Glenn,

Your recent post raises four questionable points concerning
Starck:

(1) Judging design quality,

You ask "Who are we to judge design quality ?"

Whether you approve something or disapprove,
you are judging quality. In praising Starck, you are judging
design quality.

Qualities are attributes and characteristics. We judge
them all the time. If you want to take a comprehensively
detached view, then you must abstain from praise as well
as its contrary.

Establishing and considering criteria of excellence, of
performance, of elegance are among the kinds of things
one might do on a list such as this. You do so when you
praise Starck. This is a legitimate activity.

What is questionable is asserting your right to praise
Starck -- that is, to judge design quality -- while questioning
the right of others to register their judgement on the same
body of work.

(2) Appealing to future history

"... there are few other other designers who will be
remembered as well in the 22nd century."

It's easy to appeal to the judgement of history.
We aren't there yet. Few of us expect to reach
the 22nd century to find out whether this is a
valid statement or an invalid conjecture. I expect
to hit 90 in 2039 and maybe even to make my
century a decade later. I don't expect to be here
in C22.

As Eugene Ionesco once wrote, "You can only predict
things after they have happened."

I am happy to predict what has already happened
and to judge the quality of what Starck has
already created.

(3) Misattributing unique virtue

"He is also one of the few to use a lot of recycled
material in a product that can/could actually be purchased."

This is simply not so. This is a counterfactual claim.

There are extensive and increasing uses of recycled
material in products that can be purchased. Starck makes
an occasionally obtrusive point in some products
by revealing these recycled elements. Most designers,
engineers and manufacturers who use recycled products
simply get on with the job. You will sometimes find quiet
notices about recycled material in the labels. Other times,
there is no note. Why would one bother to say that 17% of
the plastic or 26% of the aluminum in a product is recycled?
Several manufacturers of toilet paper and
paper towels are happy to brag about 100% recycled pulp
and fibers. Most just recycle and reuse -- since recycled
plastic and pulp and metal are technically the same as new,
the issue is irrelevant.

The claim you make on Starck's behalf is not irrelevant.
You misattribute to him uncommon virtue. Recycled materials
are virtuous, but the reality is that this is an increasingly
common virtue.

Recycling is standard practice in many industries. It
is not as widespread as it should be, but it is
widespread for economic and environmental reasons both.

Perhaps some of our colleagues active in sustainable
design will comment on just how widespread these
practices have become.

If this is the criterion of excellence, one would do well
to recall Papanek, Fuller, Deming and the other conscientious
heroes of 20th century industry.

(4) Rejecting facile argument

These arguments involve more than the modernist debate
or the form and function issue.

There are larger and moe complex issues at stake.
I praise Starck as an artist, not as a designer.

There is something geniunely problematic in
establishing a pure marketplace morality as the
criterion of design success.

You write, "If someone designs something and someone
else wants it - who are we to judge the design 'quality'?"

If such issues as ethics, use to the purchaser -- who may
not always be aware of design flaws at time of purchase,
environmental impact and other factors are a concern,
the fact that someone can design what someone else
will buy is far from the most important standard.

David Halberstam's excellent history of the automobile
industry titled _ The Reckoning _ shows how the Big
Three were able to design seriously flawed cars and foist
them on a willing public for years before the competitive
power of better cars at lower prices shifted the market.

The power of markets to allocate goods and services
efficiently is well known. Some issues cannot be subject
simply to the criterion of choice and efficient allocation.

Al Capone's proposed that he was a business leader (or a
public servant) supplying the wants of customers. The
distasteful trappings of his empire were merely a response
to the somewhat touch competition in his industry.

Tobacco firms and drug dealers design a product
that someone else wants.

Starck is not in that league, but the justification fails
for the same reasons.

I'll accept elegance and art as an account of Starck's
work, but the larger discourse surrounding Starck
requires a better and more serious account.


Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management

+47 22.98.51.07 Direct line
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax

Home office:

+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
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