Democratic Design
It is the rare interior design magazine or coffee-table book—one might well assert, uninformed/uninformative—that fails to include some item, product, design object, or furnishing by Philippe Starck, whether done intentionally or by sheer happenstance. Such a state is a testament to the prolific output of this man. Granted, these are usually high modern design publications with rather more expensive sensibilities, but Starck is well known for crossing this boundary with what he terms, "Democratic Design."
Through Starck's “Democratic Design” concept, one must strive to increase the quality of objects at lower prices so that more people can enjoy the best of design—he was a lone voice at a time when design was turned exclusively towards the elite. So, in his body of work is often a basic design language for an item (say, a chair), and that form is reinterpreted in various material iterations—one chair may be in cut crystal and silk for Baccarat, another in polished stainless and leather through Cassina, in wood and leather by Driade, recycled polished or brushed aluminum at Emeco, transparent acrylic by Kartell.
"There are still as many democratic things I do as luxury ones…. Today, I think it's very interesting to do both because, like Robin Hood, I use the rich to give to the poor. If I am able to study how to make things for the rich, I can then see if I can adapt these creations for people with less money." PhS.
Thus has Starck established a means to offer high design to every level of society at reasonable-to-exorbitant costs. Brilliant! Starck has often remarked that his high-end commissions pay for his design work and innovation such that it is affordable to create the lower cost product (though I suspect his commissions are significant either way)…"Democratic Design" for everyone.
Through Starck's “Democratic Design” concept, one must strive to increase the quality of objects at lower prices so that more people can enjoy the best of design—he was a lone voice at a time when design was turned exclusively towards the elite. So, in his body of work is often a basic design language for an item (say, a chair), and that form is reinterpreted in various material iterations—one chair may be in cut crystal and silk for Baccarat, another in polished stainless and leather through Cassina, in wood and leather by Driade, recycled polished or brushed aluminum at Emeco, transparent acrylic by Kartell.
"There are still as many democratic things I do as luxury ones…. Today, I think it's very interesting to do both because, like Robin Hood, I use the rich to give to the poor. If I am able to study how to make things for the rich, I can then see if I can adapt these creations for people with less money." PhS.
Thus has Starck established a means to offer high design to every level of society at reasonable-to-exorbitant costs. Brilliant! Starck has often remarked that his high-end commissions pay for his design work and innovation such that it is affordable to create the lower cost product (though I suspect his commissions are significant either way)…"Democratic Design" for everyone.
Democratic Ecology: LESS AND MORE
Few areas of design exist where he has not explored—from furniture to mail-order homes, motorbikes to mega-yachts, and airplanes and even the artistic direction for space-travel projects.
Moreover, Philippe Starck early on believed in and supported the green, sustainability movement out of respect for the planet's future. He created the Good Goods catalogue of "non-products for non-consumers in tomorrow's moral market," and set up his own organic food company. Starck developed the revolutionary concept of "Democratic Ecology" by creating affordable wind turbines for the home, perhaps someday followed by solar-powered boats and hydrogen cars.
True to his drive toward ecologically sustainable product development, Starck created the "Broom" chair ("Less And More. Made Of Nothing.") composed of wholly recycled materials of a new composite of discarded industrial materials, reclaimed even before they enter the long cycle that most recycled materials have to undergo. "Imagine," says Philippe Starck, "a guy who takes a humble broom and starts to clean the workshop, and with this dust he makes new magic." The "dust" that Starck refers to is reclaimed polypropylene and reclaimed wood fiber, two of the materials used to create his Broom Chair (2011) for Emeco.
Moreover, Philippe Starck early on believed in and supported the green, sustainability movement out of respect for the planet's future. He created the Good Goods catalogue of "non-products for non-consumers in tomorrow's moral market," and set up his own organic food company. Starck developed the revolutionary concept of "Democratic Ecology" by creating affordable wind turbines for the home, perhaps someday followed by solar-powered boats and hydrogen cars.
