Thanksgiving and Design

In America it's Thanksgiving, third Thursday in November. (Canada holds Thanksgiving on another date.) Thanksgiving for Americans, is thanks for arriving safely across the Ocean, surviving a year in a new country. The year after they arrived, they celebrated the anniversary of their safe arrival, and survival.

In London, thanks to everybody who had contributed to designs and museums through the ages. Everybody you look at or use was designed by somebody. The bus. the bus stop. The train. The art deco stations. The museums.

Each generation has new ideas. New ideas on chairs, a cushion on the floor, a block of wood, a solid tub, a back, with legs. Upholstered. Plastic and wipe-clean.

A table of wood or plastic, on legs, with room for your legs underneath. A mirror on top for a dressing table. A desk with a pull out place for your coffee. A ledge or pull-out for your laptop. Straight, or curved top.

The 2016 glass-topped tables create a feeling of space in small rooms. But, as a landlady, I won't buy them, because a tenant might break them.

In the UK The Design Museum has re-opened in a grand new venue in London.

What I found interesting is that it does not attempt to choose good design, but rather to show a history of how design has changed, whether good or bad, a true museum.

I happen to think that art deco of the Thirties was graceful, elegant, wonderful. The Fifties, yuk, utilitarian, looks awful. I hate those spindly diagonal legs on furniture. Wood changes to wood chip. Plastic table tops and trays. Chairs no longer have upright backs but slope backwards so you get an L shape neck, hunchbacks and dowager's hump. Cheap backless bench seating encouraging slumping.

Thirties cups were an improvement. V shape. Easier to clean inside. Easier to look inside and check they are clean.

The Thirties? Beautiful buildings. White with green tiled roofs. However, flat roof houses and block of flats, introduced in the Nineteen Thirties are a design disaster in a rainy country. Anybody who studies history or has lived in a flat roof dwelling knows they are prone to leaking roofs. I've had leaks in blocks of flats where I lived in Singapore and London. Also a relative (Uncle Jack, a deceased relative my marriage) said he was nearly bankrupted by the cost of repairing his house which he eventually sold after years of problems.

I just came back from Umbria. The oldest churches were susceptible to earthquake damage. So were the oldest houses. Medieval buildings in the UK have been destroyed by fire this year. New buildings in America and worldwide are designed to be earthquake proof. Our thanks to all the designers and architects who have made buildings safer.

http://designmuseum.org

Angela Lansbury, author, travel writer, speaker.