Trips to India in the late 1980s convinced architectural partners Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch of the power of color. “We saw strong pinks, red, oranges and saffrons in the natural spices and the red of the earth, some artificial and some natural dyes,” Hutton recalls. “What impressed us was that the colors were used in a completely everyday way. Someone will wear a beautiful sari to milk the cows-welt, not to milk the cows,” she laughs, “but every day.”

Since that Technicolor epiphany, the couple, both Architectural Association-educated, have tried to inject whole families of hues into their work-most often aqueous groupings of pistachio, turquoise and cobalt or Schiaparelli-esque sets of peach, crimson and cerise. They’ve painted concrete, powder-coated steel, lacquered wood and tinted glass, exploiting new technologies to embrace a heartily artificial palette.

Fear of color, Hutton says, “is the legacy of modernism. It’s still seen as something quite frivolous to do. We don’t see it that way. Architecture should be enjoyed by the senses.”

At the beginning of their practice, Sauerbruch and Hutton applied a lively palette to London’s 15ft. row houses. “We’re always trying to overcome the fact that the house is like a little tower, two rooms and a staircase,” Hutton says. “Through color, one can liberate the space.”

As they transformed houses in London, they entered, and won, multiple competitions to build in Sauerbruch’s native Berlin. Their Photonic Center, with its color-tinted glass optical labs, opened in 1999; and their 30,000sq.meter GSW Building-located just blocks from Checkpoint Charlie-has managed to steal some of the architectural press from Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum.

The GSW, a four-part composition of the couple’s favorite amoebic shapes, features an ovoid aluminum “pillbox” glittering with various greens, a reception desk lacquered indigo, and a tall, slim glass office tower with powder-coated shades. “The red and pink shutters are all made of steel sheets with very tiny perforations, so they have a scale,” Hutton says. “They’re not a uniform abstract color.” From afar, however, the double-layered glass facade resembles a constantly changing abstract composition, a painting in progress by hundreds of hands. An everyday task, like opening your office shutters, becomes part of a larger aesthetic project.

AS LONG AS THERE HAVE BEEN POLITICIANS who have sought the office of U.S. President, there’s been a colorful trail of political buttons commemorating their campaigns. When George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, more than 40 varieties of pewter, brass and copper clothing buttons were available. By 1848-when the Whigs’ Zachary Taylor battled for office against the Democrats’ Lewis Cass-photographed images of candidates were carrying the likenesses of political candidates to the American public. . As grassroots campaigning took hold in U.S. political races, candidates flooded voters with posters, pamphlets, mugs, plates, snuff- boxes, cigars, crockery, walking sticks and razors-a sheer avalanche of political memorabilia- but the granddaddy of collectible political trinkets has always been the political button. . Around 1870, American John Wesley Hyatt perfected celluloid, a material that had been discovered in 1839 by French chemist Anselme Payeu. The refinement of celluloid led to the creation of the pin-back button. Amanda Lougee of Boston perfected the pin-back’s design in I893-crafting a thin, metal disk, enclosing a graphic under celluloid, holding it together with a metal ring, then inserting a pin into the back. Her patent was quickly snapped up by Whitehead and Hoag Co., an advertising-novelty printer in New Jersey. The company used its promotional know-how to make the low-cost button a staple of the 1896 presidential race between Republican William McKinley and Democrat William Jennings Bryan. . The pin-back button’s popularity was immediate. Even in its initial year, more than i,ooo versions were produced, each aptly reflecting its particular candidate’s platform. For the next two decades, political buttons enjoyed a heyday, collectors say, due to the fabulous graphics made possible by celluloid and the resulting multitude of designs created for every candidate. Many of the buttons virtually enshrined candidates, their portraits framed by exquisitely detailed American flags and eagles in a manner that brought tears to the eyes of patriots everywhere. * In 1920, the celluloid button was replaced by a lithographic version that enabled images to be printed directly on the metal; by 1952, acetate became the material of choice. But besides an evolution of materials used to make them, political buttons haven’t changed much throughout American history. * The flag-waving red, white and blue has generally dominated the button scene over the past century, but a few innovators– such as Jimmy Carter and Barry Goldwater-bucked tradition and employed “wild” color schemes, such as green and white, or black and gold, in their campaigns. * Other standouts include Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign pin in the shape of his famous pince-nez spectacles. Portraits of him and running mate Charles W. Fairbanks were inserted into the wire-rimmed frames. A plethora of Rough Rider and teddy-bear themes also marked Roosevelt’s campaign button trail. * Celluloid buttons were phased out in the 1920s with the arrival of lithographic buttons, which were less expensive to make and easily mass-produced. The major drawback of the lithographic buttons was that the designs that could be printed on the button’s metal surface were much less elaborate than those that could be printed on paper. In fact, the In fact, the quality of lithographic-button images has never matched that of the celluloid-button era. Perhaps that explains the general lull in imaginative graphics seen in buttons produced between the late ig2os and the late ig6os. 9 Button designers became experimental again in the 1960s, probably because of the social consciousness of that era, says Steven Elkin, now a New York Citybased financial investor but an avid button collector from 1968 to 1982. “The whole counter-culture movement brought about a change in button graphics,” says Elkin, whose collection includes more than 12,000 campaign and political-cause buttons. “Before 1968, most buttons were pretty staid; after this, they became much more fun.” e Although modern-day candidates spend only a minuscule amount of their promotional dollars on buttons, new designs crop up with every campaign. A recent peek at the popular Web site www.politics.com revealed nearly 3o different designs for Democrats and more than 50 for Republican candidates, showing that buttons remain a favorite vehicle for visually promoting politicians in their electoral pursuits.

