SIMPLICITY IS THE BEST

Design Aesthetics

(khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie), creative planning directed toward perfecting man’s physical environment, which iscreated by the instruments of industrial production; the method used is to reduce to a single system the functional andcompositional relationships between individual objects and groups of objects and the objects’ aesthetic and functionalcharacteristics. Design aesthetics—often identified with design proper—is inseparable from the modern-day process ofcreating industrial products intended for man’s direct use; its practice results from creative interaction between designengineers, technologists, and other specialists and is meant to facilitate a better appraisal of consumer needs and anincrease in production efficiency. Under the conditions of socialism, design aesthetics contributes to the creation of aharmonious physical environment that will meet all of the growing material and spiritual needs of man.

Designers who practice design aesthetics make use of the results of research in various fields of science and technologyand are familiar with modern industrial production and its engineering and economics.

Design aesthetics is governed by the theory developed by industrial design and by data derived from economics, sociology,psychology, ergonomics, semiotics, and systems engineering. Its methodology consists of an analysis—a study of theinitial situation and construction of the planned object, functional-ergonomic and design-production analysis, andcompositional analysis—and a synthesis, which includes a functional-ergonomic survey and work on the object’scomposition. The use of modeling at all development stages (with scale models or, frequently, full-size models) makes itpossible to test and select the optimum variants of composition, color and line, and ergonomic design. Here, the modelserves not as an illustration of the design but rather as a designing tool; continuously modified in the course ofdevelopment, it eventually becomes the standard for the experimental model of the article.

Specific to the methodology of design aesthetics is the consideration of the planned article as one element in the entiregroup of objects that surround man in a physical environment, all of which must meet utilitarian and aesthetic requirementsas much as possible and increase the efficiency of man’s activities. Systems that unite articles produced or used togetherare the most complicated objects of design aesthetics. In this instance the methodology of design includes such tasks assolving the problems of component diversity in the system (the range of items offered) and formulating the system’sstructure with the techniques of standardization and unitization.

Design aesthetics arose in the early 20th century, but the preconditions for its establishment developed long before thetransition from hand to machine production; such a transition entailed “a complete technical revolution, which does awaywith the craftsman’s manual skill that has taken centuries to acquire” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 3, p. 455).A direct result of this revolution was the conflict between the progressive-ness of the engineering idea underlying a newarticle and the article’s aesthetic inferiority, which caused many utilitarian objects to lose the inherent artistic significancethey formerly possessed. Recognition of the conflict in the mid-19th century first took the form of a romantic appeal torevive the traditions of medieval craftsmen (J. Ruskin and W. Morris), but the unsoundness of the approach soon becameapparent.

The foundations of Western European design aesthetics were laid in the theoretical and practical work of the artists,architects, and engineers P. Behrens, W. Gropius, G. Semper, and H. Muthesius in Germany, H. C. van de Velde inBelgium, and Le Corbusier and F. Reuleaux in France, as well as in the work of the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus.In the 1930’s and 1940’s the center of design aesthetics shifted from Europe to the USA, where it developed primarily in theform of what is known as commercial design and was used as an effective tool of competition. American industrial firmsorganized design departments and a large number of planning and design consulting firms appeared. In the 1950’s and1960’s several higher educational institutions of design in Europe and the USA became the centers of theoretical research indesign aesthetics. The Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm played an especially important role. In a number of countries,including Great Britain, France, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan, state and public organizations have beencreated for the purpose of encouraging the development of design aesthetics, including national design councils, designcenters, and professional designers’ associations. Such organizations were united in 1957 in the International Council ofSocieties of Industrial Design (ICSID).

The creation of highly utilitarian industrial products is characteristic of design aesthetics as practiced in capitalist countries,but there are also individual examples of the successful use of the discipline to increase the efficiency of human activitiesunder extreme conditions, for example, in space and marine exploration. The creation of “corporate packaging” for largeindustrial enterprises and corporations, which embraces production, product packaging, advertising, transportation, clothingfor company employees, and the architecture of buildings, uniting them with common artistic characteristics, was one of themost important spheres of application of design aesthetics in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Corporate packaging is oftendistinguished by a high aesthetic level; however, its design solutions are dictated mainly by commercial publicityconsiderations.

