工业设计专业英语(第三版)第五课设计与文化

1、2021/8/141ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGN2021/8/142Lesson 5Design and CultureENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free2021/8/143Now that “design” is understood from Tokyo to Moscow, from Buenos Aires to Montreal, it is obvious that each country according to its politics, its economics, it

2、s sociology, its industry, uses “Design” in a different way; but one must add that a universal language is being constructed daily.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free既然从东京到莫斯科，从布宜诺斯艾利斯到蒙特利尔，这些国家东懂得了“设计”，那么我们从中很容易发现每个国家根据各自不同的政治、经济、社会、工业状况，以不同的方式运用“设计”；但有一点必须要补充说明的是一种通用的语言正在被日趋构建。2

3、021/8/144“文化”一词以其非常民主的意思贯穿于整篇文章，也就是说，作为一个概念，它把现在社会所表现出的各种思想和价值作为一个整体而包含其中，而不仅仅指的是人的努力所达到的水平。同时，在这里涉及被理解为影响每个人的一种现象。ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and freeThe word “culture” is used throughout the text in its most democratic sense, that is , as a concept which embraces the ideas and va

4、lues expressed by modern society as a whole, rather than one which only touches one level of human endeavor. In parallel, design is understood here as a phenomenon which affects everybody.2021/8/145ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and freeThe definition of culture has to be considered w

5、ithin a broad context which subsumes economics, politics and technology as these are the forces which have determined the dominant cultural patterns in modern society. Design is also formed and sustained by these forces and, as a result, designed artifacts act as culture ciphers. In this book, I hav

6、e set out to examine both the way in which culture has influenced design in this century and the manner in which design has, in its turn, played a part in creating culture through the objects, institutions, personalities and the patterns of behaviour and thought that have accompanied it. Since 1900,

7、 design and culture, in this wide sense, have become increasingly interdependent and the implication of this relationship will re-merge constantly in the following chapters.文化的定义必须以宽泛的角度加以考虑，它包括经济，政治以及技术，因为它们是决定现代社会主要文化样式的力量。设计也有这些力量形成并支持着，因此，设计出的人工制品充当了文化元素的角色。在这本书里，我着手审查了本世纪文化影响设计的两种途径以及反过来设计在通过事物

8、，体制，个性和行为样式以及伴随其中的思想中创造文化的方式。从广泛的角度来讲，自1900年以来，设计和文化变得越来越相互依存并且这个关系的含义将在以下几章不断的重复出现。2021/8/146My main thesis is that, within the framework of industrial capitalism which created it and continues to dominate it in contemporary Western society, design is characterized by a dual alliance with both mass

9、 production and mass consumption and that these two phenomena have determined nearly all its manifestations. Like Janus, design looks in tow directions at the same time : as a silent quality of all mass produced goods it plays a generally unacknowledged but vital in all our lives; as a named concept

10、 within the mass media, it is, however, much more visible and generally recognized. In this latter guise design becomes an extension of marketing and advertising. The “designer-jeans” phenomenon, which persuades us to by a product because it has been designed, is, culturally speaking, totally distin

11、ct from the activity of the anonymous designers within industry who resolve the problems of the cost, appearance and use in consumer products. The way in which design as an adjunct of marketing has grown out of design as an aspect of mass production is a major theme within the story of modern design

12、 and the focus of this book. It is a change which directly mirrors the way in which the model of mass-production industry, as presented by Henry Ford, which dominated American ideas about industrial organization in the early twentieth century, has been challenged by an alternative model which stress

13、es batch production, a smaller scale of operations (or set of operation), and, at times, a fair amount of hand or skilled word. This latter model best expressed by Sloanes work at General Motors in the USA in the 1920s and by contemporary development in Japan and Italy-puts the demands of the market

14、place above those of the logic of mechanized mass production and tends, as a result, to value the diversification of products rather than , or as well as, standardization. These two models of industry coexist in this century and have different implications for the meaning of design. An important sub

15、-theme is the way in which the aesthetic of designed artifacts has swung repeatedly backwards and forwards from production to consumption as sources of metaphorical inspiration. ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free2021/8/147ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free我的主要

