On one of those luminous days, with mounds of snow melting in recently blizzard-ravaged Connecticut, I went to visit with Niels Diffrient in his studio. He asked me to try out a working model of a lounge chair, his current project. Not your father’s lounge chair, this one is designed to accommodate the analog and digital media we use every day. As I stretched out and felt the comfort and support of the chair, I recalled that Niels had designed a similar chaise at the beginning of the digital revolution when we predicted that work would change dramatically, but had no idea what that change would look and feel like.

It was 1987 and I was working on a Metropolis article, “Chaises Longues,” writing, “For most people, working and relaxing suggest different body positions but the two can be reconciled by the long chair.” As one of our illustrations we showed Niels sitting, feet up with his bulky desktop computer raised to the ergonomically correct height and placed on the swiveling tablet attached to his then new Jefferson chair.

Niels Diffrient is a tinkerer, a fixer, an ever-restless experimenter, and an industrial designer who is not afraid to go back to his old ideas and make them better, more appropriate, more useful. His approach is aided and abetted by his constant search for new information and ideas, gleaned from the great big world of human knowledge we all have access to, but few bother to dive into as Niels does. He is truly a practicing generalist.

So when his new book, Confessions of a Generalist, a self-published and self-marketed biography designed by Brian Sisco, appeared on my desk, I was eager to dip into the details of a life that I knew only through anecdotes. To give you a shorthand idea of Niels’s thought pattern, I decided to excerpt a portion of the book, a section entitled “The Foundation of Generalism.” It’s a start. —SSS

The first thing to understand is that design is not art. As Oscar Wilde is purported to have said “Art is absolutely useless.” In spite of some topical conceits such as “Functional Art” or “Art Design” and other such oxymorons, art remains without utility; design is integral with utility and usefulness. This means fulfilling the needs of people which includes aesthetic considerations, separating it from engineering design and other technical, specialized pursuits.

The next thing to understand is that design, as currently practiced, is an activity not a profession. Whether one is a fashion designer, graphic designer, product designer or interior designer, one is still pursuing an activity or applied practice. Design, as a word, is a verb, not a noun, and as such is not a suitable identifier for a practice that has not yet reached the standards of a profession. Read more…

As we enter a transition era that demands far greater resilience and sustainability in our technological systems, we must ask tough new questions about existing approaches to architecture and settlement. Post-occupancy evaluations show that many new buildings as well as retrofits of some older buildings, are performing substantially below minimal expectations. In some notable cases, the research results are frankly dismal [see “Toward Resilient Architectures 2: Why Green Often Isn’t”].

The trouble is that the existing system of settlement, developed in the oil-fueled industrial age, is beginning to appear fundamentally limited. And we’re recognizing that it’s not possible to solve our problems using the same typologies that created them in the first place. In a “far-from-equilibrium” world, as resilience theory suggests, we cannot rely on engineered, “bolt-on” approaches to these typologies, which are only likely to produce a cascade of unintended consequences. What we need is an inherent ability to handle “shocks to the system,” of the kind we see routinely in biological systems.

In “Toward Resilient Architectures 1: Biology Lessons” we described several elements of such resilient structures, including redundant (“web-network”) connectivity, approaches incorporating diversity, work distributed across many scales, and fine-grained adaptivity of design elements. We noted that many older structures also had exactly these qualities of resilient structures to a remarkable degree, and in evaluations they often perform surprisingly well today. Nevertheless during the last century, in the dawning age of industrial design, the desirable qualities resilient buildings offered were lost. What happened?

The fractal mathematics of nature bears a striking resemblance to human ornament, as in this fractal generated by a finite subdivision rule. This is not a coincidence: ornament may be what humans use as a kind of “glue” to help weave our spaces together. It now appears that the removal of ornament and pattern has far-reaching consequences for the capacity of environmental structures to form coherent, resilient wholes. Image: Brirush/Wikimedia

A common narrative asserts that the world moved on to more practical and efficient ways of doing things, and older methods were quaint and un-modern. According to this narrative, the new architecture was the inevitable product of inexorable forces, the undeniable expression of an exciting industrial “spirit of the age.” The new buildings would be streamlined, beautiful, and above all, “stylistically appropriate.” Read more…

If you look up Industrial Design on Wikipedia today, these are the pictures included with the article: an iPod, a blender, a rotary phone, a typewriter, a guitar, a car, and a chair. It is the last of these objects that I’m thinking of today. As I’m drinking coffee and writing this, I sit on a chair. The chair I am sitting on is certainly not the product of a brilliant industrial designer. It does serve its function as ‘chair’, so it must have followed some sort of design. It’s made of cheap particle board, has a trapezoidal seat which gets wider toward the ledge, and a slightly obtuse back rest made up of a frame and three vertical slats. To be honest, it’s not very comfortable. But it does serve its purpose, at least until my back starts aching and I’m forced into all kinds of neurotic personalized stretches.

