INDUSTRIAL DESIGN The Universities that teach it & the Companies that use it

The Art of Making Things that Look Good and Work
from Pratt Institute | by Grace Glueck

?Foam follows function,? says Andrew Morrison, a designer responsible for the ?are you ready??foam football, a brightly colored non0igskin that can be safely tossed around a living room. It started with a football he and his fellow esigner Bruce Hannah made of plastic foam to throw in the studio wile watching Sunday football games.

Many foam footballs later, tired of making replacements with a band saw, they decided to use them in testing whether a new process, making seat cushions out of cold-molded foam for an easy chair, could be done as well with fiberglass tooling as with more expensive metal. No one knew if it would work. When tried out with the footballs, voila! It did. What?s more, to their surprise, the foam footballs began to sell on their own.

That was in 1972 and now the football, a semi-icon, appears in a show devoted to work by alumni, like Mir. Morrison and Mr. Hannah, of Pratt Institute?s Industrial Design program. Called ?Corvettes to Cuisinarts: Six Decades of Diversity in Industrial Design,? the show at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, organized by Debera Johnson, chairwoman of the industrial design department, is about a whole lot more than play.

Among other examples of ?beauticality? turned out by the designers are surgical staplers, automobiles, airplane interiors, teakettles, lighting, packaging, clocks, tableware, telephones, furniture, food processors, a Korean War memorial, a flexible sink, an air-pump lamp, jew3elry, sports gear, a baby stroller, kitchen items and a bidet. (Along with the football, Mr. Morrison and Mr. Hannah are also represented by a ?Suspension Seating System? (1971) designed for Knoll Inc., a handsome couch with an aluminum extrusion frame that comes apart easily and uses a minimum of materials.?

This Brooklyn-based Pratt Institute is noted worldwide for its program in industrial design, established in 1934 by the designer and teacher Donald Dohner, aided by the drive and energy of two fellow teachers from Carnegie Tech, Alexander Kostellow and his wife, Rowena Reed Kostellow. The program?s objective, Alexander Kostellow later said was to ?supply students with an organized approach to the mechanics of design, to develop an understanding of the elements of design, of structure, of the organizational forces which control them, and an ability to apply this knowledge to a variety of situations in design designing for self-expression or for industry.?

Tucker Veimester, a 1974 graduate of the program (named for the short-lived but fabulous Tucker automobile, in whose design his father, Reed, participated,) defines design this way in an interview included in the press materials for the show: ?Learning to give form to an idea, making things work and making things more beautiful.? Internationally active, Mr. Viemester is probably best known for his part in producing OXO GoodGrips, the thick handled kitchen tools on view in the exhibition that make life easier for the dexterity-challenged.

Other noted alums whose work is represented in the show include John Cafaro, chief designer of the Corvette C5 for General Motors (car bugs can drool over a sizable mock-up of the dashing sportster); Donald Genaro, who in 1968 designed the sleek Trimline touch-tone phone for Western Electric (still in use); Louis Nelson, whose 164 foot-long mural is one of three elements of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington; and Charles Pollock, whose design of an elegantly streamlined padded leather executive chair for Knoll in 1965 is a classic of the furniture world.

Naturally the Cuisinart of the shows? title is here?in two versions, designed in 1970 and 1973 by mark Harrison partly on the basis of extensive hand-motion studies. So are other familiar objects like the classic Gillette Promax Compact Hair dryer, a simple merging of two intersecting tubes, by Morison Cousins and Michael Cousins (1978). But many of the items will surprise and intrigue viewers not fine-tuned to the world of design.

Take, for example, some of the new wheeled items. A stunner is Andrew Servinski?s prototype Kawasaki MK9(1996), a hunky brute of a motorcycle with streamlined yellow cowling but lots of machinery showing. It?s a ?concept? bike built of fiberglass, aluminum and stainless steels for riders who want ?high style and performance, but also comforts like a roomy seat and relaxed riding position.?

For possible future motorcycle riders, Mr. Serbinski has also designed the Quattro Tour Stroller (2002), a techy looking baby carriage with a sunshade and feeding tray that offers a ?parents console? with space for cell phone, eyeglasses, and other personal effects.

More off the beaten track is Mr. Viemeister?s Coca Cola Cruiser (2003, designed with others), a four-wheel electric-powered scooter designed specifically for the beverage industry. Inspired by extreme sports, it is steered with the feet, throttled and braked with the hands, and it can carry more than 120 cans of ice-cold drinks. (Too bad it?s only shown here in photographs.?

Not quite transportation, but wheeled, is the Kila lamp, a small bright-red desk lamp designed by Harry Allen in 2003. Its three-roller-skate wheels allow it to spin in a trice on its axis, shedding light on virtually anything.

More unusual items include Joel Hoag?s Squish Flexible Sink (1999), with a silicone rubber basin whose sides can be folded up or down to create distinctive shapes. The sink adds a safety factor to wash-ups by eliminating corners and hard edges. An Eye Clock by Lucia N. DeRespinis (circa 1960) tells time by hands moving within the shape of a large eye, probably inspired by the well-known CBS logo. (Ms. DeRespinis also designed a Dunkin? Donuts logo, circa 19780, in saturated orange and pink, based on her daughter?s preference for the colors of her birthday party decorations. It is still used.?

This show of beautiful objects, useful objects and objects that manage to be both makes no pretense of being an overview of American design. But it is an engaging and informative introduction to the field, and Pratt?s continuing contribution to it. Corvettes to Cuisinarts: Six Decades of Diversity in Industrial Design? was at Pratt Manhatan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street, through July 31, 2004. It will be at the Schafler Gallery on Pratt Institute?s Brooklyn campus from Sept 21-October 15th, 2004.