16、论点是，在创造了设计并且继续支配着它的西方社会的工业资本主义框架下，设计通过与大量生产和大量消费的双重联盟被赋予特征，并且这两种联盟的现象几乎已经决定了它的所有的特征。像杰纳斯一样，设计是朝向不同的方向同时进行的：作为所有大批量生产的产品的一种无形的质量它扮演着一个未被世人承认但在我们所有人的生活中非常重要的角色；然而，作为一个在大众媒体中指定的概念，它更加明显并且得到了广泛的认可。在后一种认知里设计成为行销与广告的延伸。 从文化角度来讲，“设计师与牛仔裤”现象与解决在消费产品中出现的价格，外观及使用问题的业内不知名的设计师的活动是完全不同的。涉及从市场营销的一个附属品成长为批量生产的一个方面

17、的这种方式是现代设计报道中的一个主要主题和这本书的焦点。像亨利.福特提出的那样，直接反映工业化批量生产模式的转化过程是一次转变，这一转变支配了20世纪初美国关于工业组织的想法，并且这一转变以及一个可选择的模式挑战，这种模式强调批量生产和一种较小的生产规模（或者系列生产），并且有时强调一定数量的手工或者技术性的工作。后面的模式被在20世纪美国通用汽车斯隆的工作制与在日本及意大利同一时期的发展很好地说明了，这种模式将市场的需求放置在机械化大批量生产的逻辑和趋势的需求之上，因此，更重视产品的多样化而不是标准化。在本世纪这两种工业模式同时存在，并且对设计的价值有着不同的意义。一个重要的副标题是以北设计

18、的人工制品的美学形式作为潜在的灵感之源，从生产到消费之间反复摇摆的方式。2021/8/148While the book concentrates on design as it has come to be defined and understood since the advent of mechanization, and emphasizes those themes which have made it part of recent history, it is also important to remember that the concept has an earlier h

19、istory which is largely responsible for the way we comprehend it today. Design has always been one aspect of a larger process whether of manufacturing, in the craft or mechanized sense, or, from the consumers point of view, of participating in social or economic life and its definition has, from the

20、 moment the word entered the English language, been in a state of constant flux due ,primarily, to the changes in the social-economic framework which has sustained it. Thus the difference between a seventeenth-century-pattern maker and a modern industrial designer is less one of the nature of their

21、respective creative activities than of the economic, technological and social constraints within which the activity is performed. What have remained constant are the visualizing and humanizing aspects of the design process as even today the designers input into the manufacture of an electronic calcu

22、lator, for example, focuses on the aesthetic and ergonomic aspects of that product.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free2021/8/149ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free同时本书关注设计，因为自机械化出现以来，设计已经开始被定义和理解了，并且设计强调使它成为近代历史一部分的那些主题，记住这个概念有一个较早的历史也是相当重要的，这个较早的历史在今天很大程度的影响着我们

23、对于设计的理解。设计总是一个较大程序中的一个方面，这些程序指的不管是手工意义或机械意义上的制造业还是从消费者的角度来看对社会和经济生活的参与。从设计这一单词在英语词汇中出现的那一刻起，它的定义处于一种平稳的变化状态，这一状态起初是由支撑它的社会经济框架的变化形式决定的。因此十七世纪模式的制造者和现代工业设计者之间的差别不是他们各自的创造性活动所具有的某种特性而是制约活动（设计）形成的经济，技术和社会条件。所以保持不变的是设计过程中形象化和人性化的方面，例如，即使今天设计者像一台电子计算机制造的输入关注的是产品的美学和人机工程学方面的内容。2021/8/1410The most signific

24、ant and powerful constraining factor on design in the last two centuries has, however, been its growing alliance with mass production and mass consumption. This, more than any other historical event, has determined the special characteristics we associate with its role in modern society. In recent d

25、ecades, manufacturing industry has removed design from its original, humble and largely anonymous backstage position as an element in the production process and push it into the limelight as an important aspect of the sale ability and desirability of consumer products. The French Marxist writer, Lau

26、rent Wolf, explains that it has become merely “a new way of elaborating products linked to the profound mutation of the production process”. Design, in the “old” sense, has not disappeared however. It remains as central to the process production as it ever did but tends , at least in terms of its cu

