Anti-Design

Anti-Design originated in Italy in the 1960's as a reaction against the modern dreary and sophisticated designs. The movement of good design emphasized of striking colours and scale distortion. The colour palette was mostly blacks, whites and greys. Anti-Design got its era by producing furniture, exhibitions, and manifestos. Ettore Sottsass Jr. was the main and first designer of the Anti-Design movement once it took over and grew in a large number.

Circus box

One may not notice what these are, Ettore Sottsass designed these strange looking tall cuboards made out of plywood and covered with plastic. The decorative surface looks in a geometrical style but all different from each other, and with dull colours not as in good design using primary colours and meaningful patterns. Their mainly use was as cloth hanging. In my view I do not like them at all they look much more as a skyscrapers or a models of a stop motion set.

 Selene Chair

As we know chair designs of other eras are all designed beautifully and well build , as they should be. In anti-design, there was a major preoccupation with space and storage. They often tried to make their designs fold or stackable because of this problem we still make most of the chairs in a cheap look and functional for space. Vico Magistretti designed the Selene chair that could be stackable to save space. It is a cheap, light-weight, portable, waterproof, easy to clean and a single piece of polypropylene in a single process. Stackable plastic chairs have become so common that we forgot their original. In my view it is a very great design for stackable, it is also simple shape that can goes with everything, but still it looses the sense of a chair.

 Boalum Lamp

Another example of anti design is this strange looking lamp called the Boalum flexible lamp by Gianfranco Frattini and Livio Castiglioni. This was just a simple long, flexible, plastic tube with bulbs wired inside. It does not have that aesthetic look and great function, but it can be manipulated by the owner the way he adore the lights to glow whether in a garden, a party, meeting room etc. In my view it does not look interesting, it is just a tube but the lights may create a beautiful effect by simply moving the tube around.

Anti-Design is not only on strange and unusual looking objects, it is just a different thinking and a different way of looking at an object. Most of the objects are well known and really amazing. Also new ideas and materials were added by this era.

Referencing: Anti-Design - The Art History Archive (Year August 2011) Anti Design, [Online] Available from: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/antidesign/ [Accessed: 5th January 2014]