at the back containing the dining and sitting area. The entire room was reworked: the floor, the panelling, the fireplace, the doors, and the cupboards. According to the ideas of the De Stijl movement, which he had encountered during the First World War, the construction elements were separated and painted in contrasting colours: red, black, green, and blue. In 1929 Hoste wrote in his Opbouwen about colour:
‘(…) the value of the material can be enhanced by colour; colour can serve to emphasise accents; moreover, colour arises partly automatically through the effect of light and shadow. Architecture may be enriched by colour just as any object may be executed in both precious and ordinary materials.’
The construction year 1924 of the Black House of Doctor De Beir by Huib Hoste indicates that it is an early expression of Modernism in Belgium. The L-shaped living space has cupboards around the projecting corner. The protruding block with the service lift and cupboard for the glasses below also acts as a draught screen for the door to its right. The long, low cupboard beside it is for the crockery. For the colour scheme on the walls and the floor, Hoste collaborated with the painter Victor Servranckx (1897–1965). Everything confirms Hoste’s vision that architecture, furniture, and colour must form a single whole.
.
The same collaboration with Servranckx and the same urge for harmony can be found in the bureau-fumoir for which they won a gold medal at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in 1925 in Paris. Hoste wanted to ‘bring the various pieces of furniture […] into harmony by giving them the same spirit as that of the perfect industrial objects (radiators, ventilators, typewriter …)’. Although the furniture was not truly built-in, it was so massive and heavy that it appeared to form an integrated part of the architectural space. In the magazine Van Onzen Tijd, Hoste had already written in 1918:
‘One tries, for example, to make cupboards under which no dark opening can be seen between the legs, so that the walls of the space are partly resolved into cupboard walls; one tries, for example, to make armchairs which do not appear meagre like scaffolding, but which form a real mass in the space; one makes them so heavy that the user comes to leave them more or less in their fixed place and no longer drags them arbitrarily around the room…’
.
.
The architecture and the interior of the White House of the writer and poet Jef Mennekens (1877–1943) by Joseph Diongre (1878–1963) from 1927 exude the same ‘cubist’ atmosphere. Diongre combined veneers of fine woods with painted elements and sections in stained glass.
In 1925, J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963) was one of the most progressive architects. He designed the Kiefhoek district in Rotterdam with about 300 social dwellings. For the living area, he designed a cupboard that projects forward but in height and width corresponds to the door to the kitchen on the left and the door to the staircase on the right. The houses were only built between 1928 and 1930, and the cupboards between the kitchen and dining room were omitted due to budget cuts. Also characteristic is the wooden moulding at the top of the doors, running almost entirely around the room. Usually, the wall below was painted in a colour, and the part above it and the ceiling in white.
The bedroom block opens onto a narrow dressing area. The adjoining bathroom is located in the middle of the block, separating the boudoir from the sleeping area. This allowed Le Corbusier to keep the walls free of furniture, except for the bed.
The furniture in the Pavillon de l’esprit nouveau by Le Corbusier at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels went in a different direction from that of Hoste’s bureau-fumoir. Le Corbusier wrote about it in the Œuvres complètes:
‘If we analyse the problem, we see that what is needed is an equipment to classify the different elements for domestic use. The casiers standards, which replace the countless pieces of furniture with different shapes and names, are placed against or perpendicular to the walls, in the parts of the apartment with a specific daily function. The lockers alone form the furniture of the house and leave a maximum of available space in the rooms. All that remains are the chairs and the tables.’
Le Corbusier preferred to place these casiers standards between two functions, as a cloison-filtre, so that the space could flow through. In the Almanach de l’architecture moderne he writes: ‘Furniture creates architecture.’ Initially, they were made of wood, in which the modules of 75 cm x 75 cm were visible, with the end edges of the cupboard frames left exposed.
