THE DESIGN ISSUE

Issue 12 April/May 2012

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Form or function?

Paco Rabanne – the architect

of fashion

The architects of the futureKTP President Vincent Cassar on good planning

Money / Issue 12 - 33

Design

Simple is beautifulWe’re only beginning to confront the consequences of our most alarming design fetish: over-hyped, over-produced, over-disposable electronic gadgetry that keeps us in a pre-determined loop of dependence and obsolescence. How to find our digital equilibrium? By choosing to cherish these low-tech paragons of industrial-design minimalism. Sean Patrick Sullivan reports.

Sean Patrick Sullivan is Money’s North American correspondent. He has lived in Boston, Chicago, Manhattan, Hollywood, and

Philadelphia, and currently resides in Toronto, where he’s active as a cultural critic, creative consultant and commercial communicator.

May I be candid? There are many schools of design criticism – literally and figuratively. Entire MFA programmes are dedicated to the discipline. Yet, if you were to ask me which great intellectual inspired my own approach the most, I’d mention a certain German-born economist first, last, and only. (Hint: It’s not Karl Marx.)

E.F. Schumacher came to economics by way of commerce, agriculture, and journalism. As the author of two cross-over publishing sensations, Small Is Beautiful (1973) and A Guide For The Perplexed (1977), he refined and popularised the concept of what’s now called ‘appropriate technology.’

While definitions have varied over the

years, appropriate technology involves the development, application and valourisation of objects or systems that are small-scale, open-source, labour-intensive, energy-efficient, and locally, infinitely re-produceable. The end game is to replace time-wasting, capital-depleting, reductively economic beliefs that ‘bigger is better’ and ‘growth is good’ with a more holistic (and, one might say, more trans-culturally, trans-historically typical) emphasis upon beauty, elegance, simplicity, sustainability, and permanence.

While Schumacher’s ideas are typically applied to energy, agriculture and transportation policy, they’re crucial to understanding the impact and appeal of what we might want to call highly

inappropriate technology: e-readers, paper shredders, pod-based coffee brewers, and other single-function, time- and resource-intensive items that often become obsolete the moment they’re used.

If we do this, something delicious and peculiar might happen. We might start to resist the matrix of mobile devices, tablet computers, social networks, and planned obsolescence currently remodelling our entire lives and rewiring our collective neuro-circuitry. And we might start to fall back in love with icons of industrial design, all of which add gorgeous form and immeasurable function to our lives, all of which are built to last, and all of which work so well you’ve probably never even noticed them. Let’s begin.

The printing pressIt’s impossible to overstate how much the invention of die-cast movable type – and the printing presses it made possible – transformed the evolution of Western civilization. With ferocious velocity, Johannes Gutenberg’s ingenious wood-and-metal machines embodied every single value later prized by economists like Schumacher. Rather than alienating or substituting human labour – and without consuming significantly more resources per unit produced – movable type and printing presses used inks and papers similar to those favoured by calligraphers and illuminators to radically different effect. Now, narratives establishing religious, scientific, industrial, and political authority could be composed, revised, and circulated in far less time than required to create a manuscript. Meaning culture and civilization itself shifted and developed faster than previously possible – thanks to the industrial collision of fire, copper, sculpture, and alphabet.

The candleCandles – those ever-so-simple towers of meltable fat or wax, formed around slow-burning cords or wicks, minimising the heat and maximising the light inherent in fire – are currently appreciated for their romantic, devotional, decorative, and atmospheric purposes. But long before the 19th-century introduction of the kerosene lamp and incandescent lightbulb, candles extended working hours, causing exponential increases in human interaction and productivity, starting in China during what’s

now called the Qin dynasty (221BC to 206BC), continuing through India and Japan by 1AD, at which time the art and science of candle making (through independent discovery and technological diffusion still uncharted) spread across Africa, The Americas, and The Middle East. Candles specially calibrated to keep time, rather like hourglasses, were being used by the court of Alfred The Great around 870AD and less than a century later in China, during the Sung dynasty, a period of remarkable scientific achievement and advancement.

Money / Issue 12 - 33

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34 - Money / Issue 12

The paper clipOf all the icons of industrial design, none has a more passionately contested origin than the humble paper clip. Regardless of whose story you choose to believe – alleged countries of origin include Norway, Germany, England and the States – these tiny flat loops of wire were originally used to fasten not just paper but also fabric.

Numerous variations have emerged over the past hundred years, but none have ever come close to the sales racked up by the original Gem design, perhaps due to its minimalist beauty and unparalleled performance.

The paper clip is oddly intuitive, gripping without wounding (as staples might) and stacking without mangling (as spirals might). These qualities – symbolic of non-violent, non-damaging solidarity – inspired Norwegians to wear paper clips on their lapels during the World War II Nazi occupation.

Design

Money / Issue 12 - 35

The mokaInvented in 1933 by Luigi DePonti for Alfonso Bialetti, the moka is a sexed-up, high-excitement variant of old-fashioned percolation technology, which was invented in 18th-century England and perfected in 19th-century America.

Despite various extraction-technology rivals (many of them electronic) and ambitious marketing campaigns, coffee lovers all over the world, from Rome to Rio de Janeiro, still applaud Bialetti’s low-tech stove-top coffee pot for its simplicity and indestructibility, not to mention its distinctively luscious, uniquely concentrated brew. With its sexy, bevelled, hourglass shape – perhaps inspired by Cubism or Futurism – its equal parts appliance and ornament, it is a hyper-caffeinated synergy of form and function.

It should come as no surprise that the original Moka Express is in permanent collections around the world, including those at the London Science Museum and New York City’s Museum Of Modern Art. Fortunately, recent additions to Bialetti’s catalogue, including a model that generates espresso and steamed milk froth at the same time, are no less elegant in design and construction.

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