Design
Industrial design is always meant for mass reproduction, whereas design may also mean one-off production. [Feb 2006]
Related: applied arts - architecture - car - cult objects - decorative arts - fashion - furniture - "good design" - graphic design - industrial design - interior design - object - product - technology
By region: Italian design - Scandinavian design
Movements: art deco (1925-1950) - art nouveau (1880-1905) - atomic age - Arts & Crafts (1851-1914) - Bauhaus (1920-1930) - International Style - Jet Age - machine age - Memphis design group - pop (1960-1980) - postmodernism - space age - streamline moderne (1925-1950)
Designers: Joe Colombo - Luigi Colani - Ray and Charles Eames - Piero Fornasetti - Carlo Mollino - Gaetano Pesce - Dieter Rams - Ettore Sottsass
Connoisseurs: the Fiells - Stephen Bayley - Philippe Garner - Bevis Hillier - Penny Sparke
Magazines: Domus magazine
Citroen DS (1955)
Carlton cabinet (1981) - Ettore Sottsass
Design classics
Some industrial designs are viewed as classic pieces of design that can be regarded as much as works of art as pieces of engineering. This is a list of designs that are regarded as having reached this classic status.
- 1859: The No. 14 chair by Michael Thonet
- 1903: The Hill House ladder back chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
- 1916: The glass Coca-Cola bottle by Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana
- 1917: The Red and blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld
- 1925: The Wassily Chair No B3 by Marcel Breuer
- 1929: The Barcelona chair by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- 1935: The Volkswagen by Erwin Komenda
- 1948: The Porsche 356 by Erwin Komenda
- 1950s and later: Tupperware
- 1955: Arne Jacobsen's Chair 3107
- 1955: The Citroën DS "Goddess"
- 1961: The IBM Selectric typewriter
- 1963: The Porsche 911
- 1967: The Panton chair by Verner Panton
- 1994: The Aeron chair
- 1998: The iMac by Jonathan Ive and Apple's Industrial Design Group
- 2001: The iPod by Jonathan Ive and Apple's Industrial Design Group
Fashion
Fashion is the most elusive and ephemeral of the decorative arts. --Philippe Garner"Good" design
Image sourced here.
SK4 record player, 1956
Design: Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot
Manufacturer: Braun
Dieter Rams is the last survivor of the modern movement (Stephen Bayley, 1991)
The modern movement can be interpreted as an attempt to restore rules to the theory and practice of architecture after a century and more of eclecticism. (Stephen Bayley, 1991)
Good design would mean something as long as there was some identifiable competition in the form of "bad" design. (Stephen Bayley, 1991)
See also: Stephen Bayley - good - bad
Sixties Design (2001) - Philippe Garner
Sixties Design (2001) - Philippe Garner [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
During the decade many associate with the Beatles, hippies, and flower power, designers in Europe, Asia, and the Americas were fundamentally rethinking modernist principles. Sixties Design is a documentation and analysis of that era during which belief in modernist design began to crumble. As modernism--the foremost design mode of the 20th century--reached its golden years, it came to be considered by many an autocratic, almost fascistically impersonal movement that strove to raise the standards of large groups by ignoring the peccadilloes of individuals. At the same time, the modern era and its designers are responsible for remarkable innovations that have forever changed the way we live, work, and play. The book captures an interesting moment during which modernism and its refutations began to coexist.
Author Philippe Garner breaks the book up into five sections. In each he addresses a different aspect of the designed '60s, and his insights add dimension to the hundreds of illustrations. He makes connections between the cold war and Jane Fonda's erotic antics in a fur-lined spaceship from the movie Barbarella--with photo-documentation to boot--and he provides a startlingly lucid and economical analysis of Swedish modern furniture design in the context of minimalist principles and the craft revival. From Florence Knoll's office designs to Oscar Niemeyer's unparalleled "master plan" city, Brasilia; from Richard Avedon's fashion photography to Neal Armstrong's space walk, Sixties Design offers countless vistas from which to rethink a decade too long associated with paisleys and free love. --Loren E. Baldwin for Amazon.com
The Style of the Century: 1900-1980 (1983) - Bevis Hillier
The Style of the Century: 1900-1980 (1983) - Bevis Hillier [Amazon.com]
From Book News, Inc.
The venerable Hillier (London Times, British Museum, Connoisseur, etc.) reviews Euro-American art styles from Edwardian to post-punk, as manifest in architecture, fashion, automobile design, pop music, and other joys and trials of daily life. No bibliography. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Product Description:
In this ambitious book Bevis Hillier cuts a wide swath through social and decorative history and give a far-ranging view of the twentieth century, from Edwardian and Art Nouveau to some startling predictions about what we may expect before "the magic year 2000".
100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection (1996) - Alexander Vegesack
100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection (1996) - Alexander Vegesack [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Das Vitra Design Museum ist ein Museum für Design in Weil am Rhein. Rolf Fehlbaum, Inhaber des Möbelproduzenten vitra, hatte 1986 die Idee, seine private Sammlung mit Stücken von Charles und Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton und Jean Prouvé der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Als Architekten des Museumshauptgebäudes konnte er Frank O. Gehry gewinnen. Das Vitra Design Museum war das erste Gebäude Gehrys in Europa. --http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitra_Design_Museum [Mar 2006]
The Vitra Design Museum maintains one of the largest collections of modern furniture design in the world, with objects representing all of the major eras and stylistic periods from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. Special areas of the collection include early industrial bentwood furniture, turn-of-the-century designs by Viennese architects, Gerrit Rietveld's experiments, tubular steel furniture from the 1920s and '30s, key objects of Scandinavian design from 1930 to 1960, Italian design, and contemporary developments. A further area of special interest is American design, ranging from Shaker pieces to the postmodern seating of Robert Venturi.
The Museum Collection also holds several prominent estates, including those of Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Anton Lorenz, and Alexander Girard. The Collection is complemented by an extensive archive and research library. --http://www.design-museum.de [Mar 2006]
See also: design - Frank Gehry - Germany