True to his drive toward ecologically sustainable product development, Starck created the "Broom" chair ("Less And More. Made Of Nothing.") composed of wholly recycled materials of a new composite of discarded industrial materials, reclaimed even before they enter the long cycle that most recycled materials have to undergo. "Imagine," says Philippe Starck, "a guy who takes a humble broom and starts to clean the workshop, and with this dust he makes new magic." The "dust" that Starck refers to is reclaimed polypropylene and reclaimed wood fiber, two of the materials used to create his Broom Chair (2011) for Emeco.
Bionism & Dematerialization
In the late 2010s, Starck maintained that there's no future for design because we are entering “the era of bionism and dematerialization.” Bionism, according to Starck, is finding inspiration in the living to better design technology adapted to humans and human need. Dematerialization is, he says, “less and less and less materiality, more and more and more intelligence.”
As anecdote, Starck refers us to our past origins: “After the amoeba, the fish, the frog, the monkey and the super monkey, we are today at the point where bionism is the next essential step in our evolution.” He contends that, in the coming years, all the useless things around us will disappear, one by one becoming completely integrated (curtains by LED screens, etc). In this world, what need is there for a designer? Starck quips, “The next designer will be our coach, our dietician.”
In Starck’s vision, the intelligent aspects of production seamlessly integrate with the strategy of dematerialization. The computer was a very good example (differentiation disappeared as the product matured to it's most essential but replicated across companies and lines), and now the cellphone is a fantastic example—where nearly all phones look virtually identical and function the same. In his perspective as designer of cellphones, “Yes, we work to have less and less and less and less. We don’t have solutions today to make a difference just to make a difference. If we make a difference just to make a difference, that will be more.” In other words, that which is more is less, now.
Starck projects the logical conclusion that the modern cellphone is at the front end of dematerialization, meaning we move on directly to bionics. “Bionics’ according to Starck, “is when the service—telephone, computer, anything—goes in your body. And in this case, there is no more design... For all intelligent human production, the designer will be dead very very very fast.”
Ultimately, Starck postures that today, the duty of an honest designer and an honest company is to continue to make less and less until that will not be possible. There is no such answer today. But, the future is determined by how we move toward this end.
The biggest challenge for the next product is, in Starck’s vision, the end of dematerialization. This end is the beginning of bionism, the future.
Today, though, in our present, designers and companies must offer “the most possible with the least possible. That’s why we have to accept that design like we thought of before is disappearing.”
As anecdote, Starck refers us to our past origins: “After the amoeba, the fish, the frog, the monkey and the super monkey, we are today at the point where bionism is the next essential step in our evolution.” He contends that, in the coming years, all the useless things around us will disappear, one by one becoming completely integrated (curtains by LED screens, etc). In this world, what need is there for a designer? Starck quips, “The next designer will be our coach, our dietician.”
In Starck’s vision, the intelligent aspects of production seamlessly integrate with the strategy of dematerialization. The computer was a very good example (differentiation disappeared as the product matured to it's most essential but replicated across companies and lines), and now the cellphone is a fantastic example—where nearly all phones look virtually identical and function the same. In his perspective as designer of cellphones, “Yes, we work to have less and less and less and less. We don’t have solutions today to make a difference just to make a difference. If we make a difference just to make a difference, that will be more.” In other words, that which is more is less, now.
Starck projects the logical conclusion that the modern cellphone is at the front end of dematerialization, meaning we move on directly to bionics. “Bionics’ according to Starck, “is when the service—telephone, computer, anything—goes in your body. And in this case, there is no more design... For all intelligent human production, the designer will be dead very very very fast.”
Ultimately, Starck postures that today, the duty of an honest designer and an honest company is to continue to make less and less until that will not be possible. There is no such answer today. But, the future is determined by how we move toward this end.
The biggest challenge for the next product is, in Starck’s vision, the end of dematerialization. This end is the beginning of bionism, the future.