27、ltural image, to be overshadowed by the more sales-oriented concept. ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free2021/8/1411ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free然而，在过去的两个世纪，设计上最重要的和最强大的制约因素一直是它与大批量生产和大量消费的日益增长的联盟关系。与其他历史事件相比，决定着一种典型的特征，我们将这种典型的特征与它在现代社会中的作用联系在一起。在最近的几十年，制造

28、业已经改变了设计，使它从生产过程中作为一个最初的，不被重视的，无名的幕后位置推至为对消费品的出售能力和满意程度的一个重要的引人注目的位置。法国人，马克思主义作家，霍尔夫.劳伦洛朗解释说设计几乎已经成为“精制品与生产过程中的极度变化相联系的一种新的方式”。设计，在“旧”的意义上讲，并没有消失，它保持着像先前一样的而不是趋势的以过程生产为中心的做法，至少就它的文化形象而言，被更多的以销售为向导的概念所覆盖。2021/8/1412The ambiguity created by the co-existence of these two faces of design has been the gr

29、eatest stumbling-block in a satisfactory analysis of it. It is a difficulty which is exacerbated by the confusion and ideological assumption which have been made by many of this centurys critics and historians of design. It was those critics, among them Nikolaus Pevsner, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Read

30、and Siegfried Gieldion-all of whom supported the functionalist ideals of the Modern Movement in the interwar years who helped to perpetrate the myth that society was to come to associate with that particular design movement, and who thereby turned design into a heroic rather than an everyday concept

31、. The critical tradition established by these writers has been hard to supersede and it is only recently, as a result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Modern Movement, that their views have been questioned.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free2021/8/1413ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL

32、 DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free由设计两方面的共存所产生的不确定性已经成为对设计满意分析的最大障碍。他是个难题，这个难题被这种混乱和由本世纪的一些批评家和设计界的史学家制造的一是假设加剧了。是这些批评家，其中包括培福斯纳.尼克鲁斯，忙福特.刘易斯, 李德.赫伯特，齐格弗里德所有这些人在两战之间都支持现代运动的功能主义思想是这些人错误的推进了“完美设计”等同于机器美学者这一荒诞的说法，使这些人忽视了社会将与那些特殊的设计运动联系在一起的意义，并且也是他们使设计成为一种英雄事迹而不是一个日常概念。有这些作家建立的批判性的传统很难被取代，并且只是最近，由于对现代运动不

33、断增长的不满情绪，他们的观点已经受到怀疑。2021/8/1414It has become increasingly difficult also to extricate the propaganda of design from its real manifestations and to separate sales talk from fact. One way of avoiding these impasses is to move beyond the Modern Movement critics and to consider design within the contex

34、t of social life. From this perspective, design simply becomes one of the forms of mass communication in modern society as much as it plays a fundamental role, both practical and psychological, within daily life.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free从设计的真实表现中剥离出那些对设计的夸大宣传成分和那些推销成分也已经

35、变得越来越困难。避开这些困难的一种方法就是忽略现代运动的批评家（的看法），并且将设计放在社会生活的范围内加以考虑。从这个角度讲，设计仅仅是现代社会中众多信息的一种形式，在人的日常生活中不论是在人的实践还是人的心理上，这种形式都起到了一个基础的作用。2021/8/1415In understanding many of the changes in the meaning of modern design it is important to grasp the modifications that have been effected by the changing social patter

36、ns to which the designer , like everybody else , can only respond as best he or she can. The changing role of women in this century , for example, has influenced the appearance and image of the so-called labor-saving devices in the home needed to minimize housework. Conversely, design initiative can

37、 modify socially behavior, as is the case, for example, with the Sony Walkman, the miniature tape-cassette player which has encouraged a new attitude towards such solitary activities as jogging and traveling on the underground.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free在理解现代设计意义具有许多变化的同时，

38、掌握由社会模式的改变从而影响到对设计的修正是非常重要的，像大多数人一样，设计师仅仅能对这些社会模式的变化尽可能作出最好的反应。例如，本世纪妇女地位的改变已经影响到了设备的外观及形象的改变，在家里这些设备的使用使家务劳动减到最小。相反，创新设计能够改变社会行为，这是事实，例如，索尼随身听，一种微型的盒式磁带播放器能鼓励人们以一种新的态度面对一些单独的活动比如慢跑和秘密旅行。2021/8/1416While the relationship between social change and design change remains a chicken and egg problem it is

