Not meaning to be offensive, but you guys are all obsessed with 50 and 60 year old designs. Lovely they may be, but one can't help but muse that designers such as Eames and Saarinnen were always ahead of their time, trying to be at the cutting edge. If they were alive today they wouldn't be resting on their laurels. They'd be experimenting with new forms and new materials (no doubt influenced by the move towards sustainability). Heck, even the recently departed Pierre Paulin was still coming up with fresh ideas at 80 years of age.
And let's face it,is there anything on this forum that hasn't already been said about the eames lounge chair and ottoman, the bertoia dimaond chair, the tulip table, the noguchi coffee table, the neslon bloody clock, blah blah blah.
Anyway. My point is. Does anybody know of a forum for people that appreciate new and innovative design?
I love some new design. But...
I love some new design. But in my opinion, there aren't as many good designers in the spotlight these days. And, many of them are a little quirky for my taste... even the ones that are quite good. Some try too hard to make something new.
Eames said, "innovate as a last resort." I take this to mean, only innovate if it is a direct response to a problem that hasn't a solution yet. Otherwise, let beautiful simple things that work exist without scrutiny and without the desire to keep reinventing what already works.
The 40s-50s attracts many because of it's no (or few) frills attitude toward design. We have lived far too long in the lap of luxury as a modern society to create such honest things. Now we invent status symbols for those with fortune and taste.
Be my guest. Enlighten us with your knowledge of contemporary design. We can even compare it with the vintage equivalent and contrast/compare based on design, price, social surrounds, etc.
"you guys are all obsessed...
"you guys are all obsessed with 50 and 60 year old designs"
This is good news. It proves modernism to be valid. It's point has always been to create timeless design. We are obsessed with those that succeeded with this. Why is that hard to understand?
I think the very fact that Stephen has to come here...
is adequate evidence that contemporary design is in a state of untethered exploration in the dark.
Sooner or later, design has to come to grips with its lack of a coherent philosophical underpinning the field. It has to take a stand for something again.
No philosophy. No ethic.
No ethic. No aesthetic.
No aesthetic. No coherence.
No coherence. No recognizable progress.
No recognizable progress. No escape from the hustlers.
Stephen, think of DA as a Catholic monastery on the west coast of Ireland after the fall of Rome, but before the middle ages. We are here preserving and protecting not only the ancient scrolls, but perpetuating the great knowledge of a fallen civilization that stumbled from its own weaknesses and then was overwhelmed by barbarians. Here the brothers and sisters meet and do what they can to preserve the legacy of the enlightenment of mid century design in order to maintain a small critical mass of persons who understand the legacy and how to pass it on generation to generation by word of mouth and by pixel for as long as is necessary until there is another enlightenment that can make use of the knowledge, rather than treat it as an old style to be gotten beyond by barbarians so vulgar they do not even know what they do not know about design. And, yes, the brothers and sisters here at the DA monastery are constantly on the look out for the new that can be added to the legacy that is being protected for a future enlightenment.
We care about Konstantin...
We care about Konstantin Grcic and Renzo Piano and many others. We write about them and we comment about them, but we also do not try to drive them into the square holes of our sense of the past. We try not to freeze them in time before they are even done with their careers. We try to be good brothers and sisters who recognize and praise new excellence and who boldly call shit shit when we see it being passed off as the latest thing. But after we have seen timeless greatness, after we have seen genius act in the propitious moment, after a few of the old survivors have told us of the master craftsman tradition and taught us of the convergence of historical movements that yielded the flowering of mid century modern, after we have seen what it takes to be great design, after we have been to the Cranbrook and Denmark of the mind's eye, how ya gonna keep us down on the farm with Zaha Hadid and Phil Starck? They lack high seriousness and their humor is sophomoric. We learned from the masters to eat high seriousness for breakfast and expect wit with a razor's edge. We try not to presume to know how the tradition should evolve, because we know that most of us are not the actual gifted designers that will labor to bring the unprecedented from silence to light. We know that the worst thing we can do is tell these brave designers out there operating courageously between enlightenments to design like the mid century moderns did. We know we must recognize when they do of their own volitions and imaginations. We know we must recognize even more when they push the legacy beyond where it has been, or the legacy will die of schlerosis even as we preserve and protect it. We are interested in a living legacy, not an embalmed one. The legacy is only alive, if we let it be alive. The legacy is protected and perpetuated, only if we let it be.
Vaya con dios, Stephen. You h...
Vaya con dios, Stephen. You have been to the monastery and misread it as a cul de sac of nostalgia. Heaven help you in your trek. You are, like so many, like Ponce de Leon and Pizarro, searching for something that is not there, not now anyway. It is something that was there and vanished and will return again. But it is something that must be brought into being by much hard work and much dedication by many persons trying to scale the steep darkness to enlightenment. You cannot be born in an enlightenment, Stephen, simply because you wish to be. But as Grcic and Piano show, you can construct great things that will become land marks on the road to the next enlightenment--things that will stand as dots connecting back to the last enlightenment, so that designers in the future can one day work in another enlightenment and have the historical bearings to know what to do when they find themselves there.
Bless you, my son, bless you. We have done what we could for you.
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