GENIUS OF DESIGN EPISODE 2

20’s-30’s

In the story of design- period of relationship of us and things were subject to radical examination.

Landscape- machine boomed large

How many legs does the chair actually need?

The answer to question like these reshape the word then and now.

1990 a new art school opened in Germany

1926 it came here branded to its own distinct local.

BAUHAUS

-They want to educate young people to make products

-center of new thinking

-pieces they produced were the furniture of new thinking.

- the curriculum (WALTER GROPIUS) BROKE boundaries

- design to be education without frontiers

ENEMY: central organic and highly decorated

ART NOUVEAU

– branding of contemporary life

-naked women into furniture pieces

1908 “ornament and crime”

Lois was proposing to use the less decoration – excessive use of resources

High value objects in high numbers for reasonable cost- democratic way to design and manufacture
products.

Technology (modernists)

-TRIBULAR STEEL –lighter than wood but far stronger.

CHAIR

Not simple to design a chair

- Difficult item, most challenging to design

- -element of compromise
 James Irvine (Designer)
- Marcel Breuer
- -tribular steel was his shot at design mortality
- MB118 CHAIR 1928
- Cantaliever construction – chair with no legs at all

Modern world – new and better ways of doing things

Warehouse in Germany- machines

Margaretta Schutte- Lihotzky

-Frankfurt Kitchen
Designed the kitchen very carefully
- Masproduced fitted kitchen –(rationalize women’s work)
- Inspiration: trains
- 1910- Frank and lily used a movie camera reduced 18 different motions
- ERGONOMICS- laws of work
- Reduced number of steps from stove to sink
- Aluminium bins pour flour
- Cupboard- sliding doors
- Cooking box- boiling after one hour
- Ironing board- fixed to the wall and comes down easily

Fitted House
Took its inspiration from outside the domestic sphere
- They built the corridor as the same measure of a train
- Modern traffic machine- engineering, future
- Liberating (adjust the interior to change your life)

Modernism
Enormous expectation
Poetic reflection of the modern age
- Not as comfortable
- To look at “aesthetically pleasing”

Modernists has set down to break barriers. Fundamental distinction between architects and designers
as well as architectures and designers.

- Question in temperament

1930s

Bauhaus closed its school in Desile.

Bauhaus founder walter Gropius moved to Britain. Alongside Gropius was fellow Bauhaus Marcel
Breuer. High rise living

Castleisty vibes for the houses living at the old English

All about comfort

1933

- Electricity Pylon
- Milliken Bros (1928)
- With design adjustments by sir reginald blomfield

The central electricity board 1920s- national grid

- Bringing the benefits of currents to homes everywhere

The most radio radio was the Ecko AD 65 creator of the icicle flats Created by WELLS COATES (1932)

George Carwardine 1935 –Anglepoise

- His design is based on engineering principles

- Lamp

European Design
- Is more concerned with self expression of the designer

American - Mainstream

Designer Raymond Louis

Design: Upward sales curve
1st design consultant – marry commerce and art
Streamlining to make planes automobiles go faster
Refrigerators- sales jumped by 600%
MAYA- Most advanced yet acceptable

Henry Driefes- BIG BEN clock

Systematic approach – male and female figures

American telephone- designed by BAUHAUS

Folk modernism- Airstream trailer Wally Byam
This episode was about how we started living from the early to mid-20th Century through designed
products and experiences thanks to basically, European Design vs American design. Highlights and
resonators were:

European
Characteristic In reaction to art nouveau and the over-
ethic ornamentation of everything, the
Bauhaus ethic was to strip to beautiful
utility in order to produce high value
objects in high numbers produced for
reasonable cost in a low value way [i.e.
mass production]. This is the democratic
way; the most of the best to the greatest
number of people for the least.*
So democracy as by the people (designers,
crafts people, all together in Bauhaus), for
American
Driven by consumerism,
capitalism, individualism and the
market reigns supreme. The
designer worked closely with the
manufacturer and consumer in
order to make design relevant.
So democratic design as in by the
people (the American Dream,
baby), for the people (read:
consumer) and ‘elected’ by the
people (as consumer).
 the people (to choose) but ‘elected’ for the
people (the designers impose how you
should live)
Boundary Eliminating demarcation between design Didn’t start with what
breaker and architecture, craft and mass people shouldbe but what people
production, designing and making. In the actually are (and actually do).
Bauhaus all worked together and learned Applying a systematic and
from each other. scientific approach called
‘Human Factors‘ the science of
interface between people and
things.
Approach architected, idealistic, communal, designed, rational, rigorous,
egalitarian pragmatic, mainstream
Relationship monologue – imposes thought-out vision dialogue – includes user in
to user visioning
Example Le Corbusier and Bauhaus Henry Dreyfuss
designer
Example

*Peter Fiell said much good stuff. So did a guy called Paul Bennett (called that for that was, indeed is,
his name…d’oh, faux pas alert – just looked him up, he’s an Ideo guy – s’pose that’s the sort of thing I
should just know. I did wonder why his spiel about t-shaped people resonated so much, when at my work
we’ve looked into the notion of t-shaped people when describing expertise for our designers).
Anyways, the designs were very of the times, and on looking back at my notes (yes, I made notes) it does
come across as European = bad, American = great, but Europe had old Adolf and was about to go to war,
who wouldn’t want to look to modern technology for answers about how to live better? Perhaps Le
Corbusier’s visions of architect-ed communal city living that we’re paying for now (as the doco posits) is
the same as the iDecades were living in now, the decades of connecting through wires and information
exchanges. Design of the times.
What struck me pleasantly about the episode was my personal balance as a designer where I like to strip
away fuss and decoration and fight against personal preference or business views of ‘who wouldn’t want to
use this/do it this way!?” In other words, I like both the European and American design ethics (of their
time). An idealist pragmatism based on what people actual think, do and use and what can be built,
manufactured and sustained, with a little knowledge and expertise sprinkled in.