arquiTENTANDO: Design by choice – Reyner Banham (July, 1961)

Summary

This article talk about the crisis in design values that occurred in the 1950's with the replacement of function through the styling and psychological significance of examined objects. (symbols of status, financial and intellectual power).

1951: the last published surveys of Industrial Design was carried out by informed opinion, only judging individuals products and differing most in methods of criticism.

The Industrial Design found another way to say that their recognition was altered out just saying that only the fashion changed.

At first, what remained unchanged was: quality (materials and workmanship); performance (functional and human); style of appearance and use. However, the problem of affluent democracy power had not changed also, but at the same time the manner to figure out the matter of Industrial Design changed due to the crumble of the foundation stone of the Design Theory's intellectual structure.

In these circumstances, it analyzes the role of the architects with the emergence of a new man and new concepts, when they gave up the controlling of design to theorists and critics whose arguments were linked with a variety of themes trying to justify some point of view that the speaker was committed or gave direction through a field that need to be explored.

In the Aircraft Design is clear the absence of architectural claim, where the architects acted such as aerodynamicists, only criticizing the results without contribute to design.

Between the wide range of architects activities the real area of painful or profitable involvement with Industrial Design was the scale and propinquity (size and proximity). Some surveys of architectural conversation showed a hypersensitivity to design objects in a scale to building components. This makes operational sense when they make only objects in or near buildings with same space and functions and it unable the architect to design free-standing appliances and interior spaces.

This demonstrates that the architects are not "total designs" or "responsible for the whole human environment", as the universal analogy for the designer, but their responsibility was not reduced.

Insofar the architects were thinking about time-scale and basic unit, the industrial designer thought about a range of time -scales based on the objects bulk proportion. Thereby, the architects were claimed to do what they despised on design -style up the machinery envelopes, not being the first to do it - what was called Built-in Equipment to solve the incompatible rates of obsolescence. Changing the objects bulk, performance, power needs and relationship to the surrounding space they gave up their "autocratic dominance".

In 1925 Le Corbusier demonstrated what is work with what you have in your hand: the Pavilion was designed thinking about the furniture that would occupier it. Is not important an equipment designed by an architect but the knowledge of the building necessity (going to many catalogues). Finally, it is a really architectural job in Industrial Design, getting contact with articulate and powerful consumers and becoming able to advise and to demand on the design basis knowledge.

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