In the first of our two part series, we are excited to introduce Michael Wright and Dania Herrera, the brilliant people behind Modernist Tourists. We delve into what makes them tick and they took us on a wonderful tour of Modernism. Enjoy the trip!

1. What is the concept behind Modernist Tourists?

Basically, in much the same way as normal people do, when Dania and I used to go away on holidays and day trips we would search around for fun things to do once we got there. It’s hard to pin-point exactly when things to do became a weird obsession with modernism, and when we started planning our travel around architecture, but it happened somewhere along the line. The name Modernist Tourists started as a joke really, something we coined around the time we first started posting on social media about our visits, and we sort of grew into it; now it’s a vehicle for sharing our interest in modernist architecture and design from the inter-war period. It’s not really about tourism, but it’s definitely about modernism.

Highfield Court, Golders Green, London (1935); Image from Modernist Tourists archives

2. What is it about Modernism that you love?

We’ve been together for over 20 years and we’ve always been into art, design, architecture, literature, history and music. What we like about modernism is that it’s a nexus for everything we’ve always been interested in, and we are still discovering new and interesting connections between the different strands.

For example Dania is currently reading the biography of Leanora Carrington (the Anglo-Mexican surrealist painter and author) who it turns out was friends with the architect Ernö Goldfinger and first met her lover Max Ernst in Goldfinger’s modernist flat in Highpoint (by Berthold Lubetkin), she was also enrolled in art classes with Serge Chermayeff, the emigré polymath architect who partnered with Erich Mendelsohn during the latter’s time in Britain. We find these obscure connections all the time, and when one studies the 20th century, particularly the first half of it, then one quickly realises that modernist thought was the driving force of almost every new development in the arts, even if at first they seem unrelated.

I personally appreciate the intellectual rigour which was applied to modernist literature, modernist art, modernist music etc – it didn’t allow for much in terms of whimsy or even fun(!) and I warm to that unabashed didacticism. In terms of architecture and design I love that this same discipline, at times both intellectual and moral, and the same desire to shed the redundant conventions inherited from the 19th century, was reflected in the built environment. It was a quest to find a new form for the new century, using all these new and interesting materials, to experiment relentlessly, and it must have been a very exciting time but also a rather unsettling and even frightening one to some. If one reads the key modernist architects one finds many of them theorising explicitly about how the new citizens of the 20th century should live, and how part of the architectural mission is to allow humans to develop in new and healthy ways, both physically and mentally. It all ties in with the latest sociological and psychological thinking of the period and is remarkably optimistic, though admittedly at times also rather pompous; certainly very few architects or designers would dare to speak confidently with such scope today.

This same obsession with form can be seen across all the modernisms, whether in the narrative structure of a Virginia Woolf novel, a Schönberg string quartet, a painting by Picasso or a building by Le Corbusier, and that legacy is something we still live with today. Dania and I were born in the late 20th century as part of the last generation to grow up without the internet, and for us the objects we collect have a strong physical resonance. Our flat feels like a museum sometimes, just one we happen to live in.

3. What is the best Modernist Building you have ever visited?

We both the love the Bauhaus campus in Dessau by Walter Gropius. That’s probably a pretty obvious thing to say but as soon as we arrive there, and we visited again recently this summer, it feels like a spiritual home to us.

We also visited Mies van der Rohe’s Lemke House in the north-eastern Berlin suburb of Alt-Hohenschönhausen this year. It is extremely modest in scale compared to the Bauhaus but it is such a beautiful little house, very peaceful, and I think it’s my favourite private domestic dwelling we’ve discovered so far. Unfortunately the Lemke’s weren’t able to enjoy it for very long as the war came along shortly afterwards and it was commandeered by the Russian army who used it as a motorbike garage and storeroom – 20th century history again.

In Britain our favourite building is the Isokon Flats in London where we volunteer as guides in the small museum there. Not only is it a fine example of modernist architecture by one of the leading advocates of modernism in Britain, Canadian-born Wells Coates, but it was also a clubhouse of sorts for many of the displaced artists and intellectuals of Europe living in London; and of course the fact that Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy all lived there in the mid-thirties is pretty special.

4. What is your favourite modernist piece of furniture / furniture designer and why?

That’s a very hard question so I’m going to cheat and talk about our favourites. I really enjoy sitting in my Isokon Long Chair by Marcel Breuer which he designed while living in London in 1935-36, it’s based on his earlier aluminium lounge chair but exploits the properties of plywood beautifully. Claims by the Isokon company that it aids digestion better than any medicine are probably exaggerated but it is certainly very comfortable to sit in.

However, my favourite design in terms of pure form is the S43-F chair. We own two early examples and I never tire of looking at them, there is something very human about the shape, as there is in all the best chairs, and I like the combination of wood and steel; as an exercise in economy of form and materials it is wonderfully sculptural.

We also try to be as international as possible in our collecting and with Martin’s help at By Barnabas we’ve managed to obtain some excellent examples of Czech design, including a tubular steel day bed, a pair of bedside cabinets and a music cabinet by Jindrich Halabala. Martin is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful and we’re always excited when he finds something new!

A massive thank you to Michael and Dania for giving us so much of their time and for sharing their knowledge! If you want to see more of their travels, check out their website here!