Let us first of all go back to the second half of the 19th century. The rapid growth of industry, trade and transportation and the concentration of people, places of production and capital at a previously unknown scale led to an “explosion” of cities, for which there were no existing models and no basis for their planned development. Along with the rapid growth of industrialisation the social situation also changed: objects of daily use were now manufactured almost exclusively through mass production, art withdrew increasingly from social day-today life.
Against this background and also as a symbolic start to modernism, in 1901 a building exhibition was held for the first time on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in which the separation between what was built and what was displayed, between the building and its surroundings was eliminated. In the context of the life reform movement this first building exhibition attracted great international interest.
Architects, painters and sculptors worked together to give the environment a form – the aim being to reconcile art and the everyday, the city and nature. The artists’ colony aimed at a design concept that would touch upon all areas of life. As a “milestone along the path of renewal of life” those who took part searched for a new form “that does not reflect the type familiar today, but which advances far ahead and includes aspects of the future.” (Joseph Maria Olbrich).
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