MORNING RAIN HAS momentarily washed the grime from Houston Street outside the showroom of Dune, New York City’s up-and-coming furniture design and manufacturing firm. Inside, between slurps of iced coffee at the Dune conference table, president Richard Shemtov (above left) and newly hired design director, Nick Dine (above right), are discussing their plans to make a big splash on the New York City furniture scene. They’re just about to sign a lease on a new 2,500 sq.ft. showroom and design studio space in the TriBeCa district. Their Urburbia line of furniture, which won the Editors Award for “New Designer” at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, is now being manufactured to order, and they’re stirring up plans to expand the line by collaborating with young designers in Europe and the United States. “If you look at other companies in New York, there’s nothing like this,” Dine says. “I think this is really going to kick some major ass.” One refreshing characteristic about Shemtov, 30, and Dine, 35, is that their remarks aren’t measured or even rehearsed, as is often the case with older, more experienced designers and business owners. Their fight talk is fearlessly hurled around, each bold attack interrupting the next in a kind of stereophonic indictment of the stodgy furniture industry.

“There are a few New York showrooms that carry nice products, but I think the ones that get a lot of play really have no competition,” Dine says. “If they were anywhere else in the world they would not be regarded very…

“Most of the furniture in New York is imported from Italy,” Shemtov interrupts. “We don’t knock the Italian furniture. The problem is you have to wait 14 to 20 weeks to get it.”

“Even for Ligne Roset, which is supposedly accessible and designdriven, you have to wait a tremendous amount of time…” Dine adds. “It’s a very staid company,” Shemtov says. “They don’t change their designs often, they don’t innovate…”

And so on. American furniture manufacturers, at least in Shemtov’s and Dine’s eyes, have been lulled into complacency by allowing the contract market, with its giant orders and conservative aesthetics, to call the shots. This leads to marketing-driven manufacturing, which-as Dine puts it-was destroying the American car industry until Chrysler finally woke up and broke the compulsive pattern. Dine and Shemtov say the creative deficit in contract furniture is evident in the standard “cookiecutter” cubicles that predominate American offices. It’s exacerbated the split between domestic and contract furniture design.

Dune, though only two years old with one manufacturing facility in Brooklyn, attempts to correct that division by creating furniture that’s equally suited for the home and office-and by pursuing a design-driven approach to innovation, where quality, not cost, is the bottom line. Dune furniture will be made to order, and the business will be bolstered by revenue from the kind of retail-, restaurant- and bar-interior design and fabrication projects that have sustained Shemtov and Dines respective businesses to date. Eventually, however, Shemtov hopes to be presiding over a company the size of Knoll.

BOTH DINE AND SHEMTOv have benefitted from the legacies of their fathers. Shemtov’s father is a mechanical engineer whose ferocious entrepreneurial drive spurred his son to start a New York City-based furnishings and fixtures manufacturing business, I.D.S., at the tender age of 21. Dine is the youngest son of the renowned American pop artist Jim Dine, a relation which, among other plusses, gave him the opportunity to live rent-free in the center of London for two years, where he honed his design skills after graduating from the Royal College of Art. One of Dines father’s patrons, Peter Palumbo, owned a large apartment on a site scheduled for demolition, and simply handed over the keys on the understanding that Dine vacate the premises when the bulldozers arrived. “I had a studio and a parking space in the center of London,” Dine says. “It was totally incredible. I had to take an elevator and then walk up two flights of stairs and over the catwalks over all of these buildings to get to this apartment. It was like James Bond.”

In 1994, Dine won a commission to redesign a bar and launched his own interior-design firm, Dinersans. While looking for an outfit capable of prototyping fittings for one particular job, he was introduced to Shemtov and his fixtures-manufacturing firm LD.S. Shemtov liked Dines aesthetic approach, and Dine liked Shemtov’s quality control. They discussed the idea of launching a line of original furniture. Shemtov, who had studied interior design at Parsons School of Art, took action. In in 1998, he formed a subsidiary, Dune, and began developing ideas for a collection of pieces for the ideal urban home, which became the Urburbia line. This past August, Dine signed on as design director.

The spirit of the Urburbia collection is youthful and optimistic, capitalizing on the contemporary taste for the dean lines of mid-century modern furniture, though with a more lavish and less utilitarian feel than, say, the classic Eames pieces. The designers’ inspiration comes from organic forms and materials, and exploration and refinement of such post-war Scandinavian and Italian designers as Ame Jacobsen, Hans Wegner and Carlo Mollino.

Urburbia’s prices are definitely way beyond the Ikea set-as much as five times more-but Shemtov has a rationale for this that fits neatly with the minimalist zeitgeist. “Instead of fim-lishing your whole house from Ikea, maybe you buy one or two quality pieces that will last,” he says. “We find that people today would rather own fewer pieces and have a more minimal place with good stuff.”

Whether the young, fashionable furniture shoppers Shemtov has in mind will be willing to fork out up to five times as much as they’re used to paying at Ikea for an Urburbia chair remains to be seen. The hope is that the healthy economy, the rising interest in high-end design and the burgeoning of young design talent out there will drive the demand.

Urburbia’s crowning achievement has been to bring together the work of not two but six up-and-coming designers (Shemtov, Dine, Harry Allen, Jeffrey Bernett, David Khouri and Michael Solis) and still achieve a cohesive whole. Shemtov gave each designer an object and a premise-to create pieces for the limited spaces of a city dwelling-and then unified the results with a distinctive toolbox of materials. Steel, walnut and white lacquer predominate.

