The mandatory materials for this week need to be watched, listened to and read in preparation for the seminar.
Chapter 6 from John Heskett’s book Industrial Design. This excerpt is from the Dutch translation and covers the rise of industrial design as a profession. Pay attention to the industrial, technological and economic context in which the profession arose. Enjoy, but don’t worry about all the examples.
In this episode, the story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with electronic miniaturisation to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation. A new passion for plastic arose when the possibilities where discovered: ‘plastic fantastic!’.
First episode of a
Flatpack Empire is a British documentary television series about IKEA. The three-part series goes behind the scenes of the world’s largest and best-known furniture retailer. What does it take to get new products from initial design to stores around the world?
Besides the mandatory materials, we would like to show you some other items that are a great source of inspiration. These are not mandatory for the course, but still worth checking out!
Learn about how the company introduced an ethos that is now known as “lean manufacturing”.
Manufactured Landscapes is a documentary about the work of the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who solely photographs industrial sites.
Fascinating article from NY Times documenting the travel of a container of laptops from China to The Netherlands via railways.
Craig Martin’s book illuminates the “development of containerization”- including design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.
If you have an interesting article, podcast, video, or another material that fits this topic, let us know below! We’ll check it out and maybe add it to the page.
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