Modernism was much more than a design movement as the V&A shows, says stephen bayley,

It's not the first car in the V&A, but it is the first kitchen sink. Hans Ledwinka's coruscating 1937 Tatra T87 is one of the glories of the Modernism show.

Like Volkswagen-designer Porsche, Ledwinka was a Czech, but his voluptuous streamlined car contrasts to the austere Beetle, showing how powerfully seduced were many Eastern Europeans by the romance of the machine. But machines taught rational lesons too: a complete working example of Margarete Schuette-Lihotzky's uncompromising functional kitchen design for Frankfurt's utopian socialist housing schemes of the 1930s stands as a reprimand to pre-Modern clutter and as a manifesto that well-organised, Modern people do the cooking themselves.

These were the days when right-angles, industrial materials, space-planning and