Thursday, February 10, 2011

film: The Genius of Design (part 3)

part 3: blueprints of war
the industrial process explored during war times. the 2nd World War was a brutal and innovative design contest within weapons, tanks, posters, etc, where humans were creating better ways to kill each other. they shaped the world to come. 

Hitler and the Nazis retold their Germany from 1933 where they used design in an excellent industrial way. Germany´s design industry before 1933 looked very cheap and nasty.

                         tea kettle AEG electric water kettle 
                         designed by Peter Behrens in 1909.



the Nazi trade union founded the car company Volkswagen in 1937 where Ferdinand Porche designed the first hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric), the Volkswagen Beetle. with its streamlined design the Beetle has become the most successful car in the world.  giving the driver enough space it was of striking and excellence design. its timeless design made it so successful and in 1955 Volkswagen had sold 1 000 000 cars. the Volkswagen also contributed to branding, something seen with Hitlers mark. the Germans had "won" the design and technology within war. the British could not beat them in this innovative design. they though...









  
the British machine gun named Sten gun, designed in 1940, was of high technical and quality design. they were notable for having a simple design and very low production cost making it an effective insurgency weapon with resistance groups. the gun was easy to assemble and use. the British had went from a Victorian world to a world of nasty, industrial mass production. 


but even though the gun was easy to use, its design and amount of part where still to much. the toy-maker Walter Lines, for the toy company Tri-ang toys, found a solution for the Sten gun and in 1941 he designed the gun from being 69 parts to 48 parts, something that resulted in easier and a cheaper way to produce the product. 




the British aircraft Mosquito(1941) was a twin-engined aircraft of plywood construction, designed originally as a fast, unarmed light bomber. it was quick, could fly high and consumed less fuel. the amazingly adaptable design was effective for day and night fighting, day and night bombing, anti-shipping attack, and photo reconnaissance. there where over 7 000 built for the 2nd World War. 


so toy-makers and furniture designers and their designs where the reason the British survived the war.



                              the British also had a graphic 
                              expression against the Germans.




the German company Henschel & son then in 1941 designed the Tiger 1 tank. it was a 60 ton propaganda. very detailed designed, accurate in its performance, beautiful and original engineered. the British had no chance against this monster. 









the Americans turned their car industry city of Detroit into an aircraft production instead and managed to outproduce the Germans. their design was not meant to be style. they also designed cargo ships like the Liberty ship, that was fast and cheap to produce. they even got women to weld for the mass production of the ship. everybody in the country contributed.







the furniture designer Charles Eames also contributed to the war with his Leg Splint(1945) designed in plywood, that where to help the wounded from the war to walk again. but still the curve on the Splint was not perfectly designed as it was hard to bend the wood in 3D.


he later designed the Lounge Chair(1945) where he managed to curve the wood exactly as he wanted. it became Eames break-through and the chair of the century. the chair was of consumer design and got mass produced, something that was made possible because of the industrial revolution happening during the war. the design of the world would never be the same.



 

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