The goal of this study is to develop a way of understanding of Modern Design History. For this purpose, Nikolaus Pevner's 'Pioneers of Modern Design' and Reyner Banham's 'Theory and Design in the First Machine Age' and 'Design by Choice' have been selected and studied. Three books were written in different decades: the former was written in the 1930s and latters in the 1960s.
In order to investigate how each design history was related with the historical contexts, this study has defined conceptual framework first: ideological space and a system of aesthetic judgment. Ideological space has been defined as epistemological net to reflect the actual influence of social, cultural, and economic forces and shape a mode of experience of individuals. A system of aesthetic judgment has been defined as a concrete index to organize categories, values, and meanings within ideological space. Also it help individuals describe Design History. With these concepts, Pevsner's and Banham's books have been interpreted as a symptom of a historical fissure, reflecting the actual conditions of ideological space.
The conditions of ideological space which surrounded Pevsner's Design History were; art's pursuit of autonomy, commodification and reification of cultural products, tradition of Gothic architecture, the faith in technology, and experience of Modernity. Pevsner constructed his own system of aesthetic judgment in the relation of these conditions. By means of Gothic tradition, he was able to find visual language which was supposed to represent such values as universality, absoluteness, purity, and timelessness. He believed that objects produced by Moden Design Movements were manifestation of universal laws of design language rather than visualization of an idea of universality in the early 20th century. However, Banham recognized expendability of visual language as an inevitable aesthetic quality in capitalism. In addition to these, he had his own perspectives about Modern Design History on the base of mass-culture. The conditions of ideological space, which determined Banham's history in the 1960s, were the expansions of mass-culture and popular art, the spread of mass-media, tradition of Modern design, and economic order of the late-capitalism. On the base of these conditions, Banham established his own system of aesthetic judgement in form of conflicts between capitalism and traditional value of Modern Design.