Today, though, in our present, designers and companies must offer “the most possible with the least possible. That’s why we have to accept that design like we thought of before is disappearing.”
TO BE... OR... NOT TO BE...? The Designer As Visionary—A Cautionary Tale And Request
"TO BE OR NOT TO BE?" A brooding Hamlet ponders in soliloquy to the skull of court jester Yorick. This is the essential and existential question StarckPhan believes is begged by a future of Dematerialization and Bionism as Starck projects. How are we human when everything is reduced to nothing, or nothingness. Do we want to be real, maintain our humanity, in the face of technology? And, how do we do so?
If Starck is correct and designers have no more work and purpose, then I propose "The Designer As Visionary—A Cautionary Tale And Request."
To be human is to be real...in the real, physical world: experiencing physical life along with our consciousness—an experience, so far, exclusively ours in the currently known universe. This life is a privilege. We will each have eternity to be ethereal vapor and energy dispersed in and at one with the cosmos. Our gift, our beauty, is to exist in the physical. Our gifted experience is physicality.
When we reduce those things composing our human-created, physical world to base, non-differentiated generic design (Starck's cellphone example) or if we ever achieve Starck's prospective "dematerialization," do we also reduce ourselves, our gifted experience, our potentiality—that which is diametrically opposed to "virtual" experience or "fake reality?"
Starck may be correct about our plotted course and destination. But, with respect, I hope not. That is to say, I know there is more to consider, and I hope, more to compensate for what technology will do to us even while it does for us—distancing us from each other physically while bringing us intimately closer in the virtual. To me, this potentiality is a superficial and stultifying world, divorcing us from our humanity and our uniqueness in life. I would desire something better.
All of us in Starck's and my generation have seen the tide turn from a social world where friends, families, and intimates gathered at restaurants, clubs, or homes to engage each other romantically, excitedly, familiarly, compassionately, argumentatively, perhaps even sadly... and where afterward... we have grown or evolved from the interaction. Today, restaurants are replete with designed environments meant to become so loud that there is no real conversation or interaction possible and that which does occur is too often virtual... Picture a table of ten grown beings around a communal gastropub table... with heads bowed, mesmerized and focused on cellphones and nary a word said amongst each other... until the sharable plates are delivered and they nibble on each other's fare between texts and emails... and posting photos of their food on Facebook or Instagram.
That is a world technology brought us that pushes us further away from our neighbor and friends—our humanity—even while bringing us improbably closer to someone on the other side of the planet. Love isn't spread that way, but hatred is easily. Domestic terrorism, killing "the others," in New Zealand is sparked, incubated, fomented... facilitated... half-way around the world by the ease with which we "un"-humanly communicate across the globe through "easy" technology. It is not the fault of technology. It is not even the fault of the creators of technology. It is all our faults—those of us as thinkers and contributors in the world—for not understanding that we must utilize technology for benefit and proactively protect ourselves from the distance it creates from our own sense of humanity, compassion, and love.
I would also take exception with the concept that in the future of Dematerialization and Bionism there is no need for design or designers. On the contrary, I propose the exact opposite!
If we successfully remain grounded in the “real-as-opposed-to-virtual” world and retain our humanity in the presence of technology, then design is a paramount factor in determining the quality of the experience. It is designers moving away from the purely rational, purely functional (rationality is technology’s function) and proposing the stimulating and novel that will add quality to life—or importantly, an endearing quality and experience accorded to less quantity. If we are successful and do more with less, what we do have had better be stimulating, exciting, enriching, and take us emotionally and intellectually to new experiences and environments.
To wit, I write later in this site: “Design—all of it: good, bad, indifferent, plebeian, generic, crass, etc—defines the context of our lives. It is the visual stage upon which we all exist, even if not consciously aware of the fact. Design reflects our priorities as individuals and as a people. For me, I appreciate the exciting stimulation along with an inherent acknowledgment of responsibility for the world's well-being that Starck employs. Hence why he's in our personal collection.” And, "Everyday, we awake [in our home] to an environment that is stimulating and never tiresome."
