The Genius of Design - Blueprints for War

- War time accelerates design process, industrial process, the process of creating machines, objects
- 2nd world war – clash of politics and ideology – heart of which was a brutal design process
- Innovation against industrial muscle

- From the beginning, nobody tough about design more than the Nazis, from their leading in 1933, they retooled Germany into a military machine
- They managed to concern Europe with such speed and easy because of a very sophisticated design
- Germany was not always famous for its industrial advantages, before they had a reputation that states “everything that comes from Germany is just bad”
- Founded in 1907, the Douche work group was committed to redefine the meaning of “made in Germany”
- An industrial standard unit was set up, which meant that industry would be standardized in size of steps – the size of paper, filing cabinets, etc.
- By 1933, in place was a very secure sense, that standardization in design, a function approach to rational organization of industry, became integral to public and private life, even if the German citizen wasn't aware of it

 

- There is no other product , that it is as complex, as simple to use as the car
- 1936, prototype for a new car was engineered (Ferdinand Porsche) – The Beetle, from fallows function – represents the German pursuit of excellence
- Germans realized, that design is about communication and this car convey a carefully calculated political message – on his birthday Hitler states, that he has given the people The Beetle, so they should give him his vote

 

- Threaten by invasion, Britain was forced to rethink its design, they were in desperate need of machine guns
- 12 of December 1940, Harold Jon Turpin designed The Sten Gun – nothing of this gun was forged of machined with expensive tools, it was fabricated. His second edition – The Mark Two Sten Gun, easy to assemble and use, it was a flat pat submachine gun, coast 2 pounds 2 shillings to make

 

- Lines Brothers, makers of toys, began manufacturing Sten Gun parts in 1941
- Founder and toy designer Walter Line sow ways to improve the gun, he redesigned it completely, without any previous experience. Thanks to him, the number of parts was reduced from 69 to 48 and production lowered further
- Due to the make do and man approach, perfectionism was left aside and The Sten Gun was disliked by many, it jammed on critical moments, misfire and their aim was repetitively less than true

 

- Design is different than art. When designing for industrial production there is always a clock ticking, always constraints, but those constraints could energize the process
- Mosquito Aircraft, was made almost entirely of plywood, using the furniture industry, which was spread over the country in small and tiny workshops (safe from bombing), already providing the skills needed

 

- Just like the Nazis, Britain needed a propaganda machine too – to explain, exhort and motivate, when the things weren't going so well
- They turned to graphic design (posters) in order to convey their message of safety and prevention to people

 

- While Britain relied on improvisation and native or imported genius, Germany continued its quest for victory through the relentless pursuit of quality. Hitler was convinced that only trough developing a master race of weapons, he would gain victory, an ideology embodied by a fearsome military machine, unleashed on allied forces in 1943 – The Tiger 1 Tank
- The Tiger was a result of design competition, initiated by Hitler between people’s car designer Ferdinand Porsche and engineering firm Henschel – in this case engineering muscle prevailed over design brilliance

 

- There was tradition in German design, that the most sophisticated was the best – this meant the consumption of more resources, time and engineering muscle
- The Russian came up with a completely different design – the T 34, a very simple and cheap to produce tank, numbers of which reached 60’000 in 2nd world war (The Tiger – 1300). The clash of these two weapons, The Tiger and T 34 represented the clash of two different design philosophies – quantity has a quality of its own (Stalin)

 

- Design is a process, not a style. When you’re designing, you don’t think only of the end product, but how are you going to make the thing too
- Ship builder, William Francis Gibbs proposed a design for a cargo ship, that could be mass produced – prefabricated steel parts, welded together on a Ford style production line, meant that Liberty ship could be produced faster and cheaper than ever thought possible

 

- What did the ways of the war have to offer to a post war world? Charles Eames began to experiment with plywood, trying to manipulate it to bend in 3 dimensions; he found his solution in war designs. He didn't only want to produce a chair, he wanted to produce it in numbers and process of being able to reproduce that piece of work over and over again was as important as the piece itself.