Helveticism - DT05

My fifth D&T blog post is (vaguely) inspired by a talk we had at the Glasgow Art School venue, organised by Communcication Design. The talk included various graphic designers and type designers introducing us to their craft including Imogen Ayres, the founder of independent type foundry Möbel Type, Erin Bradley-Scott, a hand sign-writer based in Glasgow,  and Guðmundur Úlfarsson, one half of the Icelandic/Danish type foundry Or Type.

Möbel Type, Lacuna Regular

E.B. Scott, Paulin Watches signage

Or Type, L10 Sample

Instead of focusing on their contributions too much however, I intend to quickly sidetrack this post towards a discussion on my number one love in the world of typography, Helvetica.

Helvetica was designded by Max Meidinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957, as an attempt by the Haas foundry to intoduce a new modernist grotesk font, closely based on the precedent of Akzidenz-Grotesk which came from the 18th century. It marked a turn away from more geometric fonts such as Futura, as the world was quickly taking up humanist, modernist typographic principles as part of the new International Typographic Style.

The book 'Helvetica forever - Story of a Typeface' (thanks Duncan) contains the whole story, but it's most interesting pages are the scans of the physical design journey which take us through the intricate process of the two designers in crafting this exceptional typeface.

It is clearly not a boring font; firstly, it does not suffer from the geometric temptations of fonts like Futura, and as the above documents prove, it has proven itself as a relatively hand-crafted creation - the ambition, I believe to find the essence of the typed form.

It certainly caught on - It was well adopted by graphic artists such as Massimo Vignelli, Otl Aicher and Josef Muller Brockmann, famous for his book Grid Systems in Graphic Design. And has subsequently held power in the graphic identities of some of the biggest world brands, as well as my examples of 'high design'. My focus however, is not on it's application as a highly considered phenomena of the design world, but on it's ubiquity. As ESTHETACORP has proven, it's everywhere. And, more importantly (and not for the worst), it doesn't always find itself in beautiful, highly considered situations.

The fact that it is everywhere is nowhere near a problem with the typeface, it is probably it's best attribute. Helvetica is a font with a highly proven visual power, and even if it didn't have this power, it is still used with such ubiquity that it has built up notoriety through repetition. When used today, it is used both as a filler, where making a decision on what font to use is seen as too much bother. More importantly, as the-font-of-all-fonts it is the font a designer chooses when they purposely want to 'join the club'.

The rise of comic sans, arial and calibri in hyper-amateur design has made the apparent presence of Helvetica seem even greater, compared to when it was actually the default font of typesetting. The uninitiated probably don't notice consciously, but the semi-initiated know it is the first choice to make. At the higest level, the use of Helvetica could even be seen to be a kind of 'in-joke': using Helvetica seems purposeful and conveys that you are joining in with the continuing celebration of graphic design that Helvetica has always been part of.

In the film Helvetica by Gary Hurstwit, this stature of Helvetica is questioned by the likes of Dave Carson, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister. They look to promote creativity and individualism and to oppose the constraint that Helvetica apparently represents. The film gives us a good look into the offices and workspaces of these revolutionaries, which is an interesting look into the world of postmodern and 'grunge' design.

Office of Erik Spiekermann, Helvetica

They're all very boring, aren't they?

Office of Stefan Sagmeister, Helvetica

Office of David Carson, Helvetica

Now, one could definitely accuse me of Ad Hominem here, but if the most cursing of Helvetica's critics are unanimously in favour of Apple, Herman Miller, Artemide Tolemo's, beige furnishings, white walls and Vitsoe style shelving - the Helveticae of their respected categories - then something in the postmodern revolution is amiss.

Office of Paula Scher, Helvetica

Clearly, the domain of these designers is in the graphic world. They are looking to free the graphical world of what they perceive to be boredom, and are employed to do as such. But when they themselves are presented with the opportunity to choose design of a different scale, they go straight for the default.

When the need arises for a comfortable, helpful and useful solution, Helvetica - and what I will term Helveticism, when applied to design solutions of a different scale - is the solution. The golden mean. Most of these design solutions come from the same era - the apex of modernism. Helvetica is conformity perfected. That's how it always was. Haas were in some way only copying other typefaces, they just got it right.

Where a design solution looks to 'expand possibilities' on a certain scale, be that Architecture, Interior, Product or Graphic, the fundamental inability of humans to stretch to a total vision inevitably leaves them lacking in 'excitement' beyond a certain stretch.

Fondation Louis Vuitton Interior, USM

Fondation Louis Vuitton Interior, USM

For example, the interior of the Fondation Louis Vuitton by Frank Gehry, perhaps one of the most expressive pieces of architecture this century, inevitably accepts Hevelticism as an interior and product solution, in it's USM furniture, Tolemo Lights, beige walls and, hell, even DELL computers.

