Thirty years ago, aesthetics became engaged with technology, and the Department of Industrial Design was born at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. It gave itself the job to convince the rest of the engineering family that it belonged to it, but today it has grown into a confident field that it a firm place at BUT.
In Ladislav Křenek's office you will find a motorcycle, a car and a caravan. Of course in a reduced form. Models from graduates of industrial design, which Křenek has been leading for seven years, not only decorate the shelves around them, they are actually in all areas where the department at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering operates. "When colleagues from abroad come to us, our students' models are very much appreciated. Students don't do much for them anymore, but if one picture is worth a hundred words, then one model is worth a hundred pictures. When creating a model, the student is better aware of the spatial relationships that can escape in computer visualization," Křenek, the head of the Department of Industrial Design, says, and thus encounters one of the key features of how industrial design has changed at FME during its thirty-year tradition.
It is interesting that behind the establishment of the Department of Industrial Design at the mechanical engineering there were not engineers or designers, but architects. "At that time, they were interested in opening the field of design at BUT, but there was no interest in the Faculty of Architecture, so they managed to agree on the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The design of products and equipment is close to the machines. On October 1, 1991, the new department was allocated premises, headed by architect Miloš Klíma, and in the summer semester the teaching of two so-called zero grades began,” Jan Rajlich recalls, who taught at the newly established workplace from the very beginning and between 1996-2014 he led it.
Initially, the designers had to convince their colleagues that the field on the border of art and technology really belongs to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. "It was not easy to promote design as a discipline that is not purely artistic, as was perceived in our country at the time. They took us as artists who, as sculptors, model the shape of a product. But we tried to introduce design with an equivalent artistic and technical component," Rajlich says. The establishment of FFA in 1993 and the beginning of the local teaching of design a year later undercut the already fragile branch of industrial designers at the mechanical engineering. "It was decided that the then design students would finish their studies at the mechanical engineering, but new ones will already be accepted at FFA and our department will gradually disappear. Before that happened, however, many people thought about it and came to the conclusion that industrial design should remain at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The students of that time also began to convince with their success that design has a future at the faculty," Rajlich says, adding that in 1996 "Industrial Design in Mechanical Engineering", as the field of study was called, was definitely saved and could begin to develop.
Beautiful and functional
In three decades, the industrial design has sent more than three hundred and sixty graduates to the world, most of whom have employed in the same or related fields. And some really shone. Teachers remember, for example, Jaromír Čech, the chief designer of Toyota's European division at the time, or Petr Nevřel, who leads ŠKODA AUTO's lighting design team. Since 2004, students of industrial design have been exhibiting their final theses at the Technical Museum in Brno. The year before, the department was invited to official cooperation with ŠKODA AUTO and thus became the only domestic university workplace that cooperates with the carmaker in the field of design.
What distinguishes designers at the mechanical engineering from their colleagues from FFA and other schools in the Czech Republic is the emphasis on the technical side of things. In other words, the industrial designer aesthetically cultivates the product so that it maintains its optimal functionality. "The industrial design cannot do without an artistic component, the author must be creative and try to create a unique work. At the same time, it is a technical and artistic solution, the two components cannot be separated from each other, they go hand in hand," Křenek thinks. And he adds that, according to him, the degree of artistic talent (although to some extent necessary) is not so decisive as creative thinking and technical feeling. "The expert sources say that only a small percentage of artistically gifted people are able to do design. On the contrary, I remember our graduate from the mid-1990s who did not have much drawing skills. However, at that time he mastered relatively new software tools and his diploma eventually won an award for the excellent student design," Křenek adds.
Modern tools have made it much easier for today's industrial design students. They have lost their drawings and hand-made models, their place has been taken over by computer visualizations, 3D printing, and they plan to make more use of virtual reality in the department. According to educators, however, this did not change much about the work of designers, they are just tools that facilitate the design process.
Křenek sees technologies and materials used in industrial production as a key element that sets trends in the field. According to him, they turned the whole design industry upside down. "Materials and technologies in production really determine the development of the field. If we take the design of car lights as an example, in the past it was possible to make the light round or square, that was the end of it. The lights were made of glass and the possibilities of shaping were considerably limited. Today they are mouldings made of polycarbonate, inside you have LED technology, the possibilities of shaping are completely different. This is one of the reasons why, in addition to the department of exterior and interior design, you will also find a special department dealing with light design in car manufacturers,” Křenek explains.
Because today's technologies already make it possible to produce many previously unimaginable products, today industrial designers are faced with the challenge of how to balance functionality while delivering original and impressive designs. "It must also have a certain foresight, because the design is not made for today, but for tomorrow. What the industrial designer suggests will appear on the market in a year, two, three. A good designer should estimate how the world will look visually in the coming years and decades," Rajlich concludes. The autumn exhibition at the Technical Museum in Brno shows how this year's graduates of industrial design see the world of the future.
The article was published in the journal Události na VUT 1 | 2021/2022.