Standardisation

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Standardisation means defining common measurements, formats and components, so that an object can be mass-produced, replaced, combined with others and sold at an affordable price. The idea was born with industry, but in the twentieth century it also became a question of design. The standard object, called the "type", can be as beautiful as a one-off piece.

Before the theory: the No. 14 chair

An early example is Michael Thonet's No. 14 chair, introduced in 1859. It is made of six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws and two nuts. It was shipped flat, could be assembled anywhere and cost little. Between 1859 and 1930 about 50 million were sold: it was the first great success of mass-produced furniture.

Cologne 1914: type versus individual

The issue erupted at the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. Hermann Muthesius presented his theses on Typisierung: Germany should concentrate on well-designed "types", suited to industry and to export. Henry van de Velde replied with his counter-theses: the artist is by nature an individualist and will never accept an imposed canon. The debate brought the Werkbund close to a split, but the path was set. In those same years Peter Behrens was already proving the point at AEG, designing lamps and kettles as families of interchangeable parts.

Everyday measurements

After the First World War standardisation became an economic necessity. In 1921 the German industrial standards committee, today's DIN, published the DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. The sheet has sides in the ratio 1:√2: folded in half, it keeps the same proportions. This gave rise to A4 and the whole A series, now the international standard ISO 216.

In 1926 the architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed the Frankfurt kitchen for Ernst May's public housing estates: 1.9 by 3.4 metres, conceived as a laboratory, with every movement calculated. About 10,000 were built, and it is the forerunner of the fitted kitchen. At the Bauhaus Walter Gropius worked on houses built from prefabricated elements like a construction set, and standardisation became one of the principles of the Modern Movement.

The Modulor and the post-war years

Le Corbusier brought the idea to the scale of the human body. In 1943 the French standards body AFNOR asked him for a system of measurements for building; the result was the Modulor, published in 1948. It is a scale of measurements based on a man 1.83 metres tall and on the golden section, which Le Corbusier used for the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille. In Britain, during the war, standardisation was instead a response to scarcity. From 1942 the Utility Furniture scheme imposed simple, rationed furniture, made to designs approved by a committee that included the designer Gordon Russell.

Today standardisation is everywhere, often without our noticing. We find it in screws, sockets, pallets, shipping containers and self-assembly furniture. It is also the reason a good design can reach millions of people.