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Papanek was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1923. He attended public school in England and immigrated to the US in 1930s, where he studied design and architecture. Papanek studied with Architect Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona in the 1940.He earned his bachelor's degree at Cooper Union in New York (1950) and did graduate studies in design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.A. 1955).

Papanek was interested in humankind as such and pursued an interest in anthropology, living and working for several years with Navajos, Inuit, and Balinese. Indeed, Papanek felt that when design is simply technical or merely style-oriented, it loses touch with what is truly needed by people.

Papanek believes that if the design is only based on art, craft and style, people's real needs will be excluded. In his view, taking into account the aesthetic value or feel of a product is just a subset of the designer's responsibilities. Since then, he has designed many products for UNESCO and the world health organization. His interest in design is all-encompassing, often considering its consequences for people and the environment. He also believed that many American designs had some drawbacks, including many safety risks and unreasonable factors.

Career

“One of my first jobs after leaving school was to design a table radio,” Papanek wