John Berry (Moderator)
Anthony Fontenot
Susan S. Szenasy
Reed Kroloff
Michigan’s design industry remains vibrant, and today there are over three thousand industrial designers working in Michigan—more than any other state. Built on the legacy established in the midcentury by some of the world’s greatest designers—George Nelson, Harley Earl, and Charles Eames to name a few—Michigan’s design heritage is as significant as its manufacturing heritage, though much less known. The dedication of the state’s manufacturers to producing affordable, well-designed products continues. Design education centers such as Cranbrook Academy of Art, Kendall College of Art and Design, and the College for Creative Studies continue to shape the creative reasoning of talented students. On June 21, 2014, at the Michigan Modern symposium at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a panel of experts examined what the future holds for Michigan’s design industry in terms of the design challenges of the twenty-first century, and how designers and manufacturers will respond to them.
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 2012. Architect: Zaha Hadid. Photographer: Todd A. Walsh. Courtesy Michigan State Historic Preservation Office.
Berry: Susan, I’d like to start with you. Reflections on the experience here?
Szenasy: I didn’t know the extent of the architecture that exists here . . . in Michigan there are some amazing examples of Modern design. Of course the furniture is spectacular and the idea that the furniture companies . . . have always been at the forefront, adapting themselves to . . . constant movement . . . as technology changes. . . . I’d like to think about Modernism, and what we saw, as a prelude to the next phase . . . Gunnar Birkerts . . . said something about Modernism being about invention, about exploration, about new materials, new ideas and when you think about . . . what you’re seeing in Michigan . . . a lot of it has been invented here. We came from a world of wood and brick and concrete and we ended up in a world of glass and steel and chemistry. So I mean this is huge. What we have been through in the past seventy years and the kind of personal and regional outcome of this is incredibly inspiring.
Berry: Anthony, can you give us some of your reflections?
Fontenot: My instinct was to try to understand the significant role that Michigan Modern played throughout the twentieth century. . . . I was interested in the relationship between the Beaux Arts versus the Prairie school. Already we see a kind of regional aesthetic that challenges the dominant aesthetic. . . . I think that’s really significant. It also went on to try to attempt a new kind of aesthetic . . . and I’m interested in its impact . . . noteworthy to me . . . this interest in organic architecture and organic design, coming out of this region . . . . That whole philosophy was developed here [the Midwest] and had a massive impact on design throughout the twentieth century. More specifically, in the mid-twentieth century, organic design played a central role . . . a new generation of designers . . . reinterpret what organic design is . . . especially at the MOMA competition that Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen win with their organic armchair in 1941 . . . Organic design is launched as a critique of the kind of International style of the Bauhaus version of European design . . . American versus European—the differences in how we interpret them is what Modern design is to be. Again, I see Michigan playing a central role in this and I think this is really important . . . the move from a cold-posture European notion of a reduced formal language into a design that is responsive to the human body; one that is dealing with comfort and the choices of an individual. It manifested itself into this organic design movement and . . . that’s a really important thing.
[The] final point I’d like to make is something called “Detroit styling,” which is . . . the relationship between industrial design and the consumer. What we saw in the presentation today on Bel Geddes, we know that that has been at work in American industrial design since the 1920s, but a renewed interest in that happened in the 1960s by young British designers such as Peter and Alison Smithson . . . the Detroit styling customization of design allowing the individual to have a consumer individualism and its role in design.
Berry: I think it is helpful to see the difference between styling and design, because I think there is a significant difference . . . real design is solving the problem and styling becomes more of an affectation or in some cases an economic gain to the company.
Fontenot: In the 1950s, when European Modernism came under attack . . . what was held up . . . was an alternative “American commercial model,” or this notion of styling loosely labeled as design or style. And I think there was this new philosophy of design in general . . . it shifted from a European sense to an American sensibility in the consumer and the role of the design process.
Herman Miller Greenhouse, Holland, Michigan, 1995. Architect: William McDonough. Photographer: Tim Hursley. Herman Miller helped fund the start-up of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The USGBC selected this building as a pilot for the development of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification process. Courtesy Michigan State Historic Preservation Office.
Berry: Reed, your reflections?
Kroloff: I’ve been trying to look at this from the broadest possible perspective that I could and take away messages that might be transferable to the present . . . what comes out . . . is a couple of processes that seem very, very clear . . . synthesis and transformation . . . whether it’s Michiganders who’ve moved to California, or whether we stay here, we see over and over again people synthesizing a variety of inputs and transforming them into something new. So whether that synthesis was at Cranbrook, something like European Modernists coming and synthesizing the production of industrial Detroit, or with the Arts and Crafts traditions of the furniture-making business on the west side of the state . . . or the European Modernists coming together with the Frank Lloyd Wright tradition of a site-based architecture landscape and producing . . . the incredible effervescence of Modern architecture in this state and in California. The second thing that strikes me is a democratization of design.
Berry: So what? What is the next thing that ought to happen . . . to make sure in the future we are capitalizing on, benefiting from, preserving, restoring, maintaining those things that are going on right now?
Szenasy: I think we have various interpretations of . . . certain words at certain times and they keep coming back but reborn. The idea of organic design was a very different kind of organic. When Wright was practicing it, he was practicing under less technologically sophisticated times. He understood what the physical organic nature of the earth was about and how to relate his buildings to the site . . . the built environment being part of the natural environment and both benefiting from each other is a hugely important idea right now. Organic design, not as a style . . . but a real deep-down understanding of what it means to connect our buildings, our products, ourselves to the natural environment. How do we think about that and how do we put the human being at the center of all of this?
Berry: The redefinition of those terms is a wonderful thought.
Fontenot: We haven’t spent enough time as a discipline to understand the relationship between these fundamental concepts of organic design . . . By the 1960s, the notion of site specificity and context was central to art practices . . . today the relationship between site and site specificity and a new regional understanding, the way architecture engages that, is wide open . . . it’s not a matter of holding onto these original intentions, but it’s seeing how these ideas evolve over time . . . any avant-garde has come out of an intense scrutiny of a historical process that then recuperates critical edge by reexamining a normal process and launching anew. So I think here in Michigan, it’s a ripe time to reexamine the history, access what’s been done, and open it up for a new era.
Kroloff: Your question about “So what?” is a double-edged question . . . So what does history mean? Why do we have our eyes focused in the rearview mirror? What can we bring forward out of that? The second is, so what now? . . . . You have to . . . look at whatever these lessons are and move on . . . Michigan still has all the natural resources, Michigan still has the biggest base of manufacturing and technology of any state, Michigan still has the second-largest agricultural production base in the United States, Michigan still has one of the largest higher education systems in the United States and one of the best.
The Brody WorkLounge by Steelcase of Grand Rapids, Michigan, reflects change in the modern workplace. Courtesy Steelcase.
Berry: Michigan also has more industrial designers in it than any other state.
Kroloff: I was just going to get to that . . . Enough already with the hand-wringing; we’ve got what we need. Let’s move forward!
Szenasy: I want to put this into an American context. I’m out there talking to a lot of design offices and the hand-wringing is everywhere, it’s everywhere. So it’s not unique to [Michigan]; what’s unique to [Michigan], as Reed said, are your resources.
Fontenot: In the 1930s and 1940s we saw the role that industry played; then we saw the relationship it played with the designers and design disciplines. Today I would ask, in Michigan . . . . what role are the industries playing in terms of sustainable energy? . . . And of all the cutting-edge issues that are affecting us, what role are the industries playing and . . . what role do they invite the designers to play in those innovations?
Berry: The furniture companies actually lead that whole issue on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and established the [U.S.] Green Building Council. They were really the catalysts that pulled that together—and still are . . . You heard some things about Herman Miller early on, way before it was an issue; that was just part of the ethos of the company. I think I can make a statement here for the big three: I don’t think anything can be designed without it being recyclable, sustainable. There are design perimeters on that.
Szenasy: And let’s not forget the bees at Herman Miller . . . it’s amazing to me that someone was just going to wipe them out through DDT. . . . Well not at Herman Miller! So now you have honey. It’s a design thinking at work at every level. It’s not like you’re designing a chair, but you’re thinking of the whole problem of figuring out how to make things work. And that’s a really valuable resource here.
Berry: And it is all problem based. You know? It’s absolutely problem based. The bees came about because there were wasps, and the wasps were natural predators to the bees . . . Charles Eames would say, “The degree to which a designer has a style is the degree to which they never solve the problem.”
Fontenot: I would just love to understand the notion of transportation that was so central to the history of this state. What does transportation mean today? How are we reinventing it? What role do designers play in that discussion?
Berry: I wish I knew the answer to that.
Szenasy: What we saw yesterday in the architectural presentation . . . Albert Kahn, the [Ford River] Rouge plant and its conversion from automotive to war production and emergency production, producing other things . . . The capability of these factories is there and . . . if the U.S. begins to decide that mass transit is really important to us as a nation . . . then I would say there could be one of those shifts within the technical manufacturing area here that could reenergize the car industry into a transportation industry. Because I think that is going to start happening whether most people like it or not. . . .
Berry: I think some of that comes from lack of a voice of what design is all about. When I talk to the legislators that I do, they don’t know who to listen to. Well, the architects say, “We are the design committee”; industrial says “Well, we’re the design committee”; graphics says, “We’re the design committee.” So there is a little confusion on who to listen to. . . . There was a great question . . . at a session . . . This era is called “Michigan Modern.” . . . What do you call now? What are we now? When one thinks of looking back, where are we and how can we define this era? And I love the question because it causes us to look at where we are, but more importantly it causes us to look at where we should go . . . I’m asking for big picture . . .
Szenasy: I wouldn’t ask for a label. What I would ask for is a vision, a vision of what needs to get solved and how do we proceed knowing what we know now? Knowing our amazing ability to invent, to invest, to be enthusiastic to new ideas, to explore new solutions that are appropriate, that are humane, that are now environmentally connected . . . when we start putting that big vision in front of us . . . then I think we are going to start redefining things. . . . I know that there is a living building, at least one, in Michigan. A living building, as you know, is not taking energy from any source except sun, wind, and geothermal. And it is so well designed that it needs minimal energy. . . . It should happen more often here because you have the availability of wind resources and water resources. I just think that it’s now the vision, the vision was modernizing. The vision at the time that all of this happened and the Ford factory was spewing out all this stuff; it was wowing the world, it created this mystique about what America could do and everybody wanted to latch onto it because it was so inventive and so positive, so beneficial to society at the time. How do we define it, what do we say that it is? Sustainability doesn’t work; it’s a word that is really loaded. Green design is too limiting. All of the words that we use are inadequate, and we really need to think about what our vision is and what your vision specifically is for this state.
Berry: I must say I really like the thought of a vision versus a label.
Kroloff: Every now and again society goes through fundamental shifts. The biggest one . . . happened at the end of the nineteenth century; the last thirty years where we shifted from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy. Absolutely everything changed with it—everything. And design is a little tiny piece of that; it’s an enabler but it is just a small piece of it. We clearly are in the middle of one of those shifts again, and that shift is driven by one simple thing—digital information and digital distribution of information that’s allowed us to send things around the world but also to dive deeply within ourselves to unlock the fundamental mysteries of how the world and our bodies actually work. That’s where we are, there is no question about it. And that’s not just me—everybody’s writing that. The question is what we do with it. The second fundamental shift . . . is radical revision of the time frame in which we live. We’re just starting to figure out how much faster everything can go than it used to. It actually does now go much faster—and it’s not because we’re over fifty! It’s because the pace of change is so radically different than what it was. That’s going to have another fundamental shift for us.
Berry: A guy named John Naisbitt wrote a book in the 1980s called Megatrends, and he was talking about the transitions in society . . . and made the point of high tech and high touch. His belief of the next trend, because of the high tech, was a focus to be much more personal and much more interactive with your own space.
Fontenot: If we are going to talk about some of the bigger changes that are going on, one thing that comes to mind is this notion of economy . . . in the 1930s and early 1940s, in both America and Europe, socialism was still a . . . philosophy for many in the Western world. Then we shifted over in the 1950s and 1960s to a consumer market and free-market economy. I think that today, the notion of economy, with the crises we have recently seen, I’m not sure if those models of economy are as solid for moving forward as we might imagine that they are. . . . What is the role for a new economy? Maybe even a postconsumer economy—post-free-market economy. I do think that there is a third way that we are starting to see . . . looking at public-private partnerships and looking at renewed interest in state planning, but not in the old-fashioned sense, the welfare sense, but a hybrid model between free market and state government that is encouraging a brand-new notion of what design can be, specifically in some of the poorest areas. Transportation is at the forefront and kind of is environmental sustainability. So I think that there is a new notion of economy that we should think about, and it’s not clear to me yet what that role in America might be.
Berry: I heard that the economic stress of different countries in the world has been one of the benefactors for really good design because it causes a new thinking on new things, and I think we may be going through that.
The 2016 Buick Avista concept car received the EyesOn Design Award for Design Excellence—Concept Car, awarded at the North American International Auto Show in January 2016. Courtesy General Motors.