Many of the pieces are multifunctional, aesthetically evoking the spirit of the 1960s spy movie while satisfying some of the practical requirements of city living. Harry Allen’s room divider contains a flip-down bed; Dines compact Cyborg sideboard eschews all knobs and handles for push-activated secret drawers and doors; and David Khouri’s half upholstered Bosco chair doubles as a plain dining chair. The piece de resistance is 31-year-old Michael Solis’ ingenious Four Forty coffee table, which features a secret compartment (in walnut) that’s revealed by sliding the two white lacquered wings of the tabletop open; it holds 440 CDs or all the magazines, coffee cups, ashtrays and paraphernalia you can sweep in when an unexpected guest buzzes the building’s intercom.

The fact that six different designers responded so harmoniously to Shemtov’s call clearly reflects their familiarity with the aesthetic challenges of living in tiny digs. It also reflects Shemtov’s strengths as an art director. Although Urburbia isn’t revolutionary, it does demonstrate that American furniture can be well-made and cool-looking, fashionable and utilitarian.

The Dune ethos is perhaps to purvey an aesthetic in which, to paraphrase a now-hackneyed Le Corbusier phrase, “less does more.” It’s tempting to conclude that somehow this is tied to the Internet boom, that the generation embracing smart, miniaturized, multifunctional technology is looking for the same values in its furniture. Solis-who recently moved from New York City to his native stomping grounds in Dallas, where he will continue to contribute to Dune’s line-even speaks the same language. “I like the interaction of objects,” he says. “All of my work plays the same role in that it must be touched, moved and changed.” As an example, his Defender stool for Dune, named after the vintage video game, is hexagonal in shape so that a group of stools can be maneuvered like pixels to form different shapes.

THE MORNING MEETING AT DUNE is curtailed as Shemtov and Dine hurry off to inspect their new premises and negotiate the terms of the lease. They disappear down a side street, amid tweeting cell phones and a “My car or yours?” debate. They have all the marks and manners of Silicon Alley pioneers, except that their product isn’t virtual.

ONLY A HANDFUL OF DESIGNERS-Eames and Breuer, for example-are so inextricably linked with the word “chair” that their names immediately spark images of chairs in our minds. Since it hit the market in 1967, the Panton Chair has been one such indelible image of furniture design: a deep-colored, plastic cantilever, cast in a single piece, a long train that seems to grow out of the ground, the bold dynamic curve of the ergonomically shaped seat. Its form is as elegant as it is extravagant; its gently flowing contours underline its sculptural character. Verner Panton’s plastic pile-chair is one of the most important designs of the 20th century. . But the Danish-born, Swiss-based Panton had already stopped traffic-literally-once before with a remarkable chair design. His 1958 ConeChair, taking its form from a cone placed on its point, caused traffic jams when it was first exhibited in a Manhattan shop window in 1960. Panton’s extensive and innovative oeuvre continued to excite international attention in the 1960s and early ’70s with innovative furniture pieces and experimental interior designs. In the last two decades, however, Panton’s work and his importance to 20th-century design have been neglected. . Now a new exhibit is rekindling interest in Panton and his design legacy. Building on a renewed interest in Panton’s work-which is fueled by the recent revival of ’60s-era objects and designs-the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, organized a comprehensive retrospective on the designer earlier this year. The exhibit, which celebrates Panton’s fertile imagination and love of experimentation, will tour Europe (Vienna in spring 200 and Lisbon next fall) before reaching U.S. shores in 2002.

BORN ON THE DANISH ISLAND of Fynen in 1926 and educated at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen, Verner Panton based his work in Basel, Switzerland, from 1963 until his death in 1998. What makes Panton so interesting for a new generation of designers is his experimentation and the radical zeal with which he approached his work. Experiments were Panton’s passion–the goal and most important method of his work. He took chances with forms and materials, manufacturing technology and construction, interior design, color and light. Both of his famous chairs were results of his experimental inclination and eternal search for novel design solutions.

The Cone-Chair marked the beginning of his collaboration with the Danish furniture manufacturer Plus-linje, for which he created what is still considered an avant-garde furniture collection. Panton’s work with Plus-linje also showed his interest in trying new industrially produced materials. He developed the first inflatable furniture out of transparent plastic foil, several years before such designers as Scolari, Lomazzi and De Pas popularized the idea at the end of the ’60s with their “Blow” armchair. Panton’s cubeshaped inflatable seat pillows could be combined into a couch; they were light, flexible and could be stowed away to save space. But his inflatable creations were stymied by the reservations of a public skeptical of furniture that strayed too far from traditional forms and materials. More critically, these designs were plagued by inadequate materials; the plastic foil produced at the time was brittle, leaked and quickly lost its elasticity.

It wouldn’t be the last time an idea of Panton’s came before its time. The designer was also tempted by Plexiglas, a material scarcely used in furniture production in the ’60s, but which provided transparency and the impression of lightness. He designed two chairs in Plexiglas: a lounge chair and a basic chair, both drawing strength from the optical illusion in which a person sitting on a Plexiglas chair, in the right light, seems to float on air. But in contrast to their optical lightness, his Plexiglas chairs-as produced in the 1960s-were physically heavy, prone to scratches and not very comfortable. Because only a small number were manufactured, the Plexiglas chairs carried a high price tag, which also contributed to their failure on the market.

Panton’s Plexiglas chairs are nonetheless seminal in design history because he was one of the first designers to work with the idea of a modular system. By having a number of standardized parts that could be combined for individualized solutions to a design problem, the modular approach offered a flexibility in responding to different kinds of needs. Functionalism in a pure form, though socially motivated, also allowed for less expensive production costs.

By the end of the ’60s, Panton had created a modular furniture system based completely on a square grid for Kaufhof, a German department store. Besides different seating elements, the system included different colored carpets and wall coverings in pyramidal shapes, all of which could be combined to form various interior landscapes.

