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If it ain’t Baroque…

If it ain’t Baroque… don’t fix it.

This morning, I re-read Adolf Loos’s monumentally amusing 1913 essay “Ornament and Crime”. Loos of course, didn’t intend to entertain: the colonial and classist condescension was most emphatically ernsthaft. Eurocentric, racist and chauvinist (to the point of effacement) it may be, the essay nonetheless looms large in contemporary design’s collective unconscious. As Wikipedia puts it (with more than mild understatement): “The essay is important in articulating some moralizing views, inherited from the Arts and Crafts movement, which would be fundamental to the Bauhaus design studio, and would help define the ideology of modernism in architecture.” The central thesis is that ornament is not only wasteful (and therefore immoral) it is also culturally backward: the more ornament you like, the less civilized you are.

Aaron McGruder The Boondocks 1999

A particularly howl-worthy passage:

“Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.”

Lot of, errr, degenerate aristocrats about these days it would seem.

One can’t help thinking that Loos wouldn’t have been a particularly fun guy to be around. Quite apart from hating the heart shape of heart-shaped gingerbread:

“The vegetables [twentieth century man] likes are simply boiled in water and then served with a little melted butter. The other man doesn’t enjoy them until honey and nuts have been added and someone has been busy cooking them for hours.”

Tell that to Jamie Oliver.

Now where am I going with this? Anyone who has been following this thread will know that my design aesthetic is, shall we say, somewhat austere, and that ornament is, more  or less, anathema (less being more and all of that).

Separated as we are by more than a hundred years from Loos’s century, it is both unfair and conceptually fuzzy to judge him by the morals of ours. In short, he is a product of his time and I’m sure that in addition to being a pompous ass he was a good dad. Or not. What is certainly true is that his thinking both presages and underpins a large part of twentieth century design. Without Loos there is no Mies.

To be continued.

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In praise of LRF

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Left Ring Finger? Long Range Forecasting? Low Resolution Fox? Nope, definitely not the last one (look it up (yet another minor moral quandary about whether something sexist can also be amusing; probably not allowed, but I digress)). No, rather, I offer some small observations on Little Rubber Feet!

LRF are perhaps something that you might not have spent a lot of time thinking about, but they are ubiquitous and surprisingly important. They are a crucial component of almost every single contemporary household object: from the chair I’m sitting in, to the computer monitor in front of me and even the keyboard I writing this with. The underside of your mouse (if you still have one)? LRF, albeit very small and not at all rubbery. You might say that LRF, if one were to stretch the definition just slightly, are the industrial design equivalent of building foundations: the point(s) at which objects touch the surface they rest upon, negotiating the transfer of the load, evening out imperfections and keeping delicate surfaces away from harder ones. They come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. There are hard ones that slide, soft ones that grip and everything in between. In addition to being made from every kind of natural and artificial rubber and plastic imaginable, they also are made from wood, glass, felt, cork and occasionally even metal. The most special LRF are the orphans that turn up on the floor or being chewed on by your pet and or child. They only reveal their origins six months later when you finally find the lamp that now both wobbles and scratches the table. These are also the same kind that, origins revealed, you are guaranteed not to be able to find again or to just have finally thrown away. Not me though. I have a special LRF drawer.

The scale of a single group lever machine comes with a few challenges. Both the porta filter and the lever itself require the user to apply relatively large amounts of force to the device. Ideally, it should resist these forces without moving when they are applied. Although single group machines are quite large and heavy compared to most items that might sit on your counter, they are featherweights compared to multi-group machines. These are just in, custom made from a low-durometer self-adhesive backed 3mm silicone rubber. The weight of the machine forces the soft material to conform to minor imperfections in the supporting surface vastly increasing the contact area and friction. Result? It grips like a barnacle to a rock.

One more tiny detail closer to finishing.

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1 – Image: Brik Pixel Art Designs by BRIK.