Behrens, Peter

Peter Behrens (1868 – 1940), is widely regarded as one of the most influential German designers of the 20th Century. Whilst first gaining recognition within the handmade arts and crafts aesthetic of the Jugendstil movement of the late 19th Century, Behrens’ utopian views of art and design as a way to improve society pushed his practice into Architecture, Furniture design and Advertising. Whilst working on the AEG Turbine Factory in 1910, Behrens designed every aspect of the company’s image, from price lists and clocks, to the building itself, in effect creating the first example of Corporate Identity, an idea that was to become so essential to design in the later half of the 1900s.

Behrens’ most important legacy, however, could be said to be seen in the design of ‘New Ways’ (1926), a private housing development in Northampton, that is often cited as the first example of the ‘International Modern Style’. Behrens’ utopian and holistic approach to design was ultimately Modernist, and with Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe and Le Corbusier as students, it would perhaps not be inaccurate to see his work as the foundations that Modernism, the most important movement of the 20th Century, grew out of.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/58771/Peter-Behrens
ArtDirectory (2008) [online] [accessed: 10/11/09] http://www.behrens-peter.com/index.shtml

Basma AlMahsat
Charlie Abbott