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Streamlining and American Industrial Design

1974; The MIT Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1573060

1530-9282

Donald J. Bush,

Architecture and Computational Design

Motion has become both a subject and a tool for the modern artist. Those who choose to embody in their work the quality of smooth and continuous (rather than staccato and disrupted) motion can find ample inspiration in nature. Animals that swim or fly, adapted to their fluid environments, inspired the smooth, organic forms in Constantin Brancusi's sculpture as well as in the biomorphic art of other artists. These streamlined forms were also observed by ships' architects and the pioneers of the science of flight, who applied them to the technology of transport. The modern passenger plane, a clear and popular symbol of advanced technology, became fully streamlined in the early 1930's. Its forms were anticipated by American industrial designers, who began to apply them to terrestrial vehicles in the hope of improving their efficiency and appearance. Eventually, architecture, furniture and other products were 'streamlined', for the stream- lined form symbolized efficiency and a new machine aesthetic, one of dynamic functionalism. Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss and other designers promoted an optimistic vision of the future, free of the economic chaos and social turbulence of the economic depression of the 1930's. By merging forms with flowing contours and rounded edges and concealing visually complex mechanisms in simple shells, the new designers created an awareness of the beauty of uncluttered sculptural forms in useful products. The receptivity to streamlined forms was conditioned by aircraft and more generally by a desire for harmonious existence. The accelerated pace and complexity of life in advanced technology countries makes enormous psychic demands. Streamlining, which has come to mean any method of improving efficiency and reducing waste, is manifest not only in industrial design but in, for example, literature and cinema, where it implies continuums of experience free of distractions and disruptions.