Philosophies of Chairs and Interfaces

This counts as a rumination

Furniture Designers Are Shifting Focus

In the course of reading my daily dose of news I came across this article on whether the world needs another chair, or a review of the Milan Furniture Fair. The review takes a pretty hard line against frivolous design and ornament without a justification for existence. Adolf Loos made a similar set of observations in 1910 (thank you industrial design reader) In Loos's essay "Ornament and Crime," he makes an argument that equates ornament with crime. among many sensationalist ramblings on tattoos and the criminal mind, Loos observes, or remarks first:

Woe betide the writing desk that has to be changed as frequently as an evening dress just because the style has become unbearable.

and

A consumer who owns furnishings witch become unbearable to him after only ten years and who is therefore forced to buy furniture every ten years is preferable to one who only buys and objet for himself once the old one can no longer be used. Industry demands it. Millions of people are employed because of this rapid change.

The NYT piece descibes a shift where instead of making furniture look good designers have moved on to new approaches:

As for tackling the emotional challenge, one approach is to design products that are unique, or seem to be so. ...he edgy Belgian design gallery, is to exhibit a series of objects, whose form alters according to where they are and how they are treated.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend toward the reconsideration of the interfaces of objects via technology. An interesting future indeed.

(RFS) An Amalgamation of Concepts

Henry Ford: 1928

Design has produced increased efficiency but has not improved the drudgery of women. Machinery has been binding the world together through system. This system should be harnessed to help the development of the human body, as well as the tackling the study of the fundamental problems of human life.

Freud: 1930

Technical application of machines has established definite control over nature. Power over nature is not the only goal of human happiness. Every tool we create perfects our own organs and brings us closer to understanding of our god like nature.

Calkins: 1932

Planned obsolescence helps drive economies by engineering the understanding of consumers.

And that is all I have time for at the moment.

(RFS) The Raven

In addition to a highly productive life of weirdness, Le Corbusier wrote on the similarity of automobiles to the parthenon.

He uses these examples to illustrate the role of standardisation in design thinking.

Beginning with the definition that "standards are a matter of logic, analysis, and minute study..." Le Corbusier moves toward the problem of perfection; or the problem of the perfect standard.

Le Corbusier likens the development of standards in the pursuit of perfection to the birth of a unified style that follows distinct rational elements and heralds the emergence of the "essential."

He uses an interesting word to describe the refuse produced in the pursuit of the essential. He calls it the "essential overplus" that either manifests itself in the form of decoration (for the peasant) or proportion (for the civilized man).

I find it interesting that Le Corbusier makes room for ornament but puts it on the same plane as proportion.

I would agree that ornament will always exist, as will proportion, but I had not thought to think about it in terms of an essential by product of design progress.

(RFS) Construct this

The constuctivists were a group of communist designers that:
DECLARED UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART

Led by Alexander Rodchenko and Varva Stepanova, the basis of the war was to eliminate experimental activity that was "removed from life" and instead "move toward real representation." They sought to use industrial mediums to create a system where the practicality of design helped forward communist ideas.

The elements of their ideology:

Tectonics- expedient use of industrial material in a communist way

Faktura - material that is consciously worked and expediently used without hampering the tectonics or the construction.

Construction - the organizational function of Constructivism

As far as I can tell from this piece, Construction means productive, so I would call this movement Productivism.

I would like to move deeper into their ideology to discern whether it has much to add to current discussion of social enterprise. There is a lot we can learn from the socialist nations that preceded our time.

(RFS) Irrational Absurd Contingent!

Theo van Doesburg 1922

Questions and quotes derived from "The Will to Style"

Does culture mean independence from nature?

Doesburg does a good job of being both especially broad, and minute in his scope. He also does a good job of making assumptions that base his new "style" in context. I suppose I disagree first with the nature vs culture approach (perhaps because I am taking a class called "natureculture"). Natural states of human independence derive from a natural order of freedom of movement and thought. Or perhaps the natural in this case describes the primitive, or the old way.

Is Materialism and hand craftsmanship the purest expression of the soul?

I'm unsure, hand craftsmanship is a wonderful expression of the soul, and often results in staggering beauty and resolution. But then again, I would define pure expression of the soul in terms of art making in general. The adage, "your art is" leads me to assume that art does not rely on traditional means to be called art. A class could be a work of art, (thanks DeCredico). I do not take for granted the words craftsmanship, pure or soul, so I'm gonna reserve judgment on this one.

Has craftsmanship as appropriate to individualistic points of view vanished due to mechanical progress?

No, this is where art fits in.

When man and labor are reduced to commodity in service of the cultural constructions do they achieve social liberation?

This is a loaded one. I wonder what Marx would say... I'm going to go with "no" for 500.... This requires its own rumination... Social Liberation

"To serve artistic ends the use of machines must be governed by the artistic consciousness"

De Stijl will make real all the things "which were known as magic, the spirt, love, etc...."

I agree with using design to make intangible experiences tangible, but I'm fairly sure that Doesburg is referring to these elements to describe how the style will unite these elements. the last sentence even goes so far as to declare that "This merging of art and life signifies nothing less than the spiritual reconstruction of europe."

Unified by visionary design eh?

Simplicity and repose? Truth and clarity in of form? Monumental synthesis?

I'm all for that.

(RFS) Bauhaus to Bauhaus

From Bauhaus to Bauhaus, everyone here is obsessed with the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was obsessed with architecture and designing everything for appropriate architecture. I think...