The first leaders of design aesthetics in the USSR were art workers (including those who established the artistic handicraftscenters in Abramtsevo and Talashkino), representatives of the Russian engineering school (I. I. Rerberg and V. G.Shukhov), and theorists of technical creativity (la. A. Stoliarov, P. I. Strakhov, and P. M. Engel’meier).

After the October Revolution of 1917, the organization of Vkhutemas (State Higher Arts and Technical Studios), with whichthe practitioners and theorists of production art were associated, was an important landmark on the road to modern designaesthetics. In the 1930’s, elements of the design aesthetics approach were used unsystematically in various spheres ofplanning. In the postwar years, design aesthetics developed primarily in the branches of industry connected withtransportation machine building. The first specialized design aesthetics organization was the Architecture and Art Bureau ofthe Ministry of Transportation Machine Building of the USSR, founded in 1946, which developed design projects forpassenger ships, railroad cars, and trolleybuses.

The development of Soviet design aesthetics intensified after the publication of the decrees of the Council of Ministers ofthe USSR On Improving the Quality of Machine-building Production and Cultural and Everyday Items by Introducing theMethods of Design Aesthetics (1962) and On the Use of the Achievements of Industrial Design in the National Economy(1968). The Institute of Industrial Design (VNIITE) was founded in 1962, and a number of special bureaus of designaesthetics were organized in different branches of industry; in the 1960’s and 1970’s, many departments of designaesthetics were established at industrial enterprises, design bureaus, and scientific research institutes.

The Institute of Industrial Design and its affiliates work on problems in the methodology and ergonomic principles of designaesthetics, develop experimental design projects for the most important types of industrial articles, and provide systematicdirection of designers’ work in industry. The monthly information bulletin Tekhnicheskaia estetika (Industrial Design),published since 1964, deals with problems in the theory, methods, and practice of design aesthetics, and the Institute ofIndustrial Design also publishes Trudy (Transactions). In addition, bibliographic and review publications are issued, designsare disseminated, exhibitions of achievements in Soviet and foreign design are organized, and an information service isoffered by specialists. The Institute of Industrial Design has been a member of the International Council of Societies ofIndustrial Design since 1965. In 1975, an international congress on design and design aesthetics was held in Moscow.

One of the major trends in the development of modern Soviet design aesthetics is an expansion of the aims and an increasein the scope of planning and design (in addition to the development of individual articles, the comprehensive equipping oflarge enterprises, and the equipping of services organizations). A transition is occurring from personal design work to thecreation of programs in design aesthetics that help improve the production quality and efficiency of production associationsand entire branches of industry.

Design aesthetics is also widely applied in the other socialist countries, where it is used in solving important nationaleconomic problems, particularly those involving an increase in the quality of industrial and cultural production. It isdeveloping systematically with state assistance, and sectoral and intersectoral centers of design aesthetics, scientificresearch organizations, and state coordinating bodies have been established.

REFERENCES

Kratkaia metodika khudozhestvennogo konstruirovaniia. Moscow, 1966.
Khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie v SSSR, 1966–1967. Moscow, 1969.
Osnovy metodiki khudozhestvennogo konstruirovaniia. Moscow, 1970.
Dizhur, A. L. Khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie v sotsialisticheskikh stranakh. Moscow, 1971.
Khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie v SSSR, 1968–1969. Moscow, 1971.
Solov’ev, Iu. B. “Khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie v SShA.” SShA, 1972, no. 8.
Khudozhestvennoe konstruirovanie v SSSR, 1970–1973. Moscow, 1975.
Dreyfuss, H. Designing for People. New York, 1967.
Ashford, F. The Aesthetics of Engineering Design. London, 1969.
Kelm, M. Produktiongestaltung im Sozializmus. Berlin, 1971.
Dorfless, G. Introduzione al disegno industriale. Turin, 1972.
Archer, L. B. Design Awareness and Planned Creativity in Industry. Ottawa-London, 1974.
Papanek, V. Design for the Real World. St. Albans, 1974.

IU. B. SOLOV’EV

SIMPLICITY IS THE BEST

Saturday, December 31, 2016

HISTORICAL BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS IN KATHMANDU

Design Aesthetics

REFERENCES