Living by Design

Industrial designs don’t tend to inspire much mooning over their creators. When we look at a painting we often think about the artist who made it, but when we look at a fork we tend to think about a fork. This season a crop of books urges us to consider the people responsible for our forks and lamps, coffee pots and chairs, emphasizing the lives of designers and architects both obscure and famous.History accrues in the form of everyday objects in the fascinating “Icons of Design: The 20th Century,” edited by Volker Albus, Reyer Kras, and Jonathan M. Woodham (Prestel, 183 pages, $19.95). Beginning in 1900 with the venerably iconic Underwood Typewriter No. 5, the chronology marches smartly through a century of cars, lamps, teapots, and airplanes, closing in on the present with icons-in-the-making such as the Swatch Watch (1983) and the Motorola Microtac (1989), the first cellular “flip phone.” Alongside each full-page image is a brief history dramatizing the object and its creator, as well as a tiny portrait; Philippe Starck, for instance, appears shady and provocative – just what we would expect from the designer of the polarizing Juicy Salif lemon squeezer (1990).The handsome and critically informative “Rene Herbst: Pioneer of Modernism,” by Guillemette Delaporte (Editions Flammarion, 224 pages, $65), focuses exclusively on the career and creations of one individual: the avant-garde French designer known as the “man of steel.” Rene Herbst’s (1891-1982) conviction that home comforts made the man, as it were, and should be available to all classes of society, inspired him to push the potential of industrial materials and ultimately herald the era of mass production. Photographs of Herbst’s storefronts, lighting systems, and furniture comprise an intellectual biography in pictures that doubles as a history of Modernism.It was only in 1987 that Zaha Hadid opened her own practice, but already her career has inspired a four-volume compendium. And rightly so – with the completion in 2003 of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, “the world’s foremost design diva” became the first woman to design a major American museum. Arranged in a clever puzzle-like slipcase, “Zaha Hadid: Sketches and Models/Recent and Major Works/Complete Projects Documentation/Texts and References,” edited by Gordana Fontana Giusti and Patrick Schumacher (Rizzoli, 576 pages, $125), compiles the entirety of her architectural works thus far.Ms. Hadid’s contemporary, Karim Rashid, works on a much smaller scale, designing everything from silverware to dog toys, but his influence is just as large. Credited with helping to popularize design and bring it to the widest possible audience – through clients such as Umbra and Prada – Mr. Rashid works at the apex of consumer product design. With “Karim Rashid: Evolution” (Universe Publishing, 272 pages, $75), the superstar designer attempts a sort of collaborative autobiography. An assemblage of sketches from his personal notebooks and essays by Moby and Philippe Starck, among others, the book illustrates Mr. Rashid’s approach and methods.Finally, in “Designers on Design” (Octopus Publishing Group, 256 pages, $39.95), designer and retailer Terence Conran and writer Max Fraser throw open the doors to the entire furniture and product design world. In a series of 110 interviews with designers who both embrace and transcend the marketplace, Messrs. Conran and Fraser ask the likes of Yves Behar, Jasper Morrison, Marcel Wanders, and Patricia Urquiola a set of 10 questions, from “What was your big break?” to “What human emotions and necessities drive your designs?” “It is often said that intelligent design is the most economical way to add value to a product,” says Mr. Conran, “but all the same it has to be done with sensitivity and a well-balanced social conscience. This book, I think, demonstrates how contemporary designers are doing just that – with intelligence, optimism, and style.”

Living by Design

Living by Design

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