Panton was a pioneer in search of new forms that could provide a more relaxed way of living, far from the stiff bourgeois conventions that were being questioned by the rebellious culture of the ‘ 60s. As he once said, “I can’t bear to come into a living room and see the sofa with its coffee table and two armchairs and realize that I’ll be stuck there all evening.” So he created furniture on wheels, which could be moved easily throughout a room. He designed 3D carpets out of long wave-like shapes, which invited people to lounge on them directly on the floor, halfsitting and half-lying down, but always comfortable.

He sought to activate the entire space of a room for living purposes-even the space off the floor. His Flying Chairs-banana-shaped, upholstered aches hanging from the ceiling on ropes-could be moved up and down using a pulley block. His explained, was to give the chairs’ occupants s different view on the surroundings and on life in general” Presented for the first time to the public at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1964, the Flying Chairs caused a media sensation. In spite of thie press popularity, they never went into series production.

Phanton continued to explore the idea of a seat that could open up and make a vertical line of space accessible. The Living Tower, introduced to the market in 1968, was his most mature disign on this theme. An organically shaped furniture sculpure, it consisted of two parts that could be combined to create seating in different positions on four levels. It was recognized as one of the most ingenious furniture designs of its time. Produced up until the mid1970s in limited edition, the Living Tower has since become a sought-after collection piece.

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POPULARITY, Panton was known not only as a designer of innovative and spectacular single objects, but also for his interiors. Although they were a central aspect of his work, his interiors have long been overlooked. Panton’s interiors represent the climax and synthesis of his entire career, fusing elements of every discipline he exploredfurniture, light, accessories and textiles-into a kind of gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art.

Panton’s interiors have been neglected in part because today most of them can be experienced only through pictures and plans. Some ofhis important designs, including the two Visiona exhibitions for the Bayer chemical company, in 1968 and 1970, were perceived as temporary. Others, like his Restaurant Astoria in Norway and the Restaurant Varna in Denmark, were destroyed years ago. Another factor sidelining Panton’s interiors has been his preference for deep colors in large square dimensions, a style that didn’t fit with the changing tastes of the 1980s.

This style was part of his approach to interiors known as “entirety,” first realized with the design of the Astoria restaurant in the Norwegian town of Trondheim in 1960. Panton covered the entire room with an op-art-inspired pattern in similar tones of single color. Abolishing the classical tripartite division of domestic space-floors, walls, ceilings-he created a total, homogeneous environment in which the dimensions fused together. It was a radical concept, unmatched in the history of modern design, which Panton applied with a variety of means in his later interior designs.

For these later works, he initially translated the 2D geometric patterns into 3D figures-turning the wall surface into a plastic relief. A good example is the modular lighting elements called “Spiegel amatures” with which he covered some of the walls and ceilings in the Spiegel publishing house in Hamburg in 1969. In the ’70s, Panton created designs for carpets and fabrics, developing a 3D optical effect through a aD medium. In 1973, for instance, he covered the floor and walls of the canteen of the Gruner & Jahr publishing house in Hamburg with a rippling “wave” design.

Color was important to Panton not only for blending spatial dimensions but also for its impact on mood. His virtuosity in dealing with the emotional impact of colors was demonstrated in a colorroom installation in a Basel gallery in 1996. Panton immersed the viewer in a bath of color through a series of eight round chambers, each painted in a strongly glowing tone, demonstrating the varying degrees color could radiate and the moods each could create. Although this installation appeared late in his career, it showed how experimentation remained at the core of Panton’s work.

“He’s different. He’s just like a big kid,” the great Danish designer Hans Wegner once said about his friend Verner Panton. “He’s like a glimpse of the sun in the humdrum of everyday life.”

Think flying cars, lunar colonies and glassdomed cities-the stuff of science fiction. Think space rockets, tangled cities and winged airships-all ofwhich have become facts of modern life. Out ofTime, a new book by Norman Brosterman, has inspired a traveling exhibit by the Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) that captures an early 20th-century view of the technological tomorrow.

Released in November, Out of Time catalogs illustrations of futuristic concepts that wowed the public from the 1890s to the 1960s. It was a period of “geewhiz” optimism as the world waited for its wildest techno-dreams to leap off the drawing board. The vivid futuristic art, which appeared mostly in popular magazines, made those flying cars seem just around the corner. “it became the group memory ofthe future because it was portrayed so many times,” Brosterman says.

SITES will bring this original artwork to cities across the country. “[The art] is beautiful and wacky and thoughtprovoking,” says SITES project director Katherine Krile. “Especially now in the year 2000, a lot of people have been thinking about the future. We thought it would be really interesting to look at past visions of the future.”

Many of the collection’s pieces come from the covers of popular-science and pulp magazines. Artists such as Chesley Bonestell, Alexander Ledenfros and Frank Paul grabbed readers with bright, detailed drawings of towering cities, floating airports and populated moonscapes.

The art fed the public’s future fever but also changed people’s expectations Brosterman says. Before Manhattan became, well, Manhattan, artists planted the concept in the vision of the Amer ican people. “Everything flew and now everything flies,” Brosterman says. “Everything was huge and now everything’s huge.”

But the artists drew inspiration from their own surroundings, too. Brosterman writes that Frank Paul’s conical and crystalline towers look “suspiciously like grandiose versions of 1930s hardware and household appliances.” Similarly, Krile says the Capri satellite is “a cross between a 1950s American car and Sputnik-a spherical car with no aerodynamic advantages to it. The artist was pulling together postwar car design and combining it with this new world of rockets and missiles.”

The Out of Time book and exhibition are resurrecting the bedazzlement of these futuristic concepts and designs, starting with audiences in Tacoma, Wash., in November.

