The Age of Streamlining

Consumerism and Style 1935-1955

Just as surely as the artists of the fourteenth

century are remembered by their cathedrals, so
will those of the twentieth be remembered for
their factories and the products of these
factories. NORMAN BEL GEDDES, 1932
• Increase in the wealth of • Increase in the production
the social groups of goods leading to mass
production.
• Surge of design conscious
market
• Finding of new
technological means to
increase the production
• Exploitation of new
materials especially new
alloys of metal and plastic
• More consumption of automobiles
• Stylists employed by big American
corporation to create the most
coveted “dream machines”
• People car “ triumph of function over
styling” emerged during this period
• Italy’s Fiat’s TOPOLINO; France’s
Citroen’s Deux Chevaux and
Germany’s Volkswagen Beetle
• “streamlining” as a concept
pioneered by America percolated in
form of many inanimate objects
• Scandinavian designs also grew in
popularity existing alongside the
bulbous form of metal and plastic
Gaby Shreiber
 Emergence of two cultures
• Living room • Kitchen
– Steeped in traditional – Futuristic
values – Pro technology style
– Ideas of comfort – Refusing to look back
– Exclusive goods like hand over its shoulder
made ceramics and glass – Oven to table ware

Design was now no longer the preserve of an exclusive few, but available to almost anybody who wanted it.
 Office
• Appearance of new
machines in ffice
• Streamlined typewriters,
cash registers, pencil
sharpeners
• New approach towards
office organization
• Encoragement to greater
and greater efficiency
• Intensive time and
motion studies
 Inspirations
• Functionalism • Streamlining
– Breaking things down to – Seamless, integrated
their essentials whole with moving parts
– Reassembling them as a covered that presented
series of identifiable, an efficient, sleek outline
connected parts.
One of the fleet of Zappelin airships
Shaped by Ferdinand von Zappelin
The great workroom in Wright’s Johnson Building
 Changes at the global front
• Development of mass
transport
• International competition
spurred innovation and
daring needs of
aeronautics and driving
• With news travelling
faster, the torpedo forms
of airships, seaplanes and
monoplanes became a
popular image of
technological
achievement

Alison & Peter Smithson

 Inspirations
• Water source: • Forward Thrust:
– 19th century natural – Javelin form of “Golden
hisotry studies, Arrow”
illustration of fish and
dolphins propelling
themselves.
Javelin form of Golden Arrow
 Inspirations

• Teardrop on wheels: • Ideas in the air:

– Exploitation of low wind
resistance and high fuel
economy of ‘teardrop
shape’
Horace Basil Oldfield designed tear drop shaped bus
 Inspirations
• Age of atom exploded
upon mass market with
the bombing of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima
• New style of bulbous
form:
– Chairs with curling seats
– Kidney shaped tables
– Ovoid ceramics
– Elegant trumpet glasses
Shape of Atomic Structure

Painting by Joan Miro

 Post war Design
• Italian designs
– More sculptural
– Much less overtly populist
• Britain, Germany, Finland
and Japan became aware
of the need to integrate
design with industry and
develop a national design
style as learned from US
during its depression.
• “Call for style”- putting
less emphasis on the
‘applied arts’ and
concentrating instead on
the design of mass
produced technological
goods made from new
material.
• Furniture became more
of industrialized product
made of steel rod and
plastic as opposed to the
craft product.
• Technology:
– Machines could eliminate
the burden of almost every
manual task
– Increase in leisure options
– Design linked with the
world of mass production
and mass consumption and
style the means through
which the people defined
their social aspirations and
their preferred way of life.
 Design Exhibitions: 1935-1955
• 1937 Paris exhibition:
– Surrealism used a display style
– Appeared again after the war in British
and Italian exhibitions
• New York world fair in 1939
– Showed the mass potential of style
– Dominated by American streamlining
– Industrial design was more in evidence
then decorative arts
– Largest exhibition of automobile
companies: GM, Ford, Chryslar
• Milan Triennales:
– After the war, smaller exhibitions were
organised
– Newly organised nations showed the
products to the rest of the world
demonstrating that design had become
par of their economic, social and
New York World Fair 1939
cultural rebirth.
 THE USA
• 1935-55 USA led the way
where design was
concerned
• Presence of wealthy mass
market and advanced
attitude towards
industrial and business
organisations
• Goods played the role of
fantasy fulfillment for Designed by Walter Darwin Teague
people for whom
economic depression was
sustained reality
 THE USA
• Streamlining:
– Derived originally from
aerodynamic experiments bur has
a number of other visual resource
including futurist painting, airships,
the tapered form of dolphins and
porpoises and the abstract
engineered forms of objects like
grain silos, bridges and factory
machinery.
– Combined to form tear drop body
shells for mechanical and electrical
products and expressive, Organic
forms for decorative art objects
– Style took full advantage of new
technolgoied available for cheap
mass production
– Only furniture escaped from the
impact
The city of Salina: Streamlined train designed in 1934
 The USA
• The consultant designers: • Consultant Designer
– Creation of an independent – Walter Darwin Teague
industrial design profession – Raymond Loewy
which set itself up to work on – Norman Bel Geddes
freelance basis with the marge
manufacturing companies. – Henry Dreyfuss
– Most came from the discipline – Harold Van Doren
of commercial art thus having a
keen awareness about the • Company
design and sales.
– Eastman Kodak
– Most of them worked across a
vast range of consumer goods, – Gestetnet Company
few confined their creativity to – Toledo Scale Company
the use of a single medium – Other shop, kitchen and
– Real emotional commitment to agricultural machinery
the contemporary world of manufacturer
speed and modern technology
Eames Chair: Design with Saarinen
• New Materials:
– Obsessed with the aesthetic
potential of the whole range of
new materials from aluminum to a
startling range of new types of
glass and to plastics
– Furniture designers interested in
finding new ways of layering,
bending and molding wood
– MOMA acted as arbiter of what is
good design & number of
exhibitions with that very title took
place in the early fifties.
– A more exclusive European
inspired idea of design emerged in
the post war USA that stood in
direct opposition to values of
“styling” and mass culture in
general.

