Furniture and Architecture: From Mass-Produced to Tailor-Made

Furniture and Architecture: From Mass-Produced to Tailor-Made

Professor: Josep Mª Fort Mir

The aim is to initiate students in the design of furniture items, both for indoor and outdoor spaces, understood from industrial production and series to design for local situations and specific needs. The furniture is placed in an intersection of scales of intervention. Due its human dimension, takes part in social, cultural and symbolic issues which shares with buildings and urban scale. However its construction adds also specific factors such industrial production, standardization and distribution. The ability to produce large numbers of identical items and to place them in different locations, are differentiating factors. The subject treats the relationship between specific aspects of industrial production and architecture, focusing the attention on the ability to establish transversal relations between disciplines apparently diverse but all involved in the process of designing an industrial product.

Likewise, the experimental character of the subject can introduce issues of future, such as the world of electric vehicles and their impact on architecture, smart cities, the internet of things, new materials and information networks, energy savings and sustainability. These are aspects impinging on everyday life and will represent a profound change in the environment in which we live and, at the same time, will be new areas of professional activity for architects, beyond the limited scope of the construction of new buildings.

Content

Theory and practice are developed in parallel. The lectures provide references to general knowledge on the subject and guidelines applicable to design exercises of the course

General subject areas for lectures:

1. Architecture and Industry. The construction of objects. Bauhaus, Hisao Hosoe, furniture and workspace.

2. Design, culture and society. Industrial Design in Catalonia. Miquel Mila and FAD.

3. Industrial design, image and business. Raymond Loewy and Styling.

4. Materials and technology. Aeronautics and Design. Carlo Mollino and Charles & Ray Eames.

5. Design, modernity and pop art; between reason and emotion. Archigram, Achile Castiglione, Vico Magistreti and De Pas - D'Urbino - Lomazzi.

Course designs developed Furniture items, on an experimental basis:

Upgrading of existing elements or creation of new products, which can be for indoor or outdoor. Adaptation of the objects to new technologies, including ICT and new materials as well as the social and cultural reality, in permanent adaptation. New proposals for furniture designed to be produced industrially designed based on production capacity of companies in the sector.

The projects are developed in two ways, with theoretical proposal and technical and formal resolution. The projects are done in teams and are presented in class, where are discussed. The course is organized as a laboratory, testing different possibilities of development.

Working language: The lectures are in English. The presentation of the projects in class by the teams, in addition to English, Catalan and Spanish, can be complemented with other languages (French and Italian, mainly).

Basic bibliography

Fort, J. M. ADI-FAD (1960-2006): diseño industrial = industrial design. Barcelona: Associació de Disseny Industrial del Foment de les Arts Decoratives: Experimenta, 2007. ISBN 9788493064181.

Fort, J. M. Arquitectura de pèrgoles i umbracle : un instrument per a l'aprenentatge de l'arquitectura. Saarbrücken: Academia Española, 2012. ISBN 9783848455478.

Fort, J. M. "Tribuna de disseny [secció fixa]". Barcelona, metròpolis mediterrània [en línea]. [Consulta: 02/07/2014]. Disponible en: http://www.bcn.cat/publicacions/b_mm/antics_bmm.htm.

Sembach, K.-J.; Leuthäuser, G.; Gössel, P. Diseño del mueble: en el siglo XX. Köln: Taschen, 1989. ISBN 3822800212.

Reculls de projectes de l'Assignatura Optativa (ETSAB) Mobiliari i Arquitectura: de la Indùstria al Disseny a mida. 

Complementary

Catàleg de productes seleccionats per als premis delta ADI FAD. Barcelona: ADI FAD, 19--.

Rybczynski, W. La Casa: historia de una idea. Madrid: Nerea, 1989. ISBN 9788489569140.

Tanizaki, J. El Elogio de la sombra. Madrid: Siruela, 1994. ISBN 8478442588.

Student's exercises