Just because design is art, doesn’t mean it’s not user-centred
The chief goal of all design should be satisfying the needs of the user. That’s ultimately what all good design is, and I would even go as far as to say there are no exceptions. This is hardly revolutionary, and many of my colleagues at the Glasgow School of Art would agree: good design is for the user! And this has lead them to take issue with Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge.
Why would anyone have a problem with it? It is a beautiful organic shape, it looks wonderful! But I guess it is not to everyone’s taste, and though I like it I don’t suppose I would want it anywhere near my living room. But its aesthetics are not the issue my friends have with it. Their issue is that it’s trying to be art. My good pal Andrew writes this about Newson¹:
“…some of his products are called “design art” which doesn’t sit hugely well with me. I think that design is an art-form but surely if its an object that somebody would like to call “art”, it is a sculpture… For example, when talking about the Lockheed Lounge, one of his most valuable designs, Marc said “It was never really intended to be comfortable”. Through further explanation, it seems that it was indeed more of a sculpture than a seat, which I can deal with. […] So it was a sculpture with a well designed shape. Whether it is “design art”, I’m not so sure.”
First of all I’m just going to disagree- I don’t think design is an art form. Certainly design can be art. But not all design is art, just like not all boots are Wellingtons.
Now back to the point. Andrew seems to be frustrated that the Lockheed Lounge is claiming to be a seat and a sculpture at the same time. He doesn’t mind it being art, he’s just annoyed it’s also trying to pass as a chair. Why? It’s not comfy, and chairs have to be comfortable, right? Another friend of ours, Kelsey, shared similar frustrations but with some added sass for good measure²:
“…I’m thankful Marc Newson has come a long way, because at the onset of his career he spent a lot of time designing furniture that no one sits on. He actually said about one his most famous pieces, the Lockheed Lounge, that if it was more comfortable than the rooftop of a bus then to him, it qualified as something worth sitting on.”
What is the real issue here? Is it the chairness of chairs, or the artness of art? Is the issue that the Lockheed Lounge dares to be art, or that it claims to be a chair?
Let’s consider the chairness of chairs. I actually think in the above quote Kelsey misheard Marc. He wasn’t talking about the rooftop of a bus, but a bus stop which makes more sense! That comparison is actually very helpful. Bus stops are designed to be sat on, but only briefly. They aren’t comfortable. They just provide a bit of rest for your legs as you wait for the number 42. No one denies a bus stop is a chair. No one is annoyed at bus stops because they are uncomfortable (Why not? Perhaps we should be! Let’s design comfortable bus stops).
Newson’s point in the bus stop comparison is actually quite a sophisticated one. Thinkers have wrestled with what makes a chair a chair for a long time. It’s a difficult question! When we see a particular chair for the first time how do we know that it is a chair? Is it that it has four legs? It can’t be! Many chairs don’t have four legs but we still know they are chairs. Even Plato and Socrates were thinking about this, centuries ago. Socrates thought that before we can say something meaningful about chairs, we have to consider what chairs are. What is common between all chairs? (Although he was actually thinking about ethics and justice, not chairs)
But Socrates got stuck, he wasn’t able to come to a conclusion. He couldn’t find these commonalities. That’s where Plato came in. He said that if you say one chair is better than another, you are actually assuming there is an absolute good from which the two chairs can be compared to. In another dimension there is a perfect form of what a chair should be. In our material world we cannot know what this perfect form is, he thought, but we can form opinions from the chairs we do have. It’s all very interesting, but also quite complicated, and I’m not going to pretend to properly understand it.
So that’s why Newson’s definition is quite nice. He takes one of the simplest examples of a chair we have and extrapolates from it. If a bus stop in all its simple glory is a chair, then the Lockheed Lounge need only be that comfortable to qualify. And when you look at the Lockheed Lounge you can tell it’s a chair. But is it a good chair?
Kelsey and Andrew both seem to think that the Lockheed Lounge has made compromises because it is an art piece. And these compromises make it a bad chair. They’re happy to admit it’s a nice sculpture, they just think it’s bad design if it’s a chair. Why? Because it’s not comfy. Because it’s not nice to sit on. Ultimately because it doesn’t meet the needs of a user who wants to sit on it.
But here’s my point: that’s not who the user is. The user isn’t someone wanting to sit on the chair for a long time. The user isn’t going to put it in their flat beside their Billy bookcase. The user is an art collector. The user is someone who wants it to look interesting. The user is someone with money to burn. And the Lockheed Lounge meets the needs of that user very well. I think designers are guilty when they think all users are the same. People come in all kinds of different flavours, and so should the objects we design. Newson has designed wonderful consumer products for the masses, he’s not trying to make everyone pay more than £2 million for a chair.
But why would Newson want to design a chair that is also art? Why should he make those compromises on comfort for the sake of art? I will leave you with this quote from Grayson Perry, who puts it far better than I could:
“…why would someone want anything they’re doing to be considered art? Because I mean there’s quite a lot of reasons and the most obvious one is because they’re an artist! “It’s what I do!” Maybe they just want a good excuse to do something. You know there’s a lot of, “I fancy doing that. Let’s call it art.” And of course probably one of the strongest reasons why you’d want your activity to be called art is economic because there’s an awful lot of money — 43 billion pounds last year — sloshing through the art market, so that’s quite a nice incentive to call what you do art.”
- Taken from Marc Newson — Spaceman by Andrew Barclay
- Taken from The Urban Spaceman by Kelsey Kordakis
- From the second of Grayson Perry’s wonderful 2013 Reith Lectures, Playing to the Gallery: Beating the Bounds (right at the beginning, about 6:00 into it)
- All photos are of the Lockheed Lounge, and taken from Marc Newson’s website.
