Description
Does form really follow function? If it does, why did Montgomery Ward consider it necessary to offer 131 different pocket-knives in their 1895 catalogue? And why do we, almost a century later, find ourselves surrounded by manufactured goods-appliances, clothing, conveyances, equipment that have the same functions but infinite varieties of design? These are among the many intriguing questions asked and answered by historian Adrian Forty in this provocative and original examination of the role played by design in our lives.
The history of design is also the history of society; any account of change must rest upon an understanding of the way design affects and is affected by economic and social conditions. In the capitalist system, this relationship is best seen in the consumer's desire for more, better, and "newer" goods, a desire bred and nurtured by the manufacturer who employs designers to give his products the look of novelty. Mr. Forty goes back to the earliest days of capitalism to describe the career of Josiah Wedgwood, the innovative entrepreneur who influenced both public taste and the means of production in ways that provide a model to this day for manufacturers of every kind of commodity. Woven into the relationship between design and society is the crucial role of design in giving form to people's ideas-and myths about the world they live in. Why, indeed, did Montgomery Ward sell 131 different pocket-knives? Because late-Victorian society was stratified in many ways and each model provided an objective visualization of the kind of person who would be its owner: man or woman, adult or child, gentleman or laborer. This is only one of the examples that Mr. Forty employs to bolster his argument. There is also the maid's uniform, which came into existence shortly after new roller-printing techniques made it possible for servant and mistress to appear in identical-looking housedresses-a dangerous occurrence when both lived under the same roof and social distance had to be maintained. And there is the hall chair, seen by everyone in the household but sat upon only by the servant who answered the doorbell. Superior in design to the servants' own furniture, but never very comfortable, the hall chair expressed massive social distinctions in the subtlest possible way.
It is not only in the home, of course, that design objectifies our ideas. Mr. Forty analyzes this process at work in the evolution of the office-why, for instance, don't executives' desks have drawers any more? and in the development of the concept of hygiene, in the bathroom and elsewhere; in the marketing of new technology to a public resistant to change (remember those radios that looked like Grecian temples?); and in the devices used by multinational conglomerates to establish and maintain corporate identity.
The design of objects, far from having a slavish dependency on their function, endows them with a profound cultural significance. In Objects of Desire, Adrian Forty demonstrates freshly and vividly the vast extent of design's influence on our lives and minds.
Adrian Forty is a lecturer in the history of architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College, London. He studied at the universities of Oxford and London, and has published articles and essays on the history of architecture and design.
ISBN:0394507924
