Core77

Few of the arts benefited from the late economic boom more than design, but a little austerity could give designers a new sense of relevance, argues Michael Cannell in The New York Times.

However dark the economic picture, it will most likely cause designers to shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Designers are good at coming up with new ways of looking at complex problems, and if President-elect Barack Obama delivers anything like a W.P.A, we could be "standing on the brink of one of the most productive periods of design ever," said Reed Kroloff, director of Cranbrook Academy of Art.

>> Read article

Photo: furniture designed by Russel Wright, the most popular American designer of the Depression, who turned out a warmed-up, affordable version of European modern furniture, tableware and linens for a new kind of informal home life