Modern Vs. Contemporary Furniture

Modern and Contemporary Furniture are often thought of as one in the same or interchangeable. When one considers both styles of furniture, we may think of clean lines, minimalistic intention, and simplistic design. Both styles carry very many similarities and can often be thought of as similar and you are not necessarily incorrect to exchange one term for the other or vice versa.
The Modern style or modernism came about just around the time of the Second World War. This time brought about great change. With this movement, came new distinctive style that was never seen before. It was a great leap of transition that forever shifted our ideas of the furniture world. It shows a move that was about much more than new design. It showed great technological advances. This style introduced the use of new materials including tubular steel, plastics, and plywood, just to name a few.
The Modern style came about at a time of social reform and change. It was great during this time because it was simple, yet affordable and effective during this period. It is very easy to point out a piece of furniture with modern design. You will see clean and simple designs that produce a great profound and aesthetic effect. As before, with classic design, you will see cluttered, detailed, and busy pieces. Modern furniture most certainly displays a unique style so different from anything in the past.
One school in particular, the Bauhaus school in Germany produced many great designers that thought of great innovative designs that would later transform the face of modern design. With the help of these group of designers, great innovation, ideas of using new inexpensive materials, and the development of modern design are seen all over the world today.
We see great designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and Herman Miller creating masterpieces that people recognize everywhere. All these great designers incorporated new materials, unique concepts, and new and creative design that we see popular to this day.
On the other hand, Contemporary design can be used as more of a broad term that can be applied to many styles. Rather than seeing contemporary design as one type of style, Contemporary design can actually apply to several different trends and styles of certain time periods. It can be a style from the 1970s, a Japanese simple low profile design, or a style created in today’s time.
Contemporary furniture is more of a prevailing style or mode during a certain time period in a certain part of the world. For example, Japanese contemporary is different from European contemporary, but they both involve new materials and simple aesthetic design. Also, Japanese contemporary in the 1970s varies from Japanese contemporary today.
Generally, both modern and contemporary designs show the introduction of new materials never seen before its time and shows great technology and innovation of design behind it. This is how we can see them as both alike. Essentially, modern and contemporary designs are not distinguishable enough to have strict precise definitions. We can just develop a general understanding and the terms can still be used loosely and in fact be interchanged.

Tagged as: Modern Furniture, Modern Living Room Furniture