In this effort I describe, Starck and his successors are of paramount importance and must be ever more creative. The growth and variety of design and design objects through the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and, I submit, until the mid-nineties, was prolific and profound, challenging our notions of what is and should be in our built and physical/cultural environments. Architects and designers took society somewhere different and exciting. A re-conceived-but-stimulating future was made present in terms of style and design.
We have had good and even excellent individual examples of design since, but as whole, not much progress toward something new has been achieved as a design “movement” defining an epic era or eras. Comparing the technological devises and technology itself in photos from twenty-to-sixty years ago easily reveals epic progress with technology and our devises, comically so. But, strip away the computers, typewriters, and phones from those same photos, and the culture of design has barely budged. And the Great Recession of a decade ago has, I think, paralyzed us design-wise in time. Few want to or can afford to take risk in designs... whatever is made must sell! That which challenges us and proposes a new experience is likely not to be a financial success, at first. Manufacturers and design houses seem not to have the financial capacity (or willing shareholders) for a few failures (or a string of them) on the way to era-defining breakthroughs. What will be the impact from our Covid-world experience? Growth taking us to new visions of stimulating “real world” environments and objects will require extraordinarily talented designers and daring, well-capitalized manufacturers and retailers.
To me this has always been Starck’s role and, I’m making the case, is how it should be: “Taking us to new visions of stimulating ‘real world’ environments and objects.” I write later, “Starck’s designs are innovative, sexy, playful, stimulating, provocative, fun, compelling, daring, and sometimes surrealistic -- to me, everything great design should be about. I did not always subscribe to this position. Once-upon-a-time my design ethic was cold and logical… or rather, rational design. Modernism and brutalism were my comfort styles. That is… until… I experienced Starck's designs through his original design for the Royalton Hotel In NYC. Through Starck's work, I came to appreciate the design additions of emotion+intelligence+playfulness+humor. Life for me has gratefully never been viewed the same since then."
If designers/philosophers/leaders like Starck have a role to play, it is to not simply see the vision of the technology, itself, but to discern a future for how we maintain our humanity in the face of the great benefits and threats presented by technology. This is the work I propose for "Designer as Visionary." Mr. Starck, there is more to be done. Please get to work : )
If Starck is correct and designers have no more work and purpose, then I propose "The Designer As Visionary—A Cautionary Tale And Request."
To be human is to be real...in the real, physical world: experiencing physical life along with our consciousness—an experience, so far, exclusively ours in the currently known universe. This life is a privilege. We will each have eternity to be ethereal vapor and energy dispersed in and at one with the cosmos. Our gift, our beauty, is to exist in the physical. Our gifted experience is physicality.
When we reduce those things composing our human-created, physical world to base, non-differentiated generic design (Starck's cellphone example) or if we ever achieve Starck's prospective "dematerialization," do we also reduce ourselves, our gifted experience, our potentiality—that which is diametrically opposed to "virtual" experience or "fake reality?"
Starck may be correct about our plotted course and destination. But, with respect, I hope not. That is to say, I know there is more to consider, and I hope, more to compensate for what technology will do to us even while it does for us—distancing us from each other physically while bringing us intimately closer in the virtual. To me, this potentiality is a superficial and stultifying world, divorcing us from our humanity and our uniqueness in life. I would desire something better.
All of us in Starck's and my generation have seen the tide turn from a social world where friends, families, and intimates gathered at restaurants, clubs, or homes to engage each other romantically, excitedly, familiarly, compassionately, argumentatively, perhaps even sadly... and where afterward... we have grown or evolved from the interaction. Today, restaurants are replete with designed environments meant to become so loud that there is no real conversation or interaction possible and that which does occur is too often virtual... Picture a table of ten grown beings around a communal gastropub table... with heads bowed, mesmerized and focused on cellphones and nary a word said amongst each other... until the sharable plates are delivered and they nibble on each other's fare between texts and emails... and posting photos of their food on Facebook or Instagram.
