Exhibition – William Morris meets Weissenhof

From 2 December 2024 to 2 March 2025, discover the exhibition William Morris meets Weissenhof – A (typo)graphic intervention in the Weissenhofwerkstatt at the Mies van der Rohe House in Stuttgart.

The British Arts and Crafts movement centred around the designer William Morris is often regarded as a pioneer in the development of modern design. While Morris’ interior designs were strongly characterised by craftsmanship and nature motifs, an increasingly reduced and functionalist aesthetic developed in modernism. But was modernism really as free of patterns as is often assumed?

In the Weissenhofwerkstatt, Patrick Thomas confronts the simple, white architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with a wall design inspired by Morris’ famous wallpaper. Stefanie Schwarz adds a typographic component to this intervention by staging quotes from important representatives of modernism on the subject of patterns and ornamentation in the exhibition space. An accompanying showcase exhibition throws a spotlight on modern interior design and makes it clear that decorative surface design and sometimes opulent patterns also played a role in modernism time and again.

A project by Patrick Thomas (Prof. Communication Design) and Stefanie Schwarz (KTL Typografie und Schriftgestaltung) from the ABK Stuttgart in collaboration with Tobias Bednarz (art historian, M.A. cand.) and Anja Krämer (museum director) from the Weissenhof Museum in Le Corbusier House Stuttgart.