Whenever people talk about industrial design, the chair is almost always one of the main cultural objects discussed. Indeed, almost every famous designer or architect has their signature chair: from the first industrially mass-produced No. 14 chair by Michael Thonet, to the Bauhaus like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer, to more modern designers like Alvar Aalto, Charles Eames, and Arne Jacobson, to name a few popular figures. So, why the chair?

An over-simplification of industrial design goes something like this: we need objects that function, and most aren’t found ready-made in nature. So someone somewhere needs to conceptualize what it should look like, how it’s made and with what materials, and how we interact with its functionality. The degree to which aesthetics, artistry, and innovation come into play can vary from non-existent to excessive formalization. Great industrial design sits at the crossroads between form and function. Read more…

For my recent story on BMW’s new i-3 electric car, I interviewed a number of transportation experts, including the legendary (and altogether charming) industrial designer Don Norman, who as it turned out currently serves as a consultant to the German automaker. Norman, the author of eight books and more academic papers than even he can count, was limited in what he could talk about concerning his client, but he did offer some fascinating insights into the future of cars and urban mobility:

Martin C. Pedersen: You consult for a number of companies, including BMW. What are you working on these days?

Don Norman: Obviously, I’m not allowed to talk a lot about what I do for BMW, but I can say that I’m working on electric vehicles with them, mostly in Munich, and a little bit in Mountain View, California, where they have a technology center. We’re working on a whole bunch of concepts. They’re also pulling me into issues involving today’s vehicles. I’ll tell you one of the big issues that they’re faced with—and it’s not a secret. All of the companies have this problem: cars are getting too complex. People can’t figure them out. I did a review for one of the car magazines. They brought a Ford to my house with the new Microsoft control system. We sat and reviewed it. It was overwhelming. We couldn’t figure out how to get half of the stuff to work. The same goes with BMW. They loaned me a new 5-series car. The guy sits down with me and we go over every single component of the car. Everything seemed sensible and straightforward, but it took between 30 and 40 minutes. When he left, I couldn’t remember anything. In fact I couldn’t even start the engine.

MCP: Your role, as they keep cramming more technology into these cars, is to help simplify them?

DN: We’re looking at a lot of things. The electric vehicle (EV) raises special questions. One of the main issues is range anxiety. BMW launched the Mini Cooper series two years ago. They produced 500 electric models and they asked UC Davis to do a study. Most of the drivers ended up loving the car. They had all sorts of concerns that turned out not to be true, especially about range.

Read more…

“Apple Alert”
Joseph G. Brin © 2012

In response to Stephan Clambaneva’s remarks about Apple’s recycling efforts, I mostly disagree with what he’s saying, not because I think he’s wrong, but I tend to have a different meter for sustainability than others, especially industrial designers.

The part of Stephan’s defense of Apple I most agree with is that people don’t just throw away the company’s products. Many even keep the packaging. I think this has to do with the intrinsic value people attribute to Apple’s products, as well as their fanatic allegiance to the brand. The fact that Apple products are more expensive may have something to do with users hanging on to them, too. I know people who keep their old laptops like books on a shelf, again this could just be a designer mentality, or could be a genuine concern for the environment. I don’t necessarily agree with the “quick to replace” idea, though.

Read more…

“Early Industrial Designer”
Joseph G. Brin © 2012

“Fluid, intuitive, plug and play, out-of-the-box” - all characteristics of user friendly experience endlessly hyped by many companies these days. However, they remain elusive – an industrial designer is one person actually trained to deliver them to us in our daily encounter with objects and information.

A Conversation With Stephan Clambaneva, North East District, V.P. Elect, Industrial Design Society of America, IDSA

Joseph G. Brin: When you all arrive in Philadelphia in April will your attendees somehow showcase what ID thinking can do for the City of Philadelphia? That’s something I’d really like to see.