That is a world technology brought us that pushes us further away from our neighbor and friends—our humanity—even while bringing us improbably closer to someone on the other side of the planet. Love isn't spread that way, but hatred is easily. Domestic terrorism, killing "the others," in New Zealand is sparked, incubated, fomented... facilitated... half-way around the world by the ease with which we "un"-humanly communicate across the globe through "easy" technology. It is not the fault of technology. It is not even the fault of the creators of technology. It is all our faults—those of us as thinkers and contributors in the world—for not understanding that we must utilize technology for benefit and proactively protect ourselves from the distance it creates from our own sense of humanity, compassion, and love.
I would also take exception with the concept that in the future of Dematerialization and Bionism there is no need for design or designers. On the contrary, I propose the exact opposite!
If we successfully remain grounded in the “real-as-opposed-to-virtual” world and retain our humanity in the presence of technology, then design is a paramount factor in determining the quality of the experience. It is designers moving away from the purely rational, purely functional (rationality is technology’s function) and proposing the stimulating and novel that will add quality to life—or importantly, an endearing quality and experience accorded to less quantity. If we are successful and do more with less, what we do have had better be stimulating, exciting, enriching, and take us emotionally and intellectually to new experiences and environments.
To wit, I write later in this site: “Design—all of it: good, bad, indifferent, plebeian, generic, crass, etc—defines the context of our lives. It is the visual stage upon which we all exist, even if not consciously aware of the fact. Design reflects our priorities as individuals and as a people. For me, I appreciate the exciting stimulation along with an inherent acknowledgment of responsibility for the world's well-being that Starck employs. Hence why he's in our personal collection.” And, "Everyday, we awake [in our home] to an environment that is stimulating and never tiresome."
In this effort I describe, Starck and his successors are of paramount importance and must be ever more creative. The growth and variety of design and design objects through the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and, I submit, until the mid-nineties, was prolific and profound, challenging our notions of what is and should be in our built and physical/cultural environments. Architects and designers took society somewhere different and exciting. A re-conceived-but-stimulating future was made present in terms of style and design.
We have had good and even excellent individual examples of design since, but as whole, not much progress toward something new has been achieved as a design “movement” defining an epic era or eras. Comparing the technological devises and technology itself in photos from twenty-to-sixty years ago easily reveals epic progress with technology and our devises, comically so. But, strip away the computers, typewriters, and phones from those same photos, and the culture of design has barely budged. And the Great Recession of a decade ago has, I think, paralyzed us design-wise in time. Few want to or can afford to take risk in designs... whatever is made must sell! That which challenges us and proposes a new experience is likely not to be a financial success, at first. Manufacturers and design houses seem not to have the financial capacity (or willing shareholders) for a few failures (or a string of them) on the way to era-defining breakthroughs. What will be the impact from our Covid-world experience? Growth taking us to new visions of stimulating “real world” environments and objects will require extraordinarily talented designers and daring, well-capitalized manufacturers and retailers.
To me this has always been Starck’s role and, I’m making the case, is how it should be: “Taking us to new visions of stimulating ‘real world’ environments and objects.” I write later, “Starck’s designs are innovative, sexy, playful, stimulating, provocative, fun, compelling, daring, and sometimes surrealistic -- to me, everything great design should be about. I did not always subscribe to this position. Once-upon-a-time my design ethic was cold and logical… or rather, rational design. Modernism and brutalism were my comfort styles. That is… until… I experienced Starck's designs through his original design for the Royalton Hotel In NYC. Through Starck's work, I came to appreciate the design additions of emotion+intelligence+playfulness+humor. Life for me has gratefully never been viewed the same since then."
If designers/philosophers/leaders like Starck have a role to play, it is to not simply see the vision of the technology, itself, but to discern a future for how we maintain our humanity in the face of the great benefits and threats presented by technology. This is the work I propose for "Designer as Visionary." Mr. Starck, there is more to be done. Please get to work : )