The NYT engages in wishful thinking I can get behind:
Now, given that all those slick Miami condos are sitting empty in the sky, designers like the Campana Brothers, with their $8,910 Corallo chair, and Hella Jongerius, with her $10,615 Ponder sofa, might have a harder time selling their wares. Already designers are biting their knuckles over the damage reports. The American Institute of Architects reported that last month’s billings index, a gauge of nonresidential construction, reached its lowest level since it began collecting data in 1995.
The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two — and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.
“American designers took the Depression as a call to arms,” said Kristina Wilson, author of “Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression” and an assistant professor of art history at Clark University. “It was a chance to make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.”
The writer probably means Jongerius’ Polder sofa (not “Ponder”), a smart and sexy design that would probably be a big hit if adapted by Ikea for $850, even with all the subtractions and substitutions that price would require. (It lists at $8,500.) Even at $1,850, it could nudge bourgeois tastes towards contemporary design while nonetheless permitting the manufacturer to use experienced workers and sustainable materials.