39、 equally difficult to decide whether economic necessity, public taste, available technology, or social need came first as causes for design innovation. For example, the emergence in this century of new materials and production techniques, such as die-casting in plastics manufacture, has been highly

40、influential in determining the appearance of many of the products which surround us but , at the same time, those object would never have entered the mass environment if they did not fulfill an earlier need, whether practical, economic, political, social or psychological. In many ways the stories of

41、 design “failure”such as that of the Ford Edsel in the early 1950sreveal more about the meaning of design in contemporary society than those of the “success” depends upon an inextricable combination of forces.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free然而，社会改变和设计改变的关系仍然是鸡和鸡蛋的问题，也就是说很难决定是经济

42、需求，还是大众品味，还是可利用的技术，还是社会需求应该作为设计革新的首要原因。例如，本世纪新的材料和生产技术的出现，比如像在塑料制造业中的压膜法，已经在很大程度上影响了我们周围的许多产品的外观，但是同时，如果那些需求革新不在早期完成，那么不论是实践，经济，政治，社会还是心理上，他们都不会被大众所接受。在许多方面有着设计“失败”的事例比如像20世纪50年代的Ford Edsel比那些依靠组合而成功的设计更多地揭示出在当代社会中设计的意义。2021/8/1417The social and psychological necessity for design is easily justified

43、 by the fact that we only need to buy , for example, one set of plastic crockery which would last us a life-time. That we continue to buy expendable products made of fragile materials, and often, indeed, to invest in duplicate examples which only vary stylistically, because of the demands of social

44、status or ritual, emphasizes the fundamentally symbolic role that design plays in our consumption and use of objects. While this tendency may be minimized at the more technical end of the spectrummost of us do not, for example, need more than one micro-wave oveneven in goods of this nature there are

45、 signs that pluralism is increasingly the norm. The socio-cultural argument is reinforced by the economic demands of industrial capitalism which depends on the constant consumption of goods. Together they locate design in the center of the picture as it is design that provides the variation that is

46、so essential to modern society. ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free社会及心理需求对于设计是可以很容易由事实来证明的，比如我们只需要买一组能使用甚至使用一辈子的塑料餐具。由于社会状态和礼节的需求我们不断的购买那些易碎的材料制成的可消耗的产品，并且事实上，我们经常投资于仅仅是在形式上有所不同的复制的东西，并且强调设计是在我们对物品的消耗及使用中所扮演的最基本的象征性的角色。然而也许这种趋势会被最小化到某一领域例如，大多数人不需要再多一个的微波炉尽管这种产品功能越来越多元化。和社会、文化因素有关

47、的争论变成对不断消耗的产品的工业化资本主义经济需求的加深。他们共同将设计定位于构想的中心，因为是设计提供了对现代社会非常必要的变化。2021/8/1418Design decisions are constantly being made everywhere, whether by designers or consumers. They all focus on the aesthetic of the product whether, in the designers case, defined as a creative resolution of the joint demands

48、of technology, price, or as the fulfillment of the requirements of taste, practicality and social and economic needs.ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free设计决议会经常被到处得出，无论是被设计师还是消费者。站在设计师的立场来看，他们都将注意力集中在产品的审美上，不管是对一个作为连接技术与价格需求的创造性决议的定义还是对作为履行品位性、实用性和社会及经济需求的必要条件的定义。2021/8/1419Design

49、is, more often than not, therefore, manifested in a tangible and visible form and objects are, therefore, an important point of entry for the design critic or historian. They are not always, however, the final words as design is, ultimately, a cultural phenomenon whose effects are as abstract as the

50、y are physical. Objects play a significant role in this book particularly those like the Italian Vespa motor scooter which encapsulate many of the important aspects of modern design and culture but most of them are included as examples or illustrations rather than as the main substance of my text. ENGLISH FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNSimple, Powerful and free因此，设计时常以有形的和可见的形式来体现，并且对于设计的评论家和史学家来说是一个重要的切入点。然而，他们总是最后的表达出设计从根本上来说是一种文化现象，它的影响同它本身一样抽象。实例在这本书里扮演了一个很重要的角色尤其像那些意大利Vespa汽车，它们将现代设计