And Karim Rashid, one of the most colourful and exuberant product and interior designers, literally has most of his office's website set in Helvetica, showing him in all white, wearing all white.

Shots of his own office reveal strikingly modernist air vents and rectilinear architectural forms.

And I can't really criticise interior design projects, given that they have no choice but to be situated in the architecture they are for, but rectilinear forms and minimalist details here actually give the rest of the products, graphics and textiles space to breathe.

Now i'm not trying, not here at least, to destroy individualist design and exploration; but in a long post which started on type design and distracted itself along the way, I have shown that there might be a golden mean, a background we have already agreed upon as being basic, unobtrusive and fit for purpose. I have called this Helveticism.

While the individualist designers fight conformity, there are those of us that don't want to encourage conformity per se, but seek to adjust and improve the 90% of a persons life in which they are too tired to give it their own spirit.

The focus is to maintain and keep up the high standards of Helveticism. As we have seen, even the most avant-garde artists will use the same plug sockets as the rest of us. An effort to impart individual expression upon every facet of ones life is both futile and counterproductive.

The most strict adherents to this dogma will, of course, take it the whole way: use Apple, drink coke, wear all black, sit on Herman-Miller and write in Helvetica (or in unadorned '< p >', as is the case in this website). But more generally it is a celebration of the beauty of the negative space in our lives, and an aspiration to place our focus there and to make it even better.

Long live the king.

Glasgow's Future Housing - DT0B

Following on from my post which introduced my chosed D&T subject; The future of housing for the ninety percent, my second specific exploration of this subject comes in the analysis of Glasgow's Homes for the Future project.

Homes for the Future was an initiative which formed part of Glasgow's year as UK City of Architecture and Design, which took part in 1999. Being an almost 20 years old exhibition, and a physical record of what 1999 thought the future should or could be, it forms an interesting and local example which will help me illustrate certain thoughts in relation to The future of housing.

In the introduction to the book on the development, Deyan Sujic States that the aim of the project is to:

"Give a new sense of identity and life to the area, to bring people back to the city centre, as well as to experiment with new forms of architecture"

It required the collaboration of Glasgow's Planners, roads department and building control, Scottish Homes, property developers, masterplanners, project managers, and, of course, the architects.

The 'phase one' site is a triangular one, facing onto Glasgow Green on one side, and also into it's own semi-public space.

View from Glasgow Green

Path into interior space

The site acts as a public thoroughfare, and potentially connects the east of the city centre (Trongate, Barrowlands) with Glasgow Green. It easily gives its residents access to either.

Rear of south blocks

The Gateway Building, Ian Richie

The Gateway building, designed by Ian Richie is a pretty straightforward High-Tech-esque piece clad in copper. The buildings were intended to be rented as affordable homes to housing association tenants. The mission by Thenew Housing Association expressed as "flexible, barrier-free, affordable rented homes for city centre living, marrying innovative design with energy efficiency, good sound insulation and air quality". Next along the road is the 'Flagship building', Tokyo based architects Ushida Findlay's first building in Europe.

Flagship building, Ushida Findlay

This building has a prominence on the site, a round almost art-deco building with a stepped rear face which gives each level (although not each apartment) a garden terrace at the rear. 

Flaghship Building, Ushida Findlay

Flagship building, rear

 Rick Mather's Building 

Rick Mather's building, not named fully in the 1999 publication, features a series of undulating balconies on the southern face, and a rather statement bridge connecting it to 'The Grand Apartments' by Elder and Cannon.

Rick Mather's Building 

The bridge

Below the bridge is another, more secluded, entrance which via a long staircase provides another point of access, especially to the western terrace of houses.

Western houses: Terrace Houses by Elder and Cannon, Terrace One by McKeown Alexander

Bridge connecting Grand Apartments and Terrace Townhouses

Rear of Terrace Townhouses and Grand Apartments

The Grand Apartmetns are Surmounted by a rather expressive penthouse, a metal box placed at an angle, which I expect has quite an aggressive view over both the central space and Glasgow Green.

Terrace One by McKeown Alexander

The Terrace One houses are rather interesting, but not as avant-garde architecture, rather as examples of architecture which would be happy in 1931's International Style, referencing the kind of formalism present in an Earnst May style Siedlung. Saying that, so does the Flagship Building, which looks like a certain building in Frankfurt.

Terrace One by McKeown Alexander

The Object Building by McKeown Alexander

From certain angles the Object Building looks like a Loosian construction, although from the opposite and more prominent sides, these buildings by McKeown Alexander are less Neue Sachlichkeit and more contemporary.

Terrace One, Left; The Object Building, Right

The Object Builidng, Detail

Wren Rutherford Building

One of the most suprising buildings, in terms of form, is the Wren Rutherford Building, described by the firm as 'modern contextualism'. This house delivers a different, and in some ways stylistically jarring, vision of the future; a building constructed from traditional materials and in an almost neo-vernacular form. When we get to the reasons why, we see that the focus of this building is on "disability access and energy conservation" -  a direction which if chosen probably does result in a more traditional form, stripping away fallacies of modernist design for genuine utility.

Architecture - delivering architecture

So what have been the benefits of imparting architecture upon the previously docile being of housing?

Well firstly, It has become architecture, which means that it does give off some striking expressions at certain angles:

I'm not sure what the mise en scène was like in 1999, but in it's own book, the development gives itself credit for "lead[ing] the way in suggesting that our inner city areas should be considered more imaginatively to offer new modes of living". Wether this was a ground-breaking idea in 1999 is debatable, but it certainly is still a growing trend in my opinion, as millennials reject dreary suburbs for urban living.

The development also promotes, in it's own words, the idea that "good design will sell" giving contemporary local examples on Byres Road:

Byres Road, Cooper Cromar

and Saltoun Street houses by Anderson Christie: (now Anderson Bell + Christie, down the road from me and a purveyor of some more recent additions to the city also, some of which were looked at in a previous post)

Saltoun Street, Glasgow

On a the more enthusiastic level, Deyan Sujic proudly compares his development to the Mies van der Rohe planned Stuttgart Weissenhofsiedlung development. 

This may be a tad too overzealous - the Weissenhofsiedlung was a development of very shocking forms by a collective of Architects who would go on to be the most influential of their century, the estate is now a UNESCO heritage site and was contributed to by the likes of Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut and J.J.P Oud. But it bring up an interesting topic - architecture that is self-councious - and therefore suffers in the same way that architecture often does.

Architecture - delivering 'Architecure'

Architecture here, and in many other places, ignores the sensible Glasgow canon of sandstone cladding in favour of the more Corbusian white stucco - this leaves the building susceptible to ugly stains caused by rusty bolts and dripping drains.

I'm not sure why Architecture so heavily insists on these white forms, perhaps it exposes the form of the whole better against a clear sky, or perhaps just gives it more modern, favourable connotations, at least to a certain circle of critics.

It does have some demonstrable downsides though.

But Villa Savoye is critiqued - I believe somewhat unfairly - as a failure by certain critics because it failed to maintain an impervious roof (see - Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture) or the Unite D'Habitation for failing to contain certain necessary side windows . These criticisms are besides the point, because Le Corbusier genuinely was making ground breaking work which would go on to become a new paradigm for the future. Glasgow's Homes for The Future? probably not so much - which brings me to my two main criticisms, and concluding points.

Homes for the Future just simply doesn't seem that forward-thinking. It is a collection of buildings by  careful but Second-Division architects who at best create Architecture which merely references past styles, and attempts to look as architectural as possible. Architecture about Architecture. Another desperate attempt at introducing Architecture to the masses, perhaps, but certainly not at the shocking level of aesthetic power - for better or for worse -  of the Guggenheim Bilbao, or even the Shonandai Cultural Centre, both which preceded it.

At it's worst it is dateable developer-friendly little-'a'-architecture, which preceded it's colored-paneled colleagues (see Preston, 2000's) by a year or two perhaps, but comes from the same family of vague form; half interested in real utility, half in form, fully in market-based acceptability. It is this separation between avant-garde expression and housing-as-comoddity which defines my housing question, and Glasgow's 1999 scheme finds itself on neither side of the fence in any convincing manner, preferring to merely do a slightly better job (which would have happened anyway given the assumed Government funding).

The second part of the criticism focuses on the myterious mention in the 1999 book of two future developments - Site B and Site C. Advocated in the book as planned phases which are to follow on from the initial 1999 development, a look IRL or on apple maps proves the same thing, the scheme hasn't caught on.

This proves, however unfortunately, that there is a central problem in this Architecture-for-housing initiative. If such an inspirational, culturally driven project has not even met it's own, narrow and self-contained, goals in 20 years, what is the hope that the lower 90% will get to the promised land of architectural self-realisation any time soon?

The problem is central to the project itself, in being an externally driven architectural program, it can never represent the reality of a possibility, as when the driving hand is removed (after one, ten, or one hundred schemes), the free market invisible hand of 'what would have happened regardless' will return and continue without comment.

