Bureau David Voss creates Bauhaus-inspired book about modern housekeeping

Date
18 January 2017

Bureau David Voss has designed In Reserve: The Household!, a book that contains historic and contemporary models of housework based on a Bauhaus notion from the 1920s that discussed new ways of living. Regina Bittner from Bauhaus Dessau came to the studio with the brief in 2015 and the book is based slightly on the exhibition Haushaltsmesse, an international trade fair on the art of housekeeping and budgeting.

Published by Spector Books, the publication is “stuffed” with all sorts of materials including photographs, essays, interviews and artistic projects. “We’ve used materials that were produced back then and today, so there’s a huge variety of aesthetics,” explains Bureau David Voss. “To create a fitting surrounding for such a compendium, we felt the design should be simple, so we kept it mostly black and white.”

Bauhaus-inspired in almost every way, some aspects of the design also echoes old books containing household accounts. This in combination with the archive imagery, makes the tome feel like it’s a passport to the past in some ways. Bureau David Voss uses two fonts, a sans and a serif, “which were easy to read and have a clear and simple cut”.

The studio spent about ten months working on the project where they were exposed to a range of sources and materials. “We are kind of experts now concerning questions about housework, but purely in a theoretical way!”

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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Bureau David Voss: In Reserve: The Household!

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About the Author

Rebecca Fulleylove

Rebecca Fulleylove is a freelance writer and editor specialising in art, design and culture. She is also senior writer at Creative Review, having previously worked at Elephant, Google Arts & Culture, and It’s Nice That.

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