" The Chair Is a Machine For Sitting", Le Corbusier.

From Morris to the Bauhaus and on to today, functionalism has evolved from a philosophy to a style. Reflecting on George Marcus definition of functionalism-“objects made to be used should be simple, honest, and direct; well adapted to their purpose; bare of ornament; standardized; machine-made; and reasonably priced; and expressive of their structure and materials” (Functionalism 1995 p.9)”- it is evident that functionalist design is more than just meeting a utility. Rather, it leads to a consideration of how it should be built, in what material and form, and who should purchase it. This becomes a criterion for understanding and judging modern design, and a reference when putting value on iconic objects.

Never than before, there has been a bigger awareness for design than the current culture. Along with the globalization of information, such as TV, magazines, and internet, people have been exposed to a new lifestyle that values aesthetics and the status that comes with it. Within this tendency, bringing design to the masses has been a source for marketing strategies. In that case, would that be an exploitation of design, or just being true tot he functionalist ideals?

Taking as an example McDonald’s case, the company realized that applying modern design could contribute to the brand’s image. Since then, McDonald’s around London area is renovating their restaurant to a design conscious space. By changing the old, rigid chairs to Arne Jacobsen’s Egg and Swan chairs, the company is making a design statement in order to attract consumers that do care about thoughtful environments. Nevertheless, a whole luggage of controversy is brought when associated with mass driven companies like McDonald's. It raises points for ethical discussion. Critics argue that using such iconic chairs to meet the company’s marketing strategy lessens the design’s importance. It stops being esteemed for its contribution in the design field to means of corporation props. They see it almost as ridicule to Arne Jacobsen’s work which was driven by an ethic that disparaged crass marketing. On the other hand, keeping in mind that Arne Jacobsen was highly influenced by the Bauhaus movement, isn’t the company letting the design naturally be part of what functionalism advocate? The company is making the iconic designs accessible to anyone without class distinction.

McDonald's is somehow providing an experience by allowing customers to interact with the designed pieces. As John Ruskin discussed, there would only be appreciation to beauty when people become surrounded by it. Then, isn’t the company pushing the design field forward? By making good design reachable for a wide public, there is something to be said about perhaps educating people who were oblivious to design and hopefully increasing its appreciation.

For people who have knowledge and admiration for good design, affordability become an excluding factor. With these consumers in mind, there are some companies that see a profitable market that functional designs should have addressed but failed to. For example, White Furniture Industries (http://www.whiteonwhite.com/) is a company specialized in reproducing iconic chairs, most of them found in contemporaries museums such as MOMA . They are immediately identifiable chairs from Marcel Breuer’s steel tube armchair to Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair. Significantly they come with a cheaper price than its original market value. As functionalism was envisioned, the reproduced chairs would have eventually been mass produced to an extent that the company is able to offer them for affordable prices. Nevertheless, similar to McDonald’s case, they are between a fine line of accessible design and depreciation of its value. In other words, increasing accessibility can correlate to a decreasing of historical significance diminished by its market assessment. White Furniture Co has been 11 years on the market and its success indicates people’s demand for such designed chairs but their inability to purchase the originals.

· In this scenario, there is the idea of branding and how it plays with the value of a product and the status that one’s get with it. They are reproduction of sculptures that one could only see in museums. Allowing the public to interact with them, even if not original pieces, it can shorten the space between object and users. On the other hand, because they are almost sculptural pieces should a space between art and viewer be kept? By copying the original products and making them accessible to anyone, could it interfere on how people look up to iconic chairs? Many of the company’s buyers are Hollywood movie companies and fashion magazines. In this case, like McDonald’s, they use their chairs to complement an environment not taking in consideration the historical value of the object. By doing so, the concern is: can such an act make the iconic chairs look almost gimmicky? In this case, how can these chairs secure their importance? It seems that they have to either compromise their status or the functionalism ideal. The iconic chairs for their impact in the design history, becomes an interesting point to be reflected on as class makers. Being iconic denotes exclusivity. It is hard to value its functionalism when by classifying as iconic already sets them apart from the public realm. Maybe, the controversy when bringing iconic desings to places like McDonalds’s, is indeed the fear of, by democratizing design, losing its status in society.

· Le Corbusier said “The chair is a machine for sitting”. This sentence optimizes the functionalism concept. While, bottom line, it addresses the primary purpose of a chair, it also connects to machine manufacturing and mass production. It indicates the simplicity of form. Last but not least, it demonstrates the human and object interaction. If a product is designed keeping in mind its user, what is the purpose if they cannot interact with it. In this case, furniture such as from IKEA is the modern accomplishment of functional design. But the question raised is what happens when iconic chairs are put in the same circumstances. While they are close in timeline to the origins of functionalism movement, they seem more unable to meet their agenda than current designs. Because iconic chairs accumulate value throughout history, when they are placed in scenarios such as McDonald’s or easily reproduced by companies such as White Furniture Industries, that is when “functionalism” definition starts being questioned.

