CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Restrained Forms
Design that says much with little: pared-back shapes, few materials and careful proportion in place of decoration.
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About
Restraint appears in many traditions, from Shaker furniture and the joined hardwood pieces of Ming China to Japanese tea houses. In modern design it became a discipline. Dieter Rams, designing for Braun, summed it up as less, but better, and his radios and shelving give each element a single clear job. Achille Castiglioni often built lamps and stools from a few ready-made parts, and Wendy Ramshaw stacked slender rings on turned stands so that jewellery and display became one quiet object. Martin Szekely in France has pursued spare, almost diagrammatic furniture. The best restrained work is never bland; it relies on proportion, exact joints and fine surfaces. Look at what has been left out and how precisely what remains is made.