“The nostalgic part of this is so rich,” Brosterman says. “The future became much more complicated than anyone imagined.”

Of course, we’re still waiting for those flying cars.

Shoji screens replacing cubicle walls in the design of government offices? It’s happening. Retail designers watching MTV for cues to entertain shoppers? Sure. Starbucks in a retirement community? Who couldn’t use a jolt of companionship with their caffeine?

All of these trends, and many more, were discussed last fall at the IDA’s fourth annual Industry Advisory Council, a forum that brings together interior designers and industry partners to share insight. The IIDA forum directors who participated represented all disciplines–government, healthcare, hospitality, retail, corporate, education, facility management, and residential design. In 2000, the council’s main topic was (and remains) the darling of trend-watchers: the New Economy and the forces that drive it, chiefly technology.

Technology means not only faster communication, but also more efficient systems that offer manufacturers better quality control, quicker production, and more time to develop products and to shop around for complementary partners. (Furniture companies have led the way in uniting under a single umbrella, but now surface companies are following them.) Or as corporate partner Glenn King of KingMahon Design Partnership, put it, “Today, the fast beat the slow–tomorrow, the fast will beat the big.”

Manufacturers who realize a need to integrate products are talking to other manufacturers. For example, the flooring people are beginning to speak to the wheelchair people, and the cart makers, and the bed makers, and the candlestick makers (or rather, the foot-candle makers). It is time for both industry and design to step out of their own spheres and enter others, to follow the lessons of the VW Bug and the PT Cruiser for which design played a crucial role in development. There’s no time to waste. Modernization used to mean 20 to 30 years, but now it means 2 to 3.

In the stalled economy of the late ’80s and early ’90s, companies returned to their core businesses. Now, to stay ahead, both designers and manufacturers have to be not only technology experts, but also business strategists, futurists, regulatory/code experts (especially if they work in today’s global economy), educators of staff and management, marketers, customer service representatives, ethicists, and management consultants.

Technology is a tool and cannot solve problems in and of itself. It requires innovative thought, combined with creative utilization of people, talent, and time. Clients want personal attention, no matter where they are located. And while designers troll the Internet for resources, their relationship with manufacturers’ representatives remains key in securing information and a sale. “Human resources” doesn’t mean the personnel department. It means people. Retaining employees is crucial for both design firms and manufacturers. The new “knowledge worker” doesn’t have the work-till-you-drop mentality of the baby boomer but demands a better quality of life. Respecting employees’ individuality, business has moved from the hierarchy organizational chart (workers in cubicles, management in corner offices) to the parity organizational chart (workers assigned to the same kind of space regardless of what they do) to the pluralism organizational chart (the right space for the right job).

Evolving from the dialogue between industry and design isn’t a business model but an intellectual one: the think tank. Together, we can harness technology and move into a better future. It is time to put out heads together.

As Detroit celebrates its 300th birthday this year, visitors will find a city springing back after decades of decline. Take a drive (this is the Motor City, after all) to see pockets of life among downtown’s abandoned skyscrapers, including three recently opened casinos, the restaurants and bakeries of Greektown, and the Tigers’s new baseball stadium. Stroll through Eastern Market and pick up a bag of pistachios at Germack Pistachio Co. or a slice of pate at R. Hirt, Jr. Co. Wander into the Renaissance Center for a look at General Motors’s new world headquarters. Or hop onto the People Mover for a quick loop around downtown and a fine view of the Detroit River. Once you’ve toured the city, consider venturing into Detroit’s leafy suburbs, especially Bloomfield Hills, home of Cranbrook one of the country’s best-designed educational campuses.

THREE MUST-SEES

Detroit Institute of Arts

Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry frescoes are among the highlights of this Beaux-Arts building in the city’s cultural center. (Rivera created the works in 1932, after weeks spent touring Ford’s Rouge plant.) Another notable feature is the Kresge Court, where each of four walls resembles a distinct European facade and skylights produce the atmosphere of a continental garden. Among the museum’s most famous artworks are Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold, Bruegel’s Wedding Dance, and Rembrandt’s Visitation. 5200 Woodward Ave.; [313] 833-7900; Wed.–Fri. 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Sat.–Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., first Fri. of the month 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

Orchestra Hall

Designed by C. Howard Crane, this elegant home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was built in 1919 in just 4 months and 23 days. The orchestra moved out in the ’40s, and the building became a jazz club where Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington performed, but by 1960 it had fallen into disrepair. The decayed building required 19 years of painstaking renovations before reopening in 1989 with the DSO back in place. Note in particular the ornamental moldings and ceiling frescoes. 3711 Wood ward Ave., [313] 576-5111, concerts every weekend.

Comerica Park

In addition to America’s favorite pastime, diversions at the new Tigers ballpark (inaugurated last April) include larger-than-life statues of hall-of-famers such as Hank Greenberg and Ty Cobb, a tiger carousel, a baseball Ferris wheel, and a fountain that sends up water streams during the home team’s big plays. The entire lower deck is a walking museum of the Tigers and Detroit, with displays of historical artifacts from 1900 through 2000. 2100 Woodward Ave., [313] 962-4000, tours during baseball season.

ALSO WORTH A LOOK

Guardian Building

Nicknamed the Cathedral of Finance when it opened in 1929, this Wirt C. Rowland–designed building, is the epitome of Art Deco style and one of Detroit’s greatest landmarks. Stroll inside its lobby and gaze at the vaulted tilework ceiling. Visitors may also peek into what was once the main banking room, with its Aztec-style design, painted ceilings, and a mural of Michigan on the south wall. 500 Griswold Ave., [313] 965-2430, lobby open weekdays 8 a.m.–5 p.m..

