While the TV media has displayed a new affinity of the early twentieth century, industry hasn't quite followed suit. Is it now time for a renewal of the first traditions of industrial design? The mid century modern has been in hipster vogue, but can it take the step up to become big in actual design?
The lasting popularity of Eames and Jacobsen furniture is a sure sign that we are hungry for earlier glory. But newer designs have not been able to breach that gap. The 00- IKEA style, which has ruled for some time, has begun to wane - also to the admition of Ikea (judging by their newest catalogue). And while Ikea has fallen on the more colorful modern scandinvian tone, the somberness of the thirties and forties are liable to appeal more to the select and elect.
At the vanguard of industrial design today we play with organic forms. New production techniques able to handle complex forms, and the breaking wave of "organic", spurs us on to new interesting designs such as Zahids "Frozen Water Table" and Lovegrove's "Ty Nant" water bottle. To me this seems like a call for the reinterpretation of jugendstyle - precursor and contemporary to Art Deco; the backbone of mid century modern.
These two styles have to a large degree defined what it means to be western european. They have given us the zeitgest of our time through their exposure in movies and media, and subsequently defined the aesthetics of our dreams. The open spaces and close connection to nature of modern architecture is the ultimate amalgamation of the lush gardenparty and the impersonal deco-dent of "the individual" - our time's prime archetype.
And so it goes without saying, that while the flat surfaces of newer furniture design, however much they embody scandinavian ingenuity, is one step behind. Indeed - the very decade of businesslike somberness, the nineties, had no unifying design that went along with current thought. Design was then a reactionary force, a cry for independence - too busy walking in lockstep with postmodernism - maybe the most unproductive and destructive intellectual endeavour in recent memory.
While we have our new-art-noveau in organic design, how long will we have to wait for our new Art Deco? Maybe in the end architecture will show us the way, just like Le Corbusier did in his work. Maybe architecture's obsession with light, will also lead them to the ultimate realisation, the one so beautifully embodied in the work of photographer Angela Strassheim; that light is also darkness; and as are We.
