"Reinforced concrete is the best constructional material yet devised by mankind", enthused the Italian civil engineer Pier Luigi Nervi in 1956.1 A position Nervi spent a circa sixty year career arguing for, both in innumerable texts and through a canon of varied, and varyingly challenging, constructions throughout Italy, and much further afield. And in doing so Pier Luigi Nervi not only helped advance a popular acceptance of reinforced concrete as a construction material, but also helped
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"Boxing is not an exclusively athletic term in these practical and utilitarian days", noted John Crocker in 1913, rather, "the making of useful and ornamental things for the home, from the boxes, that in other days adorned the rear of stores, is the nucleus of armament that has made "boxing" a pursuit that contains both amusement and substantial results."1 And nobody contributed more to promoting and advancing the amusement and substantial results of the practical and utilitarian craft of
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"¿Qué es diseño?" asked Clara Porset in 1949. What is design?1 Not because she didn't know. Far from it. Over the course of the preceding two decades Clara Porset had ably demonstrated her considered, critical and responsive understandings of design; understandings that saw her develop into one of the most important, interesting and informative furniture designers in Mexico, understandings that saw her develop into one of the more important, interesting and informative protagonists in the
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"Design ist unsichtbar", Design is invisible/unseen proclaimed the Swiss sociologist Lucius Burckhardt in 1981.1 Which surprised a great many in 1981. And may surprise a great many in 2021...... Lucius Burckhardt (1925 - 2003) (Photo Annemarie Burckhardt, © Martin Schmitz Verlag) Born in Davos, Switzerland, on March 12th 1925 Lucius Burckhardt enjoyed, as best we can ascertain, information on his early biography being more gleaned than confirmed, a comfortable childhood in the Swiss alps,
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In 1936 Aino Aalto opined that "homes can be given interior design in other ways than before - not by buying expensive complete suites of furniture, but by concentrating on low-cost furnishings which can be used - with the aid of flowers, carpets, drapery and colours - to create hitherto more practical and more comfortable homes."1 A break not only with the understandings, the ways, of generations long past in terms of what constitutes appropriate furniture; but also a break with the ways of
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The so-called Bielefeld Conspiracy asserts that the German city of Bielefeld doesn't exist. Have you ever been to Bielefeld?, it asks. Do you know anyone who has ever been to Bielefeld? Do you know anyone from Bielefeld? If your answer to all three questions is no........ how do you know Bielefeld exists? A similar conspiracy could be built around Gertrud Kleinhempel, one of Germany's first professional furniture designers and who for the greater part of her career was active in Bielefeld.
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"Only slowly does it dawn on people that modern furniture must be designed on the basis of practical necessities", observed the Danish architect and designer Kaare Klint in 1930.1 How Kaare Klint understood those "practical necessities", how he understood "modern furniture", would not only define his career, but in many regards define the development of 20th century furniture design in Denmark. Kaare Klint (1888 - 1954) Kaare Jensen Klint was born in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, on December
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In a letter in 2008 to the editors of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians concerning remarks in an article on the staged illumination of Mies van der Rohe's skeletal frame constructions, the architecture historian Kathleen James-Chakraborty refers to the "linking of Heinrich Tessenow's Festspielhaus of 1910-12 in Hellerau with the installation for the glass industry that Mies designed (in collaboration with Lilly Reich, whom Petty does not mention) for the Stuttgart Werkbund
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With the exhibition Citizen Office the Vitra Design Museum staged not only their first conceptual, research based, exhibition, but also one of the first museal reflections on "the world of the office". Reflections which not only pointed towards new directions and understandings then, but which offer insights and lessons for today....... Citizen Office. As visualised by James Irvine The ubiquity of office work in our contemporary society belies the relative youth of "the office" as a
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"The work of the Dresden artist Margarete Junge is largely shrouded in darkness" noted the art historian Gert Claußnitzer in his introduction to the 1981 exhibition "Margarete Junge. Fashion sketches and flower studies"1 And while Margarete Junge's 2D works may have been allowed to shine, if only briefly, in the early 1980s, her 3D works remained stubbornly shrouded: only in recent years being afforded the opportunity, if only partially, to radiate as they once did. Thankfully. For the works,
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"The role of the architect is one of organisation. The house is the considered organisation of our ways of life"1, opined the Austrian architect Margarete Lihotzky in 1921. And in the course of a long, varied career, she repeatedly demonstrated what she understood by such; including most famously, if somewhat narrowly, in a kitchen design............. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) (Photo 1997, Werner Faymann, source https://commons.wikimedia.org) Born in Vienna on January 23rd
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Qu'est-ce que le design? What is design? A question as old as the word itself, arguably older. But one with an answer? In an attempt to approach one the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris asked Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Roger Tallon, Joe Colombo and Fritz Eichler, Qu'est-ce que le design?...... A view of Verner Panton's installation at Qu'est-ce que le design Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris 1969 (Photo Pierre Jahan © and courtesy Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris) Organised in context of
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"This exhibition intends to acknowledge the cultural achievements of Italian design in the last decade, to honor the accomplishments of its gifted designers and incisive critics, and to illustrate the diversity of their approaches to design by presenting a collection of the most interesting examples of their work."1 Thus announced the curators of the Museum of Modern Art's 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape their intentions. The New Domestic Landscape portrayed by the gifted
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The German architect and designer Ferdinand Kramer didn't just translate the new principles of construction and design which arose in the inter-war years into his architecture, furniture and industrial designs, he was also a very eloquent writer on such matters, and thus helped, and continues to help, explain the motivations behind, and fascination with, functionalist ideals. Chair B 403 for Thonet by Ferdinand Kramer, as seen at The Kramer Principle: Design for Variable Use, Museum
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"What is the Paris Exposition?", asked Roger Gilman in the September 1925 edition of The Art Bulletin, "It is a new world of the applied arts. It is a new world of reality, reality in the square mass of concrete construction, reality in the smooth surfaces of machine products, reality in wonderful new materials offered by our mastery of science and transport, reality in the severe plainness of our practical age, reality in a marvellous effort to design everything and copy nothing. And it is a
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"In the development and designing of furniture one prevailing problem is the means for securing parts of the furniture together particularly when the parts are made of thin materials such as plywood or metal. This problem is particularly difficult when a certain amount of twisting or give between the parts is desired so as to provide resiliency to one of the parts. In general efforts to solve this problem have failed."1 So begins a patent application filed by Charles Eames on 28th July 1958.
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A few years ago the (smow) blog telephone rang..... "Good morning is it possible to speak to Philippe Starck please?" enquired the caller. "I'm sorry he's not here at the moment" we replied, truthfully, if not altogether helpfully. "When will it be possible?" came the inevitable follow-up. "We're not really sure, he's not here in Leipzig that often", we responded, truthfully if, again, not altogether helpfully, "you're probably better phoning the Paris office they tend to be better
read moreThere are those, charlatans one must say, who claim that design only exists in the here and now, that design is, by definition, new, contemporary and innovative. It isn’t of course. Design in all its facets is a continual progression. In the 1980s Peter and Alison Smithson advanced their theory of three generations, a theory developed for explaining and contextualising the Italian renaissance but which can be freely applied to the progression of most any design movement; in 2005 Steve Jobs
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