Paper short abstract:

The cabinet by Siedhoff-Buscher expresses Bauhaus ideology and progressive childhood ideas. The pedagogic cabinet's modern surface, creation of volume and void, and construction and modularity link to the modern movement in architecture and the developmental stage of object permanence.

Paper long abstract:

Walter Benjamin claimed 'the most extreme concreteness of an epoch... appears now and again in children's games, [or] in a building'. Bauhaus buildings have frequently been examined as an expression of the modern times, and Siedhoff-Buscher's children's toy games have been exonerated by few scholars to also be an expression of the time. This paper argues to include her children's furniture design into this category; the cabinet as another art piece that reflects a pivotal moment of history, capturing the unfolding relationship between modern children and modern design in the context of mass society. After World War I, children, as vulnerable individuals of future society, were the impetus to create critical design interventions, and new pedagogies. Siedhoff-Buscher combined Bauhaus pedagogy, design, and architecture to create an educational, modern structure for children. She experimented with exterior and interior relationships on a material object, combining an artistic and social breakthrough in design. By examining the cabinet as a volumetric form in space, Siedhoff-Buscher showed how furniture was the living extension of architecture. The volume of the cabinet, like architecture, transforms through constant building and imagination. A furniture cabinet is an empty hard-shell case, a protective covering, a pocket waiting to be filled, a present waiting to be opened. Through the architectural-based cabinet design, children would be encouraged to think beyond the seemingly simple surface of the cabinet to re-order and re-claim the space, navigate through forms and voids to gain a new sensibility of object permanence in building the world around them.