The casiers are not truly built-in furniture, as they are movable. In the perspective sketches from 1926 for the house of the painter Guiette (1893–1976) in Antwerp, they are so space-defining and functional that they seem indispensable. Ultimately, they were not realised.
In 1929, at the Salon d’Automne, Le Corbusier, together with Charlotte Perriand, took up the pattern of the casiers again. The cupboards divided the large exhibition space, which represented a model apartment, into a living area, a study corner, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom, but in such a way that the space continued underneath, between, and above the cupboards. Due to the slender legs and because some doors were made of shiny metal, translucent glass or mirrors, they gave a different, more industrial impression than the wooden casiers.
.
.
The cupboards were inspired by steel office furniture, such as that produced by the Ronéo company from the beginning of the century.
The material preferred by Le Corbusier was not metal or wood, but concrete — even for built-in furniture. In the spaces of his villas, concrete elements stand like sculptures. They serve as tables or as supports to place or store objects, but they have no doors. The space, which develops throughout the room, takes precedence. Thus, the library in the Villa Stein-de Monzie, designed in 1926, is a space around an opening with a view downwards, with the books placed within the concrete parapet.
The partition wall between the sitting and dining area in Le Corbusier’s Citrohan house at the Weissenhof Exhibition of 1927 is also made of concrete.
.
In Germany, at the Bauhaus, we see a third, very sober inter-pretation of built-in furniture, with attention given to light, air, hygiene, and space. In Bauhaus Journal no. 1 from 1926, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) presented the Bauhaus film, five years long, showing, among other things, his wooden chair from 1924, his steel Wassily chair from 1925, and at the bottom, in 19??: “in the end, we shall sit on supporting columns of air.”
Breuer had also, in 1926, developed for the Wilensky apartment his rather airy version of the casiers, using wood, glass, and metal as materials on a 33 cm module.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) became the temporary director of the Weissenhofsiedlung, an international architectural exhibition with 27 houses and two apartment blocks, organised in 1927 in Stuttgart by the Deutscher Werkbund. Walter Gropius (1883–1969), the director of the Bauhaus, designed two houses there, for which Marcel Breuer developed the interior. The emptied rooms with built-in cupboards and hospital-like furniture were “the most machine-like and the least cosy” of the whole estate.
Mies van der Rohe asked Rudolf Lutz (1895–1966) to avoid “everything salon-like” in the furnishing of one of Oud’s five terraced houses. One of the best-received interiors was the one Oud used for one of his terraced houses. The steel furniture is of his design, as are the built-in cupboards in the living room. The cupboard between the kitchen and dining area is an element that, together with the heating block, runs the entire width of the kitchen. In the living space, we see on the right a deep cupboard and on the left a slightly projecting sideboard with, above it, a low sliding serving hatch.
The interiors that Breuer designed at that time were also very airy, with slender cabinet elements. In 1927 he designed the apartment of Hildegard and Erwin Piscator. Hildegard requested: “only the most indispensable furniture, so that the space remains.” First, Breuer had all the panelling and decorative mouldings of the six spacious rooms removed and the walls and ceilings painted white. Only hanging along the entire length of one wall did he place in the dining room a slender piece of furniture with space inside for books and tableware, and on top of it room for a few carefully chosen objects. The adjoining sitting area also has, along the entire length, two built-in sofas with a small cabinet between them. The composition is abstract and one of the finest expressions of the International Style, the most explicit form of modernism, or, as Breuer himself wrote in 1928 in Das Neue Frankfurt: “the furniture, even the walls of the room, are no longer massive, monumental… they are more airy and open, as if sketched in space; they no longer hinder movement or the freedom for the gaze to wander through the space.”
.
.
.
In the gentleman’s bedroom — at that time separate bedrooms were still customary — there stood in the corner a built-in Spartan piece of furniture with bed and cupboard. On the opposite wall hung a wall rack and a punching ball, and on a small cabinet stood apparatus for rhythmic gymnastics: clubs and a ball, with which Erwin Piscator practised in the mornings. The cupboards were, as was common at that time, painted in grey-blue and white.