My study of housing for the ninety percent may perhaps learn from this example. It may be naiive to look at big 'A' Architecture as an endless well of solutions, as these are often driven, speculative objects, which either rely on name-brand recognition (e.g New York by Gehry, Opus by ZAHA HADID) or on extraordinary budgets set by billionaires and dictators (or both - e.g Apple Campus), neither of which will filter down to the humble abode. 

I may be more diligent inspecting housing as a commodity, defined in it's scope and it's execution, the same way that wheat and weapons are, by rather natural socio-industrial-economic conditions. Modernism arrived on the ground not because of the gesticulations of a few fancy Swiss men, but because concrete, steel and glass got cheap. It will be prudent of me to study both technological advancements, and the economic trends and conditions they exist within, in order to foresee the future of the housing condition. 

The UK Manufacturing industry - DT04

Our fourth D&T provocation was delivered by our course Head, Craig Whittet, and focused on the apparent demise of skilled traditional manufacturing.

In a general sense, it is clear that the UK is losing out if manufacturing is to be the goal. Since the 1980's, the country has shifted to a service based economy, which has seen a decline in the importance of our manufacturing industries in favour of other sectors such as banking.

The United States and France have joined us in this slump, and while these closest cousins continue to do well generally as an economy, they have failed to maintain strong manufacturing bases in the same way that developed nations like Germany and Japan, and recently developed nations like China and South Korea have.

This means that as a country we rely heavily on imports, and have a large deficit in terms of our Imports and Exports, which has developed dramatically over the last 30 years.

U.K._balance_of_trade_in_goods_(since_1870).png

This change can also be seen in terms of employment, which was the main focus of the talk.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/UK_percentage_of_workforce_by_sector.png

So what's the problem? Unemployment itself has not become a greater problem, it is just that these jobs have shifted into the services sector. Economies based on services may be more susceptible to shocks such as the economic crash of 2008. There is also the question of if individuals in the workplace are more dispensable if they are not learning hard, trade, skills.

As the UK and others developed, mines closed and manufacturing of everyday goods was moved to the second world. This is almost inevitable, apart from in luxury items, because most things need to be cheap and manufactured in high numbers. Look at dyson, who began production in the UK, but as the focus of the brand became more international, focusing on selling products in America and Asia, it made little sense to produce in the UK, from a logistical point of view if not any other.

How do we combat this problem? Looking back at the intial graphs, It is clear Germany can be a comparable model. Compared to it's friends, Germany bounced back from the crash fairly easily, It has a trade surplus, and an economy more structured around manufacturing and exports. What does it do differently?

99% of all German companies, and 40% of manufactured goods exported, belong to the German "Mittelstand," which are small and medium-sized enterprises, and are mostly family-owned. While China, Korea and any number of emerging low-labour cost countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia take on more of the responsibility for the production of our everyday goods, Germany has carved out a niche with it's Mittelstand, which are under-the-radar companies producing high-quality goods.

"Most of these companies are family-owned and based in small towns, yet they hold market shares of up to 90% in worldwide markets niches. Hauni (cigarette machines), Webasto (sunroofs and auxiliary heating systems for cars), or Dorma (door control hardware and systems; moveable walls) may not be household names, but they are leading global competitors in their respective industries" - The German Miracle Keeps Running

With razor-sharp focus, and the benefit of being progressive, technological and advanced, these companies show a way of including manufacturing in a mixed, developed, western economy.  One way of retaining manufacturing in the UK would be to follow the Mittelstand model, which focuses on Business to Business supply of anonymous but important high-quality goods.

Michel Aroutcheff - DT03

We were visited by Michel Aroutcheff, who took us through his plans and models he developed over his long and successful career.

Michel made his career, after training as an architect, in the designing and making of high-quality toys. He started making anonymous toys for sale in Parisian toy shops, but later made a name in the production of extremely well finished, high accuracy replica memorabilia toys which were tied into cartoons such as tin tin.

His visit was interesting in a number of ways. Firstly his rather off-piste career in an impressive but niche market, which shows us that there is ambitions and ways to utilise our skills beyond joining a large multinational or joining in with the design festival circuit. He said something similar to Leon Krier's 'I don't build because I am an architect.' reflecting the isolation from the world that many designers and architects may experience once going through such rigorous and sometimes ideological training systems.

I was also amazed at the material finished that Michel had managed to achieve. Fine detail and surface finish I have found to be the hardest part of any final design. This is always made harder the less decoration and detail on the final part, as flat surfaces have to stand for themselves. By utilising craft processes and hand-production, but ambitiously aiming for a very pared-back cartoonish aesthetic, Aroutcheff has made the job very hard for himself. Machines and injection moulding can all, clearly, do this in a heartbeat, But Michel's products still command prestige and a much higher price over his Chinese intimidators.