Nothing shocking is currently on view on SFMOMA’s second floor. Nothing new and nothing eye-popping. Indeed, this non-newness is so not-new, it’s completely familiar. So familiar you see it everywhere. It’s strapped around your wrist. You’re sitting on it. It projects this text on your screen. You thought it, clearly. And now it’s gone.
“It” is order. And it is one thing that will always be a challenge. It is also one thing we desire at times more and less than its opposite: chaos.
In Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, order takes the form of chairs and speakers, lighters and turntables, cameras and clocks. It is stamped on each wall in bold Helvetica: “There is no longer room for irrelevant things… Irrelevance is out.” And while instructive, exclusionary statements such as these seem increasingly “out” of fashion today, there’s something immediately familiar about this exhibition. Not only do Dieter Rams’ now-classic designs influence those of our contemporary world (iPhones, IKEA furniture, etc.), the world in which they were created is every day becoming similar to our own.
Dieter Rams, Braun coffee machine (KF 20 Aromaster), 1972; detail, design: Florian Seiffert, photo: Koichi Okuwaki
Dieter Rams came of age during what we might call the greatest disorder our species has known: the 20th Century. More, his minimalist ideas and designs developed during a particularly disorienting period: post-war Germany and the revolutionary 60s and 70s. While the world was struggling over its most complex questions, Rams and his design team at Braun worked to offer its easiest solutions. They did this by joining elegant, minimal form to total function. The world could fall apart, but Braun products would stay on track.