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21 Great Design Ideas
By Karen E. Steen
August/September 2002
This year Metropolis turns 21. It's a milestone in life--the age
of adulthood--and 2002 has certainly proved a banner year for feeling older
and wiser. As we approached this anniversary, Metropolis looked for
a fitting way to celebrate what we felt was a coming of age. All around
us we saw signs that the design world was on the threshold of a new maturity.
Architects were talking about security, product designers were talking about
sustainability, urban planners were rethinking the urban grid on what had
become hallowed ground. The exuberant colors and shapely blobs that dominated
design in the 1990s looked superficial, a remnant of less sobering times.
So what, then, does the future hold for design? What will the twenty-first
century need from designers? Can they solve some of its problems?
We think so, and we hope designers will take up this gauntlet: 21 great
design ideas for the twenty-first century. In forming this unranked list
we looked to the past as well as the future. Some of the items on it--such
as houses designed with microclimates in mind--are old ideas that it's time
to revisit. Others--paper that isn't made out of trees, for example-have
recently hit the market. And a few--such as a new political party--don't
yet exist. All of them bear the same message: design's faddishness is on
the wane, but its relevance is only beginning. |
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