Interestingly, by reflecting on what functionalism means in modern society, an ethical question has been brought up. Should iconic chairs support class distinction in order to keep its historical value? If so, the existence of the iconic chairs can only exist by compromising the functionalism ideal, concept that they had first created for. In modern society unless an object can be successfully referred as functional without corrupting its meaning, the definition as a whole should be perhaps revaluated.

Mourning Jewerly

What would be the best way of knowing the past if not being a living witness of it? Materials that go beyond time and space, inspirations that continuously inspire, or stories that persist through generation, they are all living witnesses. Contrary to common knowledge, the art of jewelry is more than a piece of ornamentation, but embedded with meaning that lasts generations. For a long time jewelry has been used as means to mourn someone’s life. In this aspect, it affected society and time, and it introduced unusual material intended not for esthetics, but for purpose of demonstrating respect and affection to the deceased. From that, it persists in modern days as a style, or as mementos of life.

Roman Period

Common during the Roman period, cameos were often propagandistic portraits of emperors intended to immortalize the ruler’s image after their death.

15th-16th Century

Memento mori inspired the early mourning jewelry. It was an artistic thought that emphasized the human mortality. The subject matters were often human’s skulls or images of humans in imminent death. It was constant reminder of the ephemeral life. The use of theses motifs are the first signs of mourning in jewelry.

Late 18th - Early 19th Century

In many cultures, the hair is an intimate part of the deceased and kept as a way of connecting the living and the lost members. During the civil war, young soldiers would leave a lock of hair with their family. Upon to their death, the hair would be integrated as ornamentations in a piece of jewelry or placed in a pendant.

Early 19th Century

Jet has been commonly used in mourning jewelry for centuries. It reached its peak after Prince Albert‘s death when Queen Victoria made it a decreed that only jet jewelry should be used in the first year of mourning. Today, jet become rarity since it has been overused and illegal to mine.

21th Century
By literally using the ashes and transforming it into a piece of jewelry, today’s mourning jewelry is not merely a figurative piece of the deceased. The diamond are made with the carbonized remains of humans and transformed in precious pieces of jewelry.

FAST FOOD SEATINGS: Bringing Design For The Masses.

Fast food restaurants, such as McDonald’s, have been manipulating their interior space according to the company’s marketing strategy. Once ignored comfort over effectiveness, the sitting area has been slowly changing from repelling to designed seats. By using iconic chairs, such as of Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair, McDonald’s is not only trying to upgrade its image to a modern and inviting restaurant, but making design accessible to people. The idea that a functional object should be simple, honest to its purpose, easily manufactured, and accessible to the masses has been a guidebook for what a modern design should be for many years. However, meeting this definition does not answer if a design is successfully functional or not. Through Arne Jacobsen's chair , McDonald’s made the design accessible to anyone, something that many functional products fail to be, but the use of the chair for the company’s marketing strategy caused controversy in the design world. At the same time, the previous McDonald’s chairs are examples of simple, machine made, mass produced, and fit to its seating purpose. However, they are not taken serious when it comes to design. There is a fine line between functional design and accessibility. While functional design can mean being timeless and modern with its value in society, breaking its value raises contradictions in its own definition.

First McDonald’s chairs, the rigid seats were intended to be uncomfortable for customers stay for a long period. They were planned in that way so the restaurant would have more vacant seats as possible for new customers. This idea exemplifies John Ruskin’s criticism about the lack of beauty because society is driven by the idea that a product should be simple, easily mass produced only to fulfill its purpose, making profit. Ruskin’s points out that there will be only design or appreciation of it when people become daily surrounded by beauty


The chair and table design is an example of mass produced, machine made design. There is not a intention to look handcrafted, not even esthetically thought, but to work efficiently. The final form is not to answer the consumer’s need, but to perform upon them.


The introduction of chairs with human factors in mind becomes a transition from sitting for a need to sitting for a choice. Functionalism become a style in which objects should be simple, well adapted to its purpose, standardized, and expressive. The form of the chair suggests a more relaxing and warming feeling and it is all part of the McDonald’s “Forever Young” campaign. It is the company attempt to reach the growing consumer’s looking for modern establishment.


Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair influenced by the Bauhaus movement. The Bauhaus design is about merging craftsmanship and mass production. Using machines allows the product to be mass produced and reach wide consumers without class distinction.