Stephan Clambaneva: We are working on trying to pull this off, still in the initial planning stages.  The workshop is called a “Sense of Philadelphia.” We intend to conduct a workshop to develop a “sensual” map of Philadelphia… Read more…

When forecasting the trends we’d see at Salone, we imagined that designers would invent new ways to maximize space, and that portability and adaptive re-use would be seen everywhere. But we encountered one surprising trend: designers weaving new concepts utilizing the abstractions of Space, Place and Time. Here’s what we saw at the SaloneSatellite, featuring 700 young designers, 20 international design schools, an exhibition whose theme was “50+50 Projects- Designing the Future.”

SPACE MAPPING

gt_t2P, Parametric Design and Digital Fabrication Studio, based in Chile, creates a design “DNA” through digital crafting of “generative algorithms.” Their objective is to arrive at a custom template that can move from objects to buildings for efficiency, as well as the creation of a kind of natural mapping of form by topographical waves. Read more…

Lamps are generally not made to be touched, but taking the chance with Spanish lighting designer Arturo Alvarez’s Nevo lamp certainly pays off. The way it holds its vaguely floral shape suggests that it is made of a metal mesh, perhaps clogged with paint. But my hands encountered silicone, rendered almost skin-like and organic by the mild warmth of the bulb inside.

Alvarez’s eponymous lighting company has been working for two years to get this material right. Silicone by itself couldn’t offer enough sculptural possibilities. But using it to cover metal gives it rigidity. The covering isn’t uniform, so the light that passes through is diffused unevenly. The material seems to have captivated Alvarez. He has used it the roses of the Nevo collection, and as the stormy Planum ceiling lights. And the lamps he is developing for the Milan Furniture Fair this year will continue the love affair, albeit in more tightly structured surfaces. Read more…

We can thank the United States Postal Service’s art director Derry Noyes for once again putting some design history on our mail. After the Masterworks of Modern Architecture stamps in 2005 and celebrating Charles + Ray Eames in 2008, its time for the golden age of American industrial design to get some philatelic love.

The new issue is a set of 12 stamps featuring iconic products designed by some of the “nation’s most important and influential industrial designers.” The focus is on the years after the Great Depression in 1929, when the economy pulled itself up by the bootstraps, and Americans looked to industrial designers for a new vision of their future. The designers of the era that gave us not just streamlining and chrome plating, but also design management and human factors. The stamps, which will go on sale in July 2011, mix the usual suspects – Norman Bel Geddes, Walter Dorwin Teague, Raymond Loewy, and Henry Dreyfuss – with some lesser known choices. Read more…

Design award categories are often unfortunate anachronisms. Most awards are given in categories based on disciplines — “Furniture Design”, “Consumer Products” – and then the organizers resort to lengthy definitions to try and force today’s exciting, interdisciplinary work into these outdated boxes. And as we saw with the I.D Annual Design Review, the results are not very convincing.

The recently announced IDSA Design of the Decade awards must be commended for giving up the disciplinary model for categories. But while one might think that having nice, open categories like “Design’s Contribution to Market Share Growth” is preferable, it turns out to be even more confusing. I appreciate the distinction between “Solution to a Developed World Social Problem” and “Solution to a Developing World Social Problem,” recognizing that social issues are embedded in economic and political disparities. But trying to decipher why “Solution to a Consumer Problem” is a separate category from “Most Appealing Consumer Solution” is baffling, to say the least. There are five different categories for design contribution to business, indistinguishable except for the finest nuance. And then there is the greatest enigma of all, “Most Responsible Design Solution,” with no inkling of what this responsibility constitutes. They might as well have called the category “Most Awesome Best Thing.”

Nonetheless, the Gold winners in each category are some really worthy design objects, and deserve a round-up:

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ClearRx
Solution to a Consumer Problem

“The first decade of the 21st century has been frequently accused of lacking coherence. Ironically, coherence emerged as one of the prevailing themes of some of the decade’s most important design work. Target’s Clear Rx bottles—hailed by IDSA’s esteemed jury as the standout Design of the Decade—exist very explicitly to deliver a clearer, more intelligible and more logical healthcare experience.”

Metropolis featured ClearRx in our November 2005 issue.

Read more…