Detroit People Mover Stations

Hop on the People Mover to get a bird’s-eye view Detroit–and to see art featured in each of the 13 stations scattered throughout downtown. The elevated trains stop every three to five minutes; a round trip takes just a quarter of an hour and the fare is just 50 cents. [313] 224-2160 for a list of stations; Mon.–Thurs. 7 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri. 7 a.m.–midnight, Sat. 7 a.m.–midnight, Sun. noon–8 p.m.

Cranbrook Educational Community

Newspaper publisher George Gough Booth and his wife, Ellen Scripps Booth, spent 30 years in the early 20th century developing Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, 35–40 minutes northwest of Detroit by car. The masterwork of chief architect Eliel Saarinen, the campus comprises Cranbrook’s Academy of Art, Art Museum, Institute of Science, and elementary and high schools. Recent constructions include a national AIA award–winning natatorium designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Other highlights: Cranbrook House, built in 1908 as the Booth’s residence, is the oldest surviving manor home in metropolitan Detroit. Designed by Albert Kahn, the house is furnished with many original pieces, including tapestries and fine and decorative art collections influenced by Booth’s loyalty to the Arts and Crafts movement. Surrounding the mansion are 40 acres of landscaped gardens with fountains, terraces, and sculpture. (380 Lone Pine Rd.; [248] 645-3147; tours June 15–Oct. 30, Thurs. 11 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. , Sun. 3 p.m.) \ Saarinen House was Eliel Saarinen’s family home and his studio from the time he built it, in 1930, until his death in 1950. The house retains its dazzling Art Deco and Finnish-inspired furnishings, and textiles woven by Saarinen’s wife, Loja. (39221 Woodward Ave.; [2483 645-3361; tours May--Oct., Tues--Sun. 1 p.m., also Sat, and Sun. 3 p.m.) \ Designed by Oscar Murray, Christ Church Cranbrook has one of the most lavishly ornamented ecclesiastical interiors in North America. While its woodcarvings, stained glass, and mosaics are contemporary with the 1920S construction of the Episcopal church, primarily English gothic in style, many of the objects are centuries-old treasures found by the Booths in their travels. (470 Church Rd., [248] 644-5210; weekdays 9 a.m.–5 p.m. unless services are underway).

WHERE TO STAY

Located in Detroit’s New Center neighborhood, former home of General Motors’s world headquarters, the Hotel St. Regis, which has just become a Holiday Inn, once catered to the GM crowd. Now that GM has moved downtown, the Holiday Inn’s 224 rooms are open to other corporate travelers and tourists. Renovated last year, the hotel has all-new furniture and is convenient to many of the city’s attractions (3071 W. Grand Blvd., [313] 873-3000, doubles from $125). \ For an upscale experience, the Ritz-Carlton, Dearborn, has the ambience of a turn-of-the century English manor house, with marble, crystal chandeliers, custom fabrics and china, and works by European artists from the 18th through early 20th centuries (300 Town Center Dr., [313] 441-2000, singles from $295). \ After exploring the boutiques and galleries of suburban Birmingham, visit the 150-room Townsend Hotel, which offers four-poster beds, marble baths, and Aveda amenities. High tea is served in the lobby Tuesday through Saturday (100 Townsend, [248] 642 -7900, doubles from $295).

WHERETO EAT

For a corned-beef sandwich, check out Eph McNally’s in Corktown, Detroit’s oldest neighborhood (1300 Porter St., [313] 963-8833). The deli seats 27 and is known for its quirky displays of metal lunch boxes and board games from the 1960s and ’70s. \ For more lavish dining and a wonderful view of the Detroit River and skyline, chow down at the Rattlesnake Club (300 River Place Dr., [313] 567-4400). Housed in an old pharmaceutical factory, the restaurant is known for freshwater lake perch sauteed with lemon caper sauce, rack of Michigan lamb with yellow corn polenta, and white chocolate ravioli dessert. The who’s who of Detroit can be spotted at Intermezzo (1435 Randolph, [313] 961-0707). Located in the Harmonie Park neighborhood, Intermezzo serves Italian dishes with American flair in a Soho-style atmosphere. Try the lamb chops, beef tenderloin, or broiled salmon.

STOCKING UP

The shops of downtown’s Broadway-Randolph district are the place to find cutting-edge designer clothes. Check out Serman’s collection of men’s suits in shades of lime, tangerine, cherry red, or royal blue, with shoes to match (1238 Randolph St., [313] 964-1335). \ For a uniquely Detroit shopping experience, head to Pewabic Pottery (10125 E. Jefferson, [313] 822-0954). Operating out of a Tudor-revival residence since 1907, Pewabic is one of only three Arts and Crafts-era potteries still open nationwide; you can watch the artists at work before buying their wares. \ Browse through the Detroit Antiques Mall (828W. Fisher Freeway, [313] 963-5252), located in a converted buggy factory, where visitors can find architectural items such as glass and brass doorknobs or light fixtures from the 1880s to the 1920s.

Henrik Fisker is drawing a car in chalk. With quick sweeps so familiar he could probably do them in his sleep, he sketches the new BMW Z8 sports car on a black sheet tacked to a wall, showing how the shape compares to the classic 508 of the late 1950s (Elvis owned one). Fisker, the Z8’s chief designer, is Danish. BMW, of course, is German. But we’re in the offices of Designworks/USA, in Newbury Park, California, much closer to the L.A. Freeway than to the Autobahn.