.
Meanwhile, De Koninck had become the leading architect of Belgian modernism. In his masterpiece, the small house for the painter Jacques Lenglet (1895–?) from 1926, he integrated a beautiful library.
Another — unfortunately demolished — house of his, namely the one from 1931 for the landscape architect Jean Canneel-Claes (1909–1989), fits perfectly into this picture of airy modernism. The small and practical dining corner has a full wall with door and built-in cupboards leading to the kitchen. De Koninck was the designer of the modular Cubex-kitchen, which was manufactured by Van de Ven and incorporated into numerous houses and apartments.
Another house that well endorsed the criteria of Het Nieuwe Bouwen was built in 1933 for Bertus Sonneveld (1885–1962), deputy director of the Van Nelle factory. The architects were Jan Brinkman (1902–1949), who headed the office, and Cornelis van der Vlugt (1894–1936), the designer. In the house, not only the newest tubular steel furniture by the firm Gispen and the most modern fabrics by the firm Metz could be seen, but also a number of beautiful built-in pieces of furniture. The entire interior — the house is well restored and open to visitors — breathes hygiene, comfort, and luxury. Van der Vlugt used the primary colours of the De Stijl movement, albeit in moderated shades. The furniture was functionally well studied and fitted with the latest technical innovations.
Such interiors with loose steel furniture and built-in cupboards, which do not disturb the pure spaces of the rooms, were the criterion of modernism in interior art at the end of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s. In issue no. 3 of Opbouwen from 1928, Huib Hoste wrote about his bureau-fumoir: “When I now look at the drawings of these pieces of furniture, I still fully agree with my conception of 1925; only some parts seem wrong to me, for instance the blocks under the bookcase, which definitely did not arise from their function. What at that time seemed necessary to me as an effect of volume, now appears completely out of proportion, impure, and irritates me.”
The same atmosphere, though somewhat softer, can be seen in the house that Huib Hoste designed in 1934 for the lawyer Joris Lens. For the cupboard between the dining area and the kitchen, the plywood veneer is not painted but varnished.
In Opbouwen, issue no. 3 of 1933, Hoste defended the use of built-in furniture: “These cupboards have many advantages: they do not have to be moved, no dust can collect underneath or behind them; they are an excellent means against noise transmission; when they are placed between dining room and kitchen, they can be made accessible from both rooms, so that carrying washed tableware around is avoided; one cannot bump into this furniture, and it saves quite a lot of space.” Hoste placed a combination piece of furniture in a corner of the living room. The burr wood veneer and the chrome-plated elements indicate the care Hoste devoted to his furniture. The whole is conceived in an extremely light manner, with shallow cupboards on legs, partly with glass doors, a low simple sofa, and a long narrow bookshelf.
.
Adolf Loos went his own way and brought another form of modernism. In 1930 he wrote: “The spaces flow into each other and connect with each other.” These connections are not as open as, for instance, in Le Corbusier’s work, and they are more interwoven. In a similar cubic manner to his spaces, Loos created built-in blocks in the interior in which he integrated cupboards, seating, and parapets. Both spaces and masses are complementary for him. We may regard this as a fourth conception of built-in furniture. One of the most spectacular solutions is the Zimmer der Dame in the Müller House in Prague from 1930. He treated the wood in the same ambiguous way as the marble in the living room: although it exudes a certain massiveness through the thickness of the blocks, the lack of technical details gives the same feeling as the plastered surfaces of the façades — a degree of abstraction. The differences in height in the floor and ceiling complete the architectural richness of this space.
.
In the built-in desk cabinet of the Peeters house (1933), Gaston Eysselinck proved that he could incorporate influences from the De Stijl movement, from Huib Hoste’s modernism, and perhaps even from Japanese interior art, in a personal manner.
