Pioneer Modernism

Humans are self-improving beings. We always strive to make better of what we have. This was the internal focus of Pioneer-modernism. The movement began by embracing the idea that design can improve human consciousness. This thought emerged amidst the first world war, a period filled with inequalities and highly contrasting extremes. It was primarily driven by the thought of creating a peaceful world by means of unifying similarities and embracing internationalism.

Pioneers followed the idea of universal beauty through geometry. Many problems emerged during this movement. One such was their attempt to fuse technology with theosophy and purists ideals. They also tried to merge Romanticism with Rationalism. Those part of the movement incorporated a broad spectrum of ideas but did not possess the necessary material means to achieve their objectives. The utopia or ideal world of design that they envisioned could not be brought about because 'mass production' was a key factor, which the technology at the time did not have a thorough mastery of. This resulted in a wide void of space between their futuristic ideas and the current reality. The idea of internationalism also raised the question and concern of identity. If their is one distinctive design then how will individuals identify themselves? So rather then solving the problem of alienation, an international and universal design would only create 'self-alienation' amongst individual geographical groups.

In the end, Pioneers created an oxymoronic ideal "they believed that design could improve society by transforming mass consciousness, but they tended to accept also that before it could do this, society itself had to be improved. While they embraced universality they also failed to note (earlier on) that internationalism would only appear beautiful and efficient to those who were able to travel around the world and experience it: which just happened to be a very small percentage of the population.