Richard Herre and the Stuttgart Werkbund (German Work Federation)
Born in 1885, Richard Herre studied architecture in Stuttgart and Munich - and before World War I, struck up close friendships with artists in the Hölzel circle and protagonists of Modernism such as Oskar Schlemmer and Willi Baumeister.
Recently rediscovered as an important representative of the New Objectivity of the 1920s and an influential figure in the Stuttgart Werkbund, Herre is considered one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Weissenhof Estate.
Overseen by Mies van der Rohe, the Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate, built in 1927 for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart. It comprised of twenty-one buildings containing sixty flats, designed by (amongst others) Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Max Taut. Herre was responsible for the interior architecture of the house designed by Max Taut.
Herre concentrated primarily on interior architecture and was strongly influenced by the ideas of Adolf Loos, but also by the holistic design ideal of Japanese homes. He created the interior design for numerous private homes, schools and businesses, as well as the Robert Bosch Hospital and Stuttgart’s Ministry of the Interior.
As well as furniture, Herre generated lighting, textiles and carpets, creating holistically designed rooms with an inventive use of colour. His furniture and textile designs from the 1920s are notable for their pure and geometric forms, punctuated by carefully considered colour compositions, which look as fresh and relevant today as they did close to a century ago.
In 1926, inspired by functionality and modernism, Herre designed chair Stuttgart and used it in his interiors for decades, repeatedly modifying it slightly in the process.
After the workspace of Herre was completely destroyed in 1944, the only works that remained were preserved over time in his private apartment and family home. With the help of his son Frank Herre and grandson Max Herre, the recently re-discovered designs of the Stuttgart Chair and Zet Kilim have been re-commissioned by e15 almost a century after their creation.
An almost forgotten chapter of Modernism now comes to life once again through e15, with the re-editions of chair Stuttgart and kilim Zet, by Richard Herre, now exclusively available at Viaduct.
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