Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Innovation in design

“ To clothe modern ideas in modern dress “. These are the words of an amazing architect born a Victorian , but turning in the end to be more a Modernist.

If you were to specify the main reason why Charles Rennie Mackintosh was such an innovative architect/designer what would you say?  I give you a hint: imagine the Victorian dark interior with over-stuffed sofas and chairs, heavy pattern upon pattern. Furthermore, take a look of the following images taking into consideration that both of the concepts took place mostly  in the same period.  

He used in his interior design a detail that nowadays is obvious, but back then turned out to be a revolutionary key factor: he created the first all-white room  in his apartment on 120 Mains Street, Glasgow, in 1900. He didn’t stop here, because he had the vision of combining architecture, furniture and art in a holistic interior design aesthetics. Sounds really modern, isn’t it? He constantly tried to play and reinterpret the scale, proportion and light. Appointed in all-white walls, with furniture sparsely arranged on light carpeting and large windows covered in natural muslin, the rooms become as modern today as they were revolutionary at the time. Another recurring technique in Mackintosh interior was the use of ebonized chairs that he designed as visual punctuation, often set agains white walls for greater impact.

Which is the source of the ideas? He regarded Japanese design as a fresh source of inspiration, free of the European historical references used by his contemporaries, particularly the functional quality of an open plan.

The color photography below is eye-opening proof of the impact of white interiors and the bold departure from a heavy Victorian past.

In the Hill House design, he also took the radical approach of designing the interior spaces first, which dictated the exterior, the opposite path of most architects. Mackintosh designed the furniture and other fixtures, as he was one of the first proponents of integrated art-architecture. His desire for aesthetic harmony even extended to prescribing the color of cut flowers that might be placed on a table in the living room, so as not to clash with the rest of the décor. Thus, as you can see, the color photography below is eye-opening proof of the impact of white interiors and the bold departure from a heavy Victorian past. It is very important, in my opinion, to realize the importance of his designing decisions in that specific period of time. Imagine also and try to understand better how hard must have been to start from scratch and come up with a totally different mentality regarding space and developing concepts that didn’t borrow anything from the old ideas of  what good design or architecture meant. He literally took rid of everything that was old, started over and constructed his own reality.

As a recognition of his originality, Mies Van der Rohe called him a “purifier in the field of architecture.”