Design and Manufacturing (original) (raw)

2020, RMIT Design Archives Journal 10 2

The theme of this issue of the RMIT Design Archives Journal 'Design and Manufacturing' will, we hope, provide an impetus to a field of research which has not yet, in Australia, developed a vigorous discourse. It is potentially vast if we take into consideration the disciplines of design - from the built environment fields of architecture, interior and landscape architecture to those which rely on prototyping - design for manufacture - as in fashion and industrially produced objects like bicycles. But, as these essays confirm, such a focus has the ability to reconceptualise some of the norms of design history. Philip Goad opens the collection with an examination of post-war Australia when "architects, artists and designers were enlisted as part of a broader push in a new and vital project of national recovery: the establishment and growth of a resilient local manufacturing industry." What Goad argues for here is multi-disciplinary design research, an approach which is not common in Australia, particularly in architectural history. After a survey of both the history and historiography of the field, Goad focuses on the textile manufacturer Bruck Mills at Wangaratta as his case study for it "can be read as a metaphor for the fate of manufacturing in Australia . . .when the physical and aesthetic attributes of art, design, photography and architecture could all combine to give image to post-war economic recovery, the building of a multi-cultural workforce, and above all, pride in the business of making." Giorgio Marfella, by contrast, focuses on the design of the headquarters of another major textile manufacturer, Feltex on the edge of central Melbourne. Feltex was "one of the largest Australian-owned manufacturing corporations, controlling a network of subsidiary wool and textile manufacturing companies with 7,000 workers and 65 factories in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa." Designed in 1959 by Guilford Bell and David Godsell, Feltex House adjoined ICI House in East Melbourne and Marfella discusses its design as both a study in post-war, American-inspired office typology and an instance of a changing urban morphology which saw major industrial and manufacturing concerns establish their headquarters in central Melbourne. Laura Jocic and Robbie Napper adopt a different point of view from Goad and Marfella, as both discuss the ways in which manufacturing impacts on the design process. Through her study of the Sara Thorn and Bruce Slorach fashion studio in the 1980s and 90s, Jocic documents the intricate relationship between designer and manufacturer when Melbourne's CBD hummed and Flinders Lane was still a viable fashion precinct. She notes: "Slorach and Thorn produced all their garments locally and drew on the expertise and specialised production processes of local manufacturers and fabricators to create their own highly individual designs." They also worked with specialised artisans to produce accessories such as belt buckles and belts and, as Jocic observes: "These types of creative and technical-based interactions between designer and manufacturer forged an environment where creativity and problem-solving worked hand-in-hand to flesh out and realise conceptual ideas." Robbie Napper's examination of bicycle design brings us into the present and provides some respite from the overwhelming sense of loss that one feels contemplating the fate of post-war manufacturing in Victoria. Focusing on bicycle manufacture, Napper comments that his research: determines that while the principles of mass customisation create ideal conditions for both manufacturer and consumer with regard to the end product, they also set up conditions for reinvention. Reinvention occurs when consumers conceive of and develop novel product variants, and the bicycle provides an instructive example of design and manufacturing-assembly processes being available at a local level. Thus his paper differs from the other three because within the ecology of bicycle design and manufacture the customer has a central role. Not only is there supply of design, there is demand, and demand influences supply. So, from his observations of cyclists in action he notes "a variety of treatments representing reinvention of the bicycle, for example the addition of components such as luggage racks and pannier bags. Also noteworthy are the reinvention acts which remove parts from the bicycle, the extreme example of which turns an otherwise ordinary bicycle into a pared down fixie." Central to mass customisation and reinvention is the bicycle shop which provides the space for exchanges between designer, product manager and customer. Napper concludes: Manufacturing and design are typically viewed as industrialised practices which occur behind closed doors. In the case of bicycle design, this research has identified that the approach of mass customisation brings design and manufacturing into the realm of the consumer, with one of the main actors in this system being the bicycle shop, which is reconceived as an important outpost of design and manufacturing capability. There is something optimistic about this statement. As we draw to the end of a difficult year where in isolation we have been driven onto our own resources and led to question the apparent certainties of globalised production and consumption and at the same time observe the fragility of national prosperity and well-being, the image of the local shop where design is embodied and exchanged is comforting indeed.