The origins of design

By Sue Alouche, Crativit Consultants

Pre-industrial revolution.
Handcrafted items and items fabricated in small quantities.

Post-industrial revolution.
1850s-1880s
Technological breakthroughs starting with James Watts steam engine.
Which led to mass production

William Morris 1834-1896

Independently wealthy.
Romantic, idealistic.
Studied architecture.
Designed furniture.
Best known for textile design.
Social agitator.
Believed that mass production and the Industrial Revolution was one of the causes of problems in
Victorian England.

Siegfried Bing (26 February 1838 6 September 1905)

Was a German art dealer who lived in Paris as an adult, and who helped introduce Japanese
art and artworks to the West and was a factor in the development of the Art Nouveau
style during the late nineteenth century.
In December 1895 he opened his famous gallery, the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, which showed
works of artists of what would become known as the Art Nouveau style

Norman Bel Geddes: Oct 16, 2013 - Feb 10, 2014

The theatre and industrial designer who The New York Times dubbed the Leonardo
da Vinci of the 20th century. He developed the notion of streamlining and aerodynamics.
Bel Geddes designed a wide range of commercial products, from cocktail shakers to
radio cabinets. His designs extended to unrealized futuristic concepts: a teardrop-shaped automobile,
and an Art Deco House of Tomorrow. In 1929, he designed "Airliner Number 4," a 9-deck
amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra, a gymnasium, a solarium, and
two airplane hangars.

Frank Lloyd Wright (18671959)

Organic architecture is also translated into the all inclusive nature of Frank Lloyd Wrights design
process. Materials, motifs, and basic ordering principles continue to repeat themselves throughout the
building as a whole. The idea of organic architecture refers not only to the buildings' literal relationship
to the natural surroundings, but how the buildings' design is carefully thought about as if it were a
unified organism. www.wikipedia.com

Dieter Rams (1932 )

Brauns designer for over 30 years.
Here are his 10 commandments:

Victor Papanek (22 November 1923, Vienna 10 January 1998

Was a designer and educator who became a strong advocate of the socially and
ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures.
He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or
essentially useless.

Zah add (31 October 1950 - )

Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space On the one
hand its about shelter, but its also about pleasure.
Zah add is an Iraqi-British architect. She received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004the first
woman to do soand the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. Her buildings are distinctively futuristic,
characterized by the "powerful, curving forms of her elongated structures" with "multiple perspective
points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life".

And now... New Media (numeric) Art

New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with
new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics,
computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, video
games, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology.
The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects and
social events, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from
old visual arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.).
This concern with medium is a key feature of much contemporary
art and indeed many art schools and major Universities now offer
majors in "New Genres" or "New Media" and a growing number of
graduate programs have emerged internationally.

And now...whats the next big thing?

Sustainism?
If Michiel Schwarz and Joost Elffers are to be believed,
"sustainism" is the next movement - and it's already
underway. In their the new book, "Sustainism is the
New Modernism," the authorsdeclare the dawn of a
new cultural era in which the world is more connected,
more localist, more digital and more sustainable.
They write:
Sustainism marks a shift not only in thinking and doing
but in collective perception--of how we live, do business,
feed ourselves, design, travel and communicate, as much as
how we deal with nature.

What do you think the future holds?

Crativit consultants 2014