"The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building!"

yea?

By uniting crafts under one roof, the bauhaus sought to enhance the ability of craftspeople to design in a unified way. (this sounds slightly like the standardisation vs high culture argument) They did this because:

Art cannot be taught, and therfore the educatino of artists should center around the workshop.
Art education begins with learning a "trade"
Proficiency of craft is essensial to any artist, and is the prime source of creative imagination.

The Bauhaus would:

Form a working community of leading and future artist-craftsmen (harmoniously)

encourage collaboration by the students in the work of the master,

secure commissions, also for students

foster constant contact with the laders of crafts and industries

design for contact with public life through exhibition and other activities

and encourage friendly relations between masters and students outside of work. (plays, lectures, poetry, music, costume parties etc..)

Students would learn through craft, drawing and painting, and science and theory. Craft training would occur through apprenticeships, drawing and painting through classes, and science and theory would approach art history to present working methods and techniques as opposed to styles, science of materials, anatomy, and personal finance.

Sounds fun!, I'd go.

(RFS) Decorating into Intimidation and The Age of Infertility

Herman Muthesius and Henry van de Velde had it out on day at the Deustcher Werkbund Conference in 1914. They fought over the role of their institution (to design for the built environment and promote their crafts etc..).

Muthesius wrote: (with numbers) 2. universal high taste has not been achieved / 3. "that the world will buy our products when they achieve convincing stylistic expression / 5. decoration into intimidation will signal a relapse wherein all hope for unified design is lost. / 7. This new standard of style should be brought to the world through publication and exposure.

van de Veldes response (with a similar numerical order):

1. The essence of an artist is that of a "burning idealist, a free spontaneous creator"=

3. The development of high culture does not happen over night, instead it is a recurring culmination of the preceding culture that occurs over generations and that to impose a standard on the world at this point (1914) would

5. Destroy the embryo in the egg.

van de Veldes argues that the creative approach (however it may come) is partially birthed by the "differentiated execution, and not through standardisation of creativity and that therefore imposing a standard "form" on the world runs contrary to the spirit of unified artistic expression. (which in my opinion falls along the lines of "free" artistic expression and not necessarily unified anyway.)

I disagree with van de Veldes second to last point (8.) where he summarizes the way arts help develop and influence the world and create a unified culture.

Quality will not be created out of the spirt for export. Quality is always firstly created exclusively for a quite limited circle of connoisseurs and those who commission the work. These gradually gain confidence in their artists; slowly there develops first a narrower then a national clientele, and only then do foreign countries.

I think it is obvious that the optimum approach is twofold. First that the freedom of expression should work its way through quality (either from the top down, or from the bottom up.) Secondly, that the scientific definition of standards should (like furniture) be continuously refreshed and made public so that the overall systems of creative expression can then continuously push the limits of possibility and thusly refresh necessary standards.

(RFS) Taylorism

Frederick Winslow Taylor invented the scientific management of production. He would do elaborate studies on efficiency wherein some people credit him with inventing the science of ergonomics. among other things that he champions (rewarding good workers, appropriate technology and what not) Taylor championed the pursuit of "the one right way to do things." He would define a specific process and then beat the hell out of it (scientifically) until he arrived at a system for the optimisation of that process.

Although principals such as these are taught everywhere in business and management school. "trim the inefficient" "find a better way to do things" I believe that this scientific approach or the ID equivalent (faux ethnographic study) frequently becomes overlooked and unexamined.

We must not succumb to modes of thought that reflect "I have the user in my head" types of mentality and we should continuously re evaluate the circumstances that we have designed for. It is impossible to design for the constraints of the world at once, the best we can do is furiously iterate solutions to maximise productivity, resourcefulness, the entire tripple bottom line, as well as more etherial or DADA ideas such as fun, or whimsical expression.

I believe these ideas also reference Christine Fredericks "Labor Saving Kitchen" of 1919 in which she defined a process:

In the goal of concentrating the working process to optimise productivity: Research, Distil, Rearrange

that sought to maximise "the homemakers investment of time, energy and money"

I wonder, do these ideals always need to be defined? Perhaps there is room for an exercise or a critique that finds the absolute wrong way to do things as a means of finding an alternate "right way" to do things.

(RFS) "Our Epochs Lack of Culture"

RFS stands for Ruminations for Storage.
In 1911 Hermann Muthesius wrote on the aims of the Werkbund, a group of artists and architects that sought to further high culture through their talents in design and manufacture. Muthesius asserted that the current epoch consisted of a profound "lack of culture" Muthesius cites the admirable progress that preceded him from the arts and crafts movement, but ultimately determines that humanity is still amazingly far from high cultural achievement. My definition of high culture probably differs from Muthesius, but nevertheless, Muthesius explains the Werkbunds task this way:

"... More importantly that the material aspect, is the spiritual; higher than purpose, material and technique stands form. Purpose, material and technique might be beyond criticism [he has a point here], yet without form we should still be living in a crude and brutal world."

It might be easy to explain the higher "form" that the Werkbund is fighting for to be some sort of spiritual ideal that brings together the previous facets and results in high cultural achievement. Maybe what he means by "without a total respect for form, culture is unthinkable." is that the built world (basically what the Werkbund was doing) must unite and illustrate the culture of the day through their use of material form, process, technique... and whatnot. Perhaps he is alluding to his future argument for the standardisation of form in pursuit of uniting the world. so to speak...