Innovatia

systems design, fittings and fixtures design, architectural fashions, paint development, fur- nishings, technology innovations and interior design trends.

products of the 1800s and early 1900s were built to deliver a mechanical function but often without much thought to human desire.

demonstrated to their clients that address- ing these unmet needs came with commer- cial advantages. Through the 1900s, indus- trial design earned a role as a bridge between customers’ desires and product development teams. The social and technical changes of the last

hundred years have provided the impetus for a vast array of labour-saving and life-enhancing products that have been refined and human- ised by the skills of industrial designers. So, what is the role of innovation and design in creating living spaces for the twenty-first century? As well as industrial design, interior design, furniture design, textile design and graphic design also play roles in shaping where we live. The impact of graphic design on domes- tic living environments may be dismissed as superficial in an era when graphic-based fur- nishings such as wallpaper are out of vogue. But graphic elements form both subtle details on many appliances and more overt incur- sions into our living spaces on screen-based appliances. Why do we need design and designers? A designed solution to a project has a much higher probability of utility and success than an outcome governed by chance. But there is also a commercial answer. Companies employ- ing professional design in the development of their products, environments and businesses financially outperform companies that don’t. Professional designers have the skills and experience required to improve the outcome of a project. Designers communicate with a language of form, materials, colour, texture, light and symbols. It’s a living language, with historical depth, undergoing constant change. Designers, by their training and immersion in this lan- guage, create the leading wave of artefacts and environments that inform society’s cur- rent and future taste.

Industrial designers are technical profession- als skilled at integrating human values with commercial and manufacturing requirements. The early champions of industrial design “Our living spaces contain evidence of our culture’s conquests, status symbols, and intellectual milestones.”

Excavating a buried house in Pompeii or Herculaneum tells you a great deal about the culture and technology of the era: a preserved snapshot of the building systems and artefacts of the Romans. Similarly, today’s houses pro- vide an equivalent view: the dual-fuel car in the drive, the LPG gas barbeque on the Permapine deck, the polyurethane wheeled skateboard in the hall, and the LCD television on the timber veneered sideboard. We gather the spoils of our conquests in our living spaces, that con- firms our status and defines our character, that give testament to the intellectual milestones of our species. If you want to find what makes a culture, simply step inside a house. All the physical objects in a house mark points along a complex vector of discovery and invention. So do the social trends and intellectual skills that determine these objects’ development. The field of industrial design evolved in response to a problem which arose during the Industrial Revolution. Early mass-produced products and home appliances were often hard to use, hard to make and unappealing. The

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INNOVATIA

| The Innovative Household

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