Minimalism is an architectural and design movement that removes everything not strictly necessary: a limited palette of materials, no ornament, clean planes, and light and space as the principal means of expression. It emerges from the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of minimal art, and flowers in architecture from the 1980s and 1990s onwards.
Minimalism is not bareness for the sake of economy. It is a design attitude in which attention shifts from decoration to proportion, material and light. Where nothing distracts, every dimension counts.
Characteristics
- Limited material palette. Often no more than three or four materials in the whole building — concrete, glass, timber and steel, say, each in its own colour and texture
- No ornament. Mouldings, architraves and decoration are absent; the junction between two planes becomes the detail
- Concealed services. Radiators, pipework, switches, door frames and curtain tracks are flush-mounted or hidden altogether
- Continuous planes. Large, undivided wall, floor and facade surfaces with as few joints as possible
- Light as material. Daylight is brought in deliberately through rooflights, high window bands, or a few precisely placed openings
- Proportion over decoration. Quality lies in the dimensional relationships of the space and in where the openings sit
Architects associated with this approach include John Pawson, Tadao Ando and Peter Zumthor.
What it means in practice
Building minimally is almost never cheaper. The opposite holds: the less there is to see, the higher the demands on workmanship and dimensional accuracy.
- Seamless surfaces require a very flat substrate and skilled plastering
- A frameless, flush door costs considerably more than a standard door in a lined frame
- Concealed services demand early coordination between the architectural design and the services drawings; retrofitting them does not work
- There is almost no tolerance: a few millimetres out of true shows immediately in a plain surface
- Without fitted storage the concept fails — storage has to be designed in from the first sketch
Related terms
- Modernism
- Functionalism
- Bauhaus
- Brutalism
- Detailing
- Setting out
Want to learn more about construction terms? Visit our knowledge base at fredsdiyplans.com.