Here's the example I use to suggest that 'design is rhetorical' (with
apologies to those who really know what rhetoric is!):
A famous example of early Modern Architecture was the 1930 ‘Tugendhat
House’ in Brno, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Apparently,
according to Mies, the client had approached the architect after seeing
some of the rather more conventional houses that he had designed before.
Then, Mies said, in an anecdote reported by Herbert Simon in 'The Sciences
of the Artificial', when he showed the surprising new design to the
client, Herr Tugenhadt,
‘He wasn't very happy at first. But then we smoked some good cigars, ...
and we drank some glasses of a good Rhein wine, ... and then he began to
like it very much.’
This doesn't tell us whether it was the articulacy of Mies van der Rohe,
or the persuasivness of the design, or the effects of the cigars and wine,
that won the client over. But it does reinforce what we all know - designs
ARE persuasive: we buy products because we like them. And that is
something that Phillipe Starck understands!
Nigel
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