Hardoy Sling Chair

Aurora Designed and Built by Alfred Juliano
 The USA
• End of American dream:
– Designers replaced by
anonymous company
men who worked within
the large corporation
– Excitement of the earlier
period replaced by
corporate blandness
– Only offering to be made
to the world was at the
youth ‘pop’ culture level
 Scandinavia

• Continued dependence on
tradition and commitment
to the applied arts
– First company to embrace the
new design style “sweden”
called swedish modern
– Characterized by simplicity
and a use of natural imagery
– Incorporation of democratic
ideal
– Importance of pattern,
human values, tradition and
natural imagery with
emphasis on human scale and
comfort
Borge Morgensen Hunting Chair
Arne Jacobson’s
Little Ant Chair
• Swedish exhibit at the New
York world’s fair at 1939
• Design philosophy “ as a
movement towards sanity”
• Dominant domestic style of
mid century
• Idea of democratic yet elegant
good living
• Symbolic to the world where
tradition, human value and
beauty played an important
role
• A style to live with and not just
to look at

Tapio Werkella’s Kantarelli’s vases

Alvar Aalto’s Birch wood Stacking Chair
Bent laminated timber with black textile webbing :designer Alvar Aalto
• Danish Modern
– Integrity of workmanship and
aesthetic simplicity
– Sense of respect for natural
materials in particular beech,
birch and teak
– Concern for craft details as well
as respect for democratic ideals
– Light yet comfortable pieces
apt to fit smaller dwellings
– Neat and flexible
– Primitivim made visible
through the use of wood and
leather, clearly african inspired
– Ability to create a wide range Selection of chair from Danish Modern
of time less objects
Hans Wagner Arm
Chair
Honesty of materials
Rounded lines and
precise geometry
Hans Wagner’s Chair and the Legend Himself
 Paul Kjaerholm
If the detail was not in order, the rest did not matter much. Pieces imbued with love for
clarity, perfection and detail.
Paul Kjaerholm
Henning Koppel’s Silver Pitcher and Bowl
• Finnish Flair
– Prominently came forward in Milan
Triennales of 1951-54
– Craggy rock forms, expressive
sculptural approach to glass
– Particularly appealing to wealthy
international market
– More democratic approach to
design was also practiced
– Many products even successful
today
– Bolder and more adventurous style
– Textiles used strong, screen printed
patterns characterized by
application of bold abstract motif
– Much less committed to traditional
craft relied instead upon stimuli
from contemporary world
 Italy
• Exclusive aesthetic providing
sophisticated items for international
elite
• More conscious of symbolic role of
design
• Organically curved metal forms
• Huge investment in production
machinery which were imported
leading to bulbous forms
• Emergence of a new generation of
designers like Ettore Sottsass,
Achille and others
• Trained as architects in the
rationalist tradition
• Lighting deigns becoming piece of
sculpture
• Technology and aesthetic
developed hand in hand
• Unerring commitment of a number
of manufacturing industries to the
concept of design
• Design in Italy reached a level of
sophistication and carved a niche
for itself

Fiat 500: affectionately known as Topolino

Ettore Sottsass
Fornasetti
• Piero Fornasetti was a Milanese
painter, sculptor, interior decorator,
engraver of books and a creator of
more than 11,000 products. In terms
of variety of decoration, Fornasetti’s
production of objects and furniture is
one of the largest of the 20th
century.

• Fornasetti is celebrated as being

among the most original creative
talents of the twentieth century.
During his career he created a visual
vocabulary that is instantly
recognisable and unceasingly
engaging. Fornasetti designed a
magical world, saturated in image
and colour and filled with whimsy
and wit.
Osvaldo Borsani Chair
Sabbatini silver plated coffee
service
 • Closure of Bauhaus in 1933
• Ulm formed in 1951
Germany – Highly rationalistic, sytematic
definition of design
established the emergence of
new definition of design
• Black Box syndrome in
design:highly rational
aesthetic
• More stylistic

Beetle 1930
Rosenthal Pottery
 Great Britain
• Council of
industrial design
formed in 1944
• Britain can make it
exhibition in 1946
• The festival of
Britain in 1951
• Borrowing of styles
from Scandinavia,
USA and Italy

Marcel Breur bent plywood dining set

Desk telephone designed by Ericssen
Ecko Bakelite radio model designed by Wells Coates
Tom Eckersley: strong surrealist tendency
Design for the future at Britain can make it exhibition…a streamlined bike designed by
Sir Misha
Dining table and Chair designed by Christopher Heal at
Britain can Make it exhibition
Festival of Britain: 1951
Contemporary style replaced
modern in Britain
Search for a new surface
leading to usage of small
motifs in bright colors
 Mass Style
• In the mass environment, design as a high minded
ideal was bring replaced by design seen as style in
and for itself, with lifestyle as its close ally.
• Evolvement of distinct national style and
emergence of different style for different markets
• Design turning into an essentially international
phenomena
Charles and
Ray Eames
It was a romance that
spawned some of the
world's most iconic
furniture, architecture
and film. Thirty seven
years of passionate
collaboration ended in
1978 when, at the age
of 71, Charles Eames
died. Ten year later to
the day, Ray died too.