By using one of the Jacobsen’s most iconic chairs, McDonald’s marketing strategy is to upgrade its image to a trendy and inviting restaurant. Jacobsen’s chair optimizes the comfortable, welcoming feeling with a modern spin. While the company uses the chair to meet the marketing agenda, by bringing design for the masses, it also raises one point of functionalism that many modern design do not address.

LIGHTING: Defying Space

General idea is that space encompasses lighting. Space uses lighting as a tool to accentuate its forms and structure. Along the way, lighting design changed in its form and technology, but preserved its functionality,to illuminate space especially at night or in the dark. Creating lighting products around the space only emphasizes the same idea of space coming first and then lighting second. However, installation artists have been experimenting space/lighting relationship. Their work shows that the space is the quality of light and, further, that without lighting there would be no space. Art installation has been an area where artists could through lighting push the boundaries of space, its meaning, and perhaps defy it. From simple usage of common products such as fluorescent tubes, to LED, artists rebel against space’s architectural structure, static quality, and its imposed boundaries.

The expected function of a lighting fixture is to illuminate a space. It is mostly used to complement the environment it lives in.

By sitting in the corner of the wall, the piece breaks the continuity of the walls. The structure of the space is somehow modified by the installation. The bright color washes away the whiteness of the wall and become the focal point.

Untitled, Dan Flavin

The artist uses the light fixtures not to accentuate the space, but each other’s light, creating a point of intersection. The resulted shape stands out of the wall. The space becomes flat while the light becomes almost a free standing, three-dimensional form.

Aquarium et Bluette, Ann Veronica Janssens

Made out of multiple lighting fixtures facing a black wall, in this piece, the lighting creates a illusion of space. It breaks the boundaries set by the physical space. The lighting fixtures turn on and off in sequence, so there is also the illusion of movement. The use of multiple of lightings as well the manipulation of them, takes the viewer beyond the living space.

Beauty, Olafur Eliasson

The LED installation takes the whole dark room. The viewer standing in the middle of the piece is led to a state of trance, where all the boundaries, the matter of the physical space is taken away, to a floating feeling. The light installation is able recreate a sense of no space.

Matrix II, Erwin Redl

Passing: Recycling Fashion

With innovative ideas along the years, fashion design has been a vast area for designers to respond to the social and political situation of the time. As a reaction to the way gender is seen or as a reflection of the spirit of the time, apparel design has been more than esthetics. The changes brought by the World War I and II, and the 1929 depression contributed in many ways to the current apparel’s design. The scarcity brought by the World War I allowed innovations on materials, such as washable fabrics and synthetic fibers. These materials are cheaper than silk with a longer life time. With the advent of World War II, the use of these fabrics was mainly used to supply military goods. As a response, fashion designers came up with innovative designs in order to compensate the shortage of fabrics. The 1920’s lavishing dresses were slowly being substituted for bolder, simpler, and refined pieces of garments. The “ready-to-wear” clothes were mass produced and intended to last. Today’s designers have been looking up to the past trends to come up with their collection.

Synthetic fabrics were first used on clothing making. Because of their strong material’s property, in the World War II they ended being restricted to the manufacture of military goods, such as uniforms and parachutes.

Due to the material limitation imposed by the War, clothes’ esthetics relies less on the fabric and more on the design. The clothes still have to bring femininity and poise.

Previous fashion periods, such as the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s are often inspiration to young designers. While Hippie, Mod, and Punk in their respective time were referred more as a subculture, now they are seen as a fashion style.

In fact, thrift clothes have never been more appreciated than ever. The mass production of stronger fabrics allowed clothes from decades ago to still be around. Nowadays Vintage Stores charge accordingly to the time value, older the clothes more expensive is the piece. Among many reasons, vintage buyers are attracted to the nostalgia of the second-hand designs. Vintage garments bring a sense of exclusivity because the chances of finding the same piece are very low. In the sameness of fashion’s trends, vintage clothing can be a breath of fresh air. Another important factor is the quality. If the garment has lasted that long it means that the material is strong. In fact, there are stores reusing the fabric of past clothes to create new designs. Not only clothes can be recycled, but the material as well. With an increasing interest on environmental issues, vintage clothing becomes an alternative for waste. Contrary to past fashion periods, today‘s consumers seems to be looking backward for innovation.

Buffalo Exchange is a secondhand clothing store. According to Time Magazine, the store earned more than $3 million last year on $43 million in revenue.


With an attractive décor, in 1984 American Rag Cie started as a small Vintage Store in San Francisco. Today it is a trendy store with its own line of clothes, named “Remake”, made out of fabrics from vintage clothes.