Abstract
To be sure, the very term “design” was not much in use in the French academic field until the 1980s. However, an important line of thought concerning design had already undergone considerable development in the 1950s under the name “industrial aesthetics.” This chapter tries to follow this activity in France between 1951 and 1984 and the development of an original design theory rooted in French philosophies of art and technology. This movement was based on a non-Kantian aesthetics introduced by Paul and Etienne Souriau, acknowledging technology as a real issue for aesthetics. Then, it was also connected with a philosophy placing technology in relation to its living and social milieu (Mauss, Leroi-Gourhan, Friedmann, Simondon). It is along these lines that we analyse the development of the Institute of Industrial Aesthetics, created in 1951 by Jacques Viénot, relating the continuous dialog between this specific design theory and its philosophical backgrounds. Indeed, during this period, a design theory based on technology and its socio-cultural effects has been developed, leading to an ecology of technology.
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Notes
- 1.
Jacques Viénot founded in 1948 the pioneering French design agency Technès, and the journals Art Présent in 1945 and Esthétique industrielle in 1951. In the same year, he founded the Institute of Industrial Aesthetics, an organization dedicated to making connections between designers and manufacturers.
- 2.
Including, for example, John Ruskin, William Morris. Henry van de Velde, Walter Gropius or Hermann Muthesius.
- 3.
Souriau clearly states: “I will avoid any advocacy of the idea of purpose.” (Souriau 1956: 200)
- 4.
The publication of Story of Modern Applied Art (1948) by Rudolph Rosenthal and Helena Ratzka, the reissue in 1949 of Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936) by Nikalaus Pevsner, renamed Pioneers of Modern Design for the occasion, the publications of Art and Technology by Pierre Francastel (1956), Origins of Functionalist Theory (1957) by Edward Robert Zurko, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) by Rayner Banham, mark the construction of industrial design as a recognized discipline.
- 5.
The practice of American designers connotes for him a cosmetic and too commercial approach: “Industrial Aesthetics returned from US in the form of “industrial design,” that is to say, as a method of sale singularly reduced to a problem of turnover.” (Viénot 1955: 30)
- 6.
See Petit and Guillaume (Chap. 6, this volume), for precisions on Leroi-Gourhan’s conception of the “technical milieu.”
- 7.
Patrix uses the terms “environment” and “milieu” interchangeably, leaving just floating the idea of “milieu” as not being away from us as the term “environment” would seem to presuppose.
- 8.
Despite the European adoption of the term “design” (made official by ICSID in 1959) it diffused in France with difficulty. Moreover, in the 1980s, the term “industrial aesthetics” is not understood as defended by Viénot (as implied arts) but on the contrary as applied arts: “The term ʻindustrial aestheticsʼ, still commonly used, is often considered as pejorative in the fields close to the practice of industrial design because it is inadequate and confusing, but also because it points out a false practice of industrial design.” (De Noblet 1981b: 15)
- 9.
The question of an ecology of technical objects was already present in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958), but it was really in the 1970s that Simondon’s texts made explicit references to environmentalism and ecological technologies. See “Birth of Technology” (1970), “Art and Nature” (1980) and especially his last text: “Three Perspectives for a Reflection About Ethics and Technology” (1983). He emphasized in these texts the major challenges of techno-ecological transition as energy optimization, recovery of artifacts, limiting negative externalities, etc. (Simondon 2014).
- 10.
In On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958), technology and aesthetics appear as two complementary modes of existence. Technology removes objects from the world while aesthetics connects objects to the world. According to Simondon, aesthetics is always a matter of inserting or including objects in a milieu. Aesthetics is not in the single object but in the relation between object and gesture, in the relation between object and its milieu. Simondon goes even further in one of his last texts speaking of “techno-aesthetics” as an “intercategorical fusion” of aesthetics and technology (Simondon 2014: 382).
- 11.
Georges Patrix noted the historical correlation of the two terms: “The year 1969 saw the introduction of the word ʻDesignʼ, while in1970 the word ʻenvironmentʼ was introduced.” (Patrix 1973: 30)
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Acknowledgements
A preliminary version of this text has been discussed by Catherine Larrère and Bernadette Bensaude Vincent during the authors’ workshop held in Paris Sorbonne on 22–23 June 2015 in view of the preparation of the collective book.
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Beaubois, V., Petit, V. (2018). Design Made in France: Perspectives on “Industrial Aesthetics” (1951–1984). In: Loeve, S., Guchet, X., Bensaude Vincent, B. (eds) French Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89518-5_21
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