Designworks, an industrial design studio where Fisker is president and CEO, began in a Malibu garage in 1972. Its founder, Chuck Pelly, a legendary car designer whose credits include the sporty Scarab, staffed the company with his most talented students from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena–the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of the auto world. In 1995, BMW, one ofDesignworks’s clients and eventually a part owner, bought the company outright to be a satellite design studio. Designworks had a big hand in developing BMW’s X5 sports activity vehicle and new 3-Series, but from the start, its purpose has been cross-pollination. Here, according to Pelly’s plan, automotive technologies and materials find applications in non-driveable goods like computers for Compaq, phones for Nokia, and desk accessories for Haworth. The goal, says BMW’s design chief, Chris Bangle, is shaping “anything that moves your body and your heart.”

Product design requires space to create and view models, but it also demands tight security. Over the years, the collegial openness that helped Designworks invent products for such varied companies as John Deere and Thermador came into increasing conflict with its parent’s security needs. On the one hand, designers profited from a free exchange of ideas–everyone from the clay modelers to the front desk receptionist critiqued projects. “On the other hand, BMW had some real secrets and kept needing to carve out more space for the closed-off clay studio,” Bangle explains. The conflict couldn’t be resolved without a major office expansion. Last year, Gensler’s Santa Monica office began one that will soon nearly double Designwork’s 38,000 square feet and tidy up the place, which Bangle admits is informal, if not scruffy.

According to project principal Gene Watanabe, the original structure–a classic 1970S California tilt-up–”was the most nondescript little white concrete building you’ve every seen.” Gensler’s job was to increase and protect the space without distorting the building’s proportions. Though most of the addition expands the automotive clay studio, the firm’s other task was to prevent the non-automotive departments from feeling neglected. All in all, the specs were a challenge. “They told us they needed lots of security and then in the next breath said they wanted lots of light and air,” Watanabe says. “But what the building really wanted to be was a bunker.”

To integrate the old and new portions, Gensler introduced a 305-foot-long exterior wall punctuated by a glass entrance topped with a thin, winglike marquee. Only a tiny notch suggests the juncture of the two parts. (Bangle, for whom the new facade resembles a ship sailing across the site, refers to the shape as a “knifing prow.”) Nicknamed “the flank,” the wall is punctuated by a long strip of clerestory windows that soften the idea of a division between workers who have access to company secrets and those who don’t. Here and elsewhere on the perimeter, windows vary in size and capacity depending on the activities of the spaces they look onto–transmitting less light to the computer labs, more to the lobby. The section bordering the clay studio at the back is made of Kalwall. At night, onlookers see mysterious silhouettes projected from the active studio’s yellow light, while the space itself remains alluringly inaccessible.

Inside the clay studio, the gems of future auto shows begin life as earthen lumps. Despite the use of scanners and other high-tech tools to transfer three-dimensional shapes to and from computers, modeling is a hands-on, sculptural process. The enlarged space makes room for expensive raised metal plates on which the models will be measured and examined from all angles. Auto-design-group offices, currently shoved away in halls, will be ranged in this part of the addition along a catwalk like mezzanine that emphasizes the involvement of all workers with the clay studio below.

A stroll through Design works reveals diverse products in the making: ski goggles for Scott/USA, ergonomic interface graphics for Sanyo/Fisher. But beginning with the entrance–the company’s public face–Bangle wanted to make clear that Design works is not a high-tech startup, but an avant-garde, global design firm. Moved to a front-and-center position in the renovated facility, the entrance leads to an exhibit area whose focus is an outdoor turntable showing off new products in natural light. When a sensitive prototype is on display, a veil will be drawn around the turntable to thwart prying eyes (especially those of competitors buzzing the site in helicopters). At other times, all Designworks employees will be able to take pride in the company’s innovations.

Bangle’s interest in privacy embraces more than security. It was his idea to provide a tower-like room poking out of the roof that he calls “the tree house.” He conceived it as a raw space, temporarily decorated by its inhabitants, where designers could solve knotty problems by fleeing upward to “lofty” thoughts. Bangle’s prototype was a house he knew as a child that an eccentric had built on top of a stone column left by erosion in the Wisconsin Dells, but he also had the work of a more classical architect, Jefferson’s office at Monticello, in mind.

As executed by Gensler, the tower offers a simple space with a whiteboard for doodling. Bangle, meanwhile, has moved on to other ideas: he dreams of building a virtual, digital studio–a Voodoo studio, in Bangle-speak–that would somehow let designers work anywhere inspiration strikes.

Though Bangle’s ideas are lofty, his feet are on the ground. Sometimes his whole body is. When presented with Gensler’s model of the expanded Designworks, he lowered himself on his hands and knees and carefully studied it from all angles. He loved that the wood was left natural, so the emphasis was on form and perspective, just as in the model for, say, a BMW. Watanabe was amazed. “I never had anybody look at a model for the same things I do,” he says.

IT SEEMS IRONIC that any alum of the high-profile Rockwell Group would crave anonymity. But Nancy Mah and Scott Kester, co-principals of Nancy Mah Design in New York, say they want to be invisible. The partners share a fantasy of creating two restaurants side by side so different in mood and concept that nobody could ever trace them back to the same studio. “We’ve found it important not to have a signature style,” says Mah, defying an accepted formula for successful restaurant design.

In fact, the year-old firm indulges in color, pattern, and fantasy–classic Rockwell obsessions. Among its projects: a walnut-paneled bakery in Nagoya, Japan, that feels like an Hermes boutique; two Manhattan sushi restaurants where both food and decor are splashed with hot Latin color; and a soon-to-be-completed downtown New York club based on a tiki bar theme. Can the apple fall far from the tree? Or has what Mah calls “the wow factor” of restaurant design taken over the whole forest?

Mah, 37, and Kester, 40, met at the Rockwell Group early in 1999 where they worked together on Ruby Foo’s, a pan-Asian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Kester had been there a year and Mah for two when they left to open their own studio; they received the commission for the second Ruby Foo’s shortly after. (David Rockwell declined to comment for this article.) Though the partners don’t see a family resemblance among their current projects, the self-trained Mah, who, while at Rockwell, helped complete Michael Jordan’s The Steak House in Grand Central Station and Nobu in Las Vegas, believes she inherited a taste for sumptuousness and whimsical coloration while employed at the powerhouse. “I’m definitely a bolder designer now,” she says.

“Being as theatrical as possible and creating a big first impression are both important lessons…for some kinds of spaces,” Mah believes. But she and Kester want to create interiors that deliver beyond the threshold. They take pride in turning the most undesirable table in the house into what Kester calls “the fat-guy table.” By building a wall around the service station at the upscale Manhattan nightclub Lotus, for example, and elevating the back booth on a platform, they transformed what is essentially a social Siberia at this style-conscious club into a shrine-like alcove. And at a time when theme-park excess is at a premium, the partners note that diners relate strongly to details like the textured underside of a table “since people’s hands tend naturally to fall there,” says (ester.

Such subtleties have practical roots. Mah worked as a restaurant hostess, waitress, bartender, and manager before trying her hand, in 1989, at designing Poiret, a small bistro in Manhattan. Her years of observing the choreography of waiters and diners informed subsequent design commissions for New York’s Bryant Park Grill and Lutece. She learned that the job “wasn’t all about what the space looked like, but more importantly about making it flow so that customers would feel wonderful as they walked in,” she says.

Kester, a Harvard architecture graduate who began designing eateries for the Niemetz Design Group in Boston, agrees with Mah that human interactions offer the most compelling part of restaurant design–”focusing on the whole flow of how people face each other or hang out at the bar or just get their coats,” he says.

Neither Mah nor Kester looks to other interiors for inspiration; in fact, their favorite restaurants are “owner-designed,” which is to say, not designed at all. A neighborhood Japanese restaurant that changes its flowers three times a day strikes exactly the right note of intimacy for them. And though their commissions are highly art directed, the partners try to match the same spirit of spontaneous accommodation. For the Miami nightclub Rumi, for instance, they tempered the room’s challenging dimensions–17 feet wide with 35-foot ceilings–by introducing six-foot-high banquettes. Under the designers’ own lighting system, the seating areas feel like little rooms. “People want to be part of the action,” explains Mah, “but rarely do they want to be the center of it.”

Mah and Kester’s designs are eye-catching–and yes, they can border on spectacle–but for clients, the real beauty is in turning every table into a Cinderella story. “If you can get an extra seat in,” Mah says matter-of-factly, “that’s another $40,000 to $50,000 a year.” Psychology class is over. Economics class has begun.

Ann Landers says you should never blow your own horn. But I do, I do. I like to brag that I’m one of the few writers who has written for both the academic journal New German Critique and the not-so-academic Playgirl. Not to mention The Nation and Total TV. I like to write for different venues and different audiences–and economically it’s a necessity. No doubt because I wear many hats, I’ve been fascinated by “multilingual” designers of graphics or Web sites who are now turning to interior and environmental design. It’s a truism that the professional journey is not always linear, and that the odd twists along the way culminate in a collection ofunusual skill; call them the riches of weirdness. They are particularly evident in designers now applying digital technology to interiors.

These riches were on lush display last fall at the annual American Center for Design’s “Living Surfaces” conference in Chicago. Speakers there showed digitalized interiors: walls turned into media feeds (Lisa Strausfeld of information Art) and ceiling-to-floor-water-falls of computer-generated letters (David Small of Small Design). Others showed mobile environments like portable, convergent, and interactive media centers (Tim Parsey ofMotorola). What struck me was that the creator soft these environments and technologies–give ortake a few industrial designers–had each started their careers in a different place from where they currently stood.

Why were digital-technology designers turning to environmental design, whether for interiors of homes and offices or for creating an environment around a user on the move? Was this quick changing practice economically driven? Were the tech-skilled designers simply fleeing the investment-drained Web? Was it mass personal eccentricity–a kind of creative restlessness? Did they, like me, enjoy working with different groups of people in different venues?

I talked with Lisa Strausfeld, who’d spoken at the ACD conference about the prototype media wall she’s designing for the revamped Penn Station. (Penn Station’s redesign is the work of SOM; the interior graphics are being done by Pentagram.) Strausfeld was trained as an architect but graduated in the early ’90s recession when architectural jobs were few, and she found herself redesigning computer circuitry for Motorola. From there she went to N IT’s Visible Language Workshop and developed software for financial displays. She then began working on an interactive site for Quokka Sports. At Quokka she was drawn to digitalized display technology and the possibility of combining her architectural interests with digital ones. In 2000 she founded Information Art and was assigned work on the Penn Station project.

I expected Strausfeld to say that her departure from Quolda had been partly for economic reasons, since it happened around the start of the downturn in Web investment (spring 2000), but in fact Quokka was prospering when she left, and she was doing fine as a VP there. Although the draining of money from the Internet has no doubt been an incentive to other formerly Web-based designers who’ve change tracks, Strausfeld sees the diversification of roles as technologically driven, too. “Advances in technology have changed our understanding of experience,” she says. To her, convergence design–combining feeds from TV, phone, and the Web–has prompted attention to holistic design, with a focus on the consumer’s environment and behavior.

User-focused design has been the buzz of the last few years. But if the ACD conference was any marker, and I think it was, there’s now a feedback loop that has not only changed the level of attention designers give to user needs but also how that holistic approach reconfigures designers’ roles. Exiting is the specialist; entering is the multifaceted, tech-savvy environmental visionary.