CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Iconic Works of Design
Designs that became reference points, widely recognised, copied and kept in production long after they first appeared.
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No open-access works for Iconic Works of Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
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Some designs outgrow their moment. They solve a problem so clearly, or capture a period so well, that they become the standard against which later work is measured. Often they depend on a new technique. Michael Thonet's bentwood chairs of the 1850s reduced a chair to a few steamed rods that could be made in vast numbers. Harry Beck's London Underground map (1933) ignored geography to show connections, a model for transit maps worldwide. Arne Jacobsen's three-legged Ant chair (1952), still made by Fritz Hansen, pressed plywood into a single waisted shell.
Others define a look: Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot's Braun SK 4 radio-phonograph (1956) gave electronics a clean white face, and Cassina's reissues of furniture by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, begun in the 1960s, turned pre-war prototypes into lasting products. Look for how often a design has been copied, since imitation measures influence.