1960 - 1973 The Revolution of Youth Jump to:
1960 - 1973 The Revolution of Youth Jump to:
 |
4 Design and Ephemerality
|
|
For many observers our sole original contribution to the spatial arts is the alternately praised and condemned skyscraper. Foreign critics find in this typically American construction either a triumph of engineering skill comparable to the Roman amphitheaters and baths, or a poorly designed architectural monstrosity. Most agree that few buildings of this type have reached the excellence of design to be found in American motorcars. Curiously, one of the first skyscrapers designed, a twenty-eight story building by L. S. Buffington, of Minneapolis, was developed from a modification of Richardson's Romanesque forms into an original structure of more than average dignity. This edifice, although completed only on paper, seems to have influenced contemporary builders through the unique quality of its interior construction. Buffington, its inventor, defined the skyscraper as "composed of a braced skeleton of steel with (masonry) veneer supported on shelves fastened to the skeleton at each story." His plans for the new building showed square cast-iron columns anchored to a foundation of concrete reinforced with I beams.
After the depression of 1929, when American businessmen found that the highest skyscrapers could not pay, architects turned to the design of smaller buildings with greater refinement. The discovery of new materials, particularly glass brick and weatherproof metal alloys, and the development of air conditioning led to the design of new building types. The Corning Glass Works Building at 718 Fifth Avenue, New York City, with sculptured details by Sidney Waugh, marks a step forward in design. Here modern American architectural form reaches a state of refinement comparable to that achieved by the designers of late American motorcars. The function of this building as a display room and offices for Steuben glassware is completely expressed by the immaculate design. Its sparkling glass units, framed in bars of Indiana limestone and nickel silver, suggest the skilled workmanship in the product sold.
The democratization of design became a reality for the first time in the economic boom years of the 1960s, as goods with a strong visual content reached a more youthful audience. Through increased consumption young people in Europe and the United States began to manifest their newly acquired wealth and to assert their “alternative” values.
From the motor-bikes, motorscooters, transistor radios and record-players of the early youth sub-cultures through to the fashion items, graphics, furniture and other lifestyle accessories of the pop sixties, they demanded artefacts which provided them with a means of identifying themselves with each other. Many designers responded to the challenge: in Britain, Mary Quant, Foaie and Tuffin, Ossie Clark, John Stephens and others provided clothing for the new youth market.
The 1960s was a decade of sweeping change throughout the fashion world generating ideas and images which still appear modern today. Whereas fashion had previously been aimed at a wealthy, mature elite, the tastes and preferences of young people now became important. At the beginning of the decade, the market was dominated by Parisian designers of expensive haute couture garments.
Graphics designers Martin Sharp and Michael English produced posters and other pieces of two-dimensional ephemera to accompany the pop music now so central to the new culture. Even furniture designers responded to the new values of expendibility, producing, by the middle of the decade, pieces of furniture which were knockdown, throw-away or blow-up.
More importantly, perhaps, where consumption itself was concerned, the pop revolution brought with it a dramatic change in retailing patterns. New boutiques sprang up aiming their goods - from fashion to ephemera - at the youth market specifically. In doing so, they emphasized the role that the visual and lifestyle aspects of their products play in consumption, stressed individualism rather than anonymous mass production, and focused as much on the visual context of the goods as on the goods themselves. Boutiques relied on peoples buying products for reasons other than those of utility and low price.
This new approach to retailing moved, quickly, beyond the area of fashion into other lifestyle goods. In 1964 the British designer/retailer Terence Conran opened his first Habitat store, its furnishings and household goods appealing to young, educated, fashion-conscious consumers. Selling objects ranging from brightly colored enamel trays and mugs to French Provençal crockery to items of pine furniture, Habitat concentrated less on the individual product than on the total environmental effect of putting together, in a single space, a wide range of objects which expressed the same “taste” values.
A careful selection of goods which together created a visually unified ensemble proved a clever way of selling customers a complete lifestyle even if they left the shop with only a single item. Habitat was the first store to sell goods on the basis of “good taste” to a mass market, and in so doing it set an important precedent which was to become increasingly influential.
4 Next Page: Fashion photographers
4 More Content:
|
||
Chapters: 