Design = Useless?
Philippe Starck is a world-renown award-winning designer who has created mass produced consumer products, from toothbrushes to wristwatches. He is also famous for his interior designs, mostly of restaurants and hotels.
A few months ago, in an interview, Philippe Starck said that everything he has created is absolutely unnecessary. He intends to change career in two years. He wants to express himself differently and finds that design is a terrible way to express oneself.
Philippe has dismissed everything material. He claims that people only need the ability to love, intelligence, and humor, in that order. He has finally realized that people don’t need anything. And I agree with him.
People don’t need anything.
When I graduated from Design school, along with 99 fellow graduates, we were required to write down our definition of ‘design’. What I should have written was that design is a means to coerce people into procuring things they don’t need. I suppose in that sense, design isn’t useless at all.
In the spirit of not doing anything useless again, Starck’s latest creation is a windmill called Democratic Ecology that was presented at Milan’s Greenergy Design. It can generate 20 to 60% of the energy required to power a home for less than $1000.
July 2nd, 2008 @ 23:07:53
i don’t get this … or maybe designers have a really different state of mind.
as an outsider, i view design as a field that makes objects usable by the person who should use it.
it’s for instance making a clickwheel to navigate through a library of songs instead of using plain buttons.
Philippe Starck’s view of design is art, and that’s his problem. While design is extremely useful and necessary, art is unecessary and not a need for anyone. But art addresses love, intelligence, humor and human senses.
In that regard, I view Philippe Starck’s work more as pure art than design.
just my 0.02… and again, i am no designer.