The arts and crafts movement was a type of rebellion to the over elaborate designs of the past, as it adopted more of a simplistic strategy. what do you think is the most important contribution the arts and crafts movement made to architecture and design, and why?

The Arts and Crafts was an esthetic and social British movement, which has defended the return to creative handcraft in opposite to the mechanized industrial objects.

They believed that the return to the artisans' origins, the manual labor would be valorized. Critics and theorists formed in 1888, in London, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, in a period that the Industrial Revolution reached many countries and invaded the market with several objects whose artistic value was lost.

It was part of that Society William Morris and his daughter May, Walter Crane, T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, Ford Madox Brown, Henry Wilson, among others. They refused the mechanic process that was part of mass production products and wanted the return of the mental and dedicated job that the crafts need. It was a unique relation between the creator and its creation.  

We could say that the first designers were part of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and that modern figure was inspired in the proposes of the 19th-century group. Definitely, Morris was one of the most experienced members of the Arts and Crafts, being able to create in many media. In architecture, his buildings were the inspiration for the Art Nouveau movement, which could be considered one of the marks of modern architecture.  

Another movement that inspired in Arts and Crafts movement, was the Bauhaus, initiated at the art school with the same name, in Dachau, Germany. The Bauhaus teachers returned to the way Arts and Crafts taught and produced their works, using the crafts as medium to create a renewed modern art.

The most important contribution of the Arts and Crafts movement was to remember that architecture and design were not dependent on mechanization.

We can arrive at this answer because:

Thus, the movement showed that architecture and design should not be sectors dependent on mechanization, but sectors with the freedom to work with both crafts and industry. This allowed for speed, specificity, and strong artistic content that valued the works.

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