There are numerous factors prompting the reduction of a design to what is absolutely necessary.
In times of economic distress, it is caused by a lack of materials, and in a rosy economic climate it is sometimes self-imposed by designers and serves to give the qualities of an object concentrated form, such as in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's claim that "less is more".
Reduction often has a socially critical edge to it, by implicitly abstracting away from surfeit. A reduced design generates pure, i.e., unfalsified, forms, alludes to structural aspects, and frequently emphasizes an aesthetics exuded by the materials themselves.
Early examples date from the first quarter of the nineteenth century and stem from secluded American Shaker communities, which created simple forms based on craftsmanship as an answer to emerging industrialization.
The Arts and Crafts Movement of the outgoing nineteenth century, especially in the wake of the thought of English social reformer John Ruskin, culminated in Ludditism and a refocus on simple, traditional production technologies.
Only after the renewal of this mood by the international spread of Art Nouveau did a conciliation appear possible between industrial mass production and structural purity in a phase between the wars which is generally termed rationalism. It is noteworthy here that in times of postwar poverty, a short economic recovery, and international economic crisis the first tubular steel furniture saw the light of day, only fourty years after the development of seamless tubes by the Mannesmann brothers.
The improved quality of materials and technological innovations thus did not act as the decisive trigger for design using reduced forms, even if the latter certainly made use of the former. It is the fine arts that have had the decisive influence such as Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, New Objectivity, Concrete Art, Minimal Art, and Arte Povera. Different stylistic ascriptions, or the most recent terminological descriptions, such as New Modesty, may pin-point individal phenomena, but they do not emphasize the general significance of this design approach. PD
