design as concept.pdf

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13

D E S I G N A S A C O N C E P T

The manifold currents and tendencies of design are reflected in the

very use of the concept of design, up to and including sometimes

rather diffuse definitions of the word. A number of these interpreta-

tions will be introduced at the outset of this essay.

From a historical perspective, it is popular to regard Leonardo da

Vinci as the first designer. In addition to his scientific studies on

anatomy, optics, and mechanics, he performed pioneering work in the

elementary science of mechanical engineering, producing a Book of

Patterns of Machine Elements. The concept of design da Vinci ap-

plied to practical objects, machines, and apparatus was thus more

technically than creatively oriented. Nevertheless, it decisively influ-

enced the idea of design: the designer as an inventor.

The sixteenth-century painter, master builder, and literary author

Giorgio Vasari was one of the first to plead in his writings for the au-

tonomous character of works of art. He designated the principle to

which art owes its existence as disegno, which translates directly into

drawing or sketch. At that time, disegno referred to the artistic

idea. Accordingly, even back then, people differentiated between the

disegno interno, the concept for an emerging work of art (the sketch,

the draft, or the plan), and the disegno esterno, the completed work

of art (such as a drawing, painting, or sculpture). Vasari himself pro-

nounced drawing, or disegno, to be the father of the three arts:

painting, sculpture, and architecture (for more information, see

Brdek 1996).

According to the Oxford Dictionary the concept of design was

used in 1588 for the first time. Its definition reads:

- a plan or scheme devised by a person for something that is to be

realized,

The word design has Latin

roots. The verb designare

is translated as determine,

but its literal meaning is

more like showing from on

high. That which has been

determined is definite. De-

sign transforms vagueness

into definiteness by continual

differentiation. Thus design

(designatio), in its general

and abstract conception, is

above all determination

through representation, the

science of design as it corre-

sponds to the science of

determination.

HOLGER VAN DEN BOOM, 1994


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14 DESIGN AS A CONCEPT

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- a first graphic draft of a work of art, or

- an object of the applied arts, which is to be binding for the execu-

tion of a work.

Later, Sigfried Giedion (first edition 1948, see also 1987) significantly

described how the industrial designer appeared in the twentieth cen-

tury: He fashioned the housing, saw to it that the visible machinery

(of the washing machines) disappeared, and gave the whole, in short,

a streamlined shape like the train and the automobile. In the U.S., this

clear separation of technical work from artistic work on the product

led to the disciplines increasing orientation toward styling, and thus

to pure fashioning.

The concept of industrial design can be traced back to Mart Stam,

who supposedly used the term for the first time in 1948 (Hirdina,

1988). For Stam, an industrial designer was someone who drafted,

sketched, and planned. In his opinion designers should be employed in

every area of industry, especially in the production of new kinds of ma-

terials.

The definition of design has long been a matter of intense concern,

above all in the former German Democratic Republic. This regime al-

ways understood design to be a component of social, economic, and

cultural policy. Horst Oehlke (1978), in particular, pointed out that

shaping affects more than the sensually perceptible side of objects.

On the contrary, the designer must be concerned with satisfying the

needs of societal and individual life.

A broad and therefore quite useful definition of design was worked

out by the Internationales Design Zentrum Berlin in 1979 in the con-

text of an exhibition:

- Good design may not be a mere envelopment technique. It must

express the individuality of the product in question through

appropriate fashioning.

- It must make the function of the product, its application, plainly

visible so that it can be understood clearly by the user.

- Good design must allow the latest state of technical development

to become transparent.

- Design must not be restricted just to the product itself; it must

also take into consideration issues of ecology, energy conserva-

tion, recyclability, durability, and ergonomics.

- Good design must take the relationship between humans and ob-

jects as the point of departure for the shapes it uses, especially

DESIGN AS A CONCEPT 15


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taking into account aspects of occupational medicine and

perception.

This complex definition clearly takes into consideration not only the

functional aspects (practical functions), but also the product language

and the ever more important ecological aspects of design. In the same

sense, but in a quite compressed form, Michael Erlhoff undertook a

clear and current delimitation of design on the occasion of the docu-

menta 8in Kassel (1987): Design, which unlike art requires prac-

tical justification, finds this chiefly in four assertions: being societal

and functional and meaningful and concrete.

There was no problem with such an open description of design

well into the 1980s. However, the age in which a uniform and thus

deologically cemented concept of design could predominate now

appears to be over once and for all. The reflections of the postmodern

age have promoted the dissolution of totality in a variety of disci-

plines. Anyone who continues to regard this as a loss is thus, in the

Lyotardian sense, stuck in the discussion condition of a modern age

which has since become history (Welsch 1987).

The diversity of concepts and descriptions is not a sign of post-

modern arbitrariness, however, but rather a necessary and justifiable

pluralism. In the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first cen-

tury I have therefore proposed, instead of yet another definition or de-

scription, listing a number of the tasks design is supposed to fulfill

(Brdek 1999). Thus, for instance, design should:

- visualize technological progress,

- simplify or make possible the use and operation of products

(hardware or software),

- make transparent the connections between production, consump-

tion, and recycling,

- promote and communicate services, but also pursued energeti-

cally enough help to prevent products that are senseless.

16 DESIGN AS A CONCEPT16

He then calls the result of

such considerations Grand

Design. He (Joschka

Fischer) relates with great

passion that everything in a

Grand Design is con-

nected with everything else:

the global economy and the

trade cycle, demographic

developments and pen-

sions, German unity and

Europe.

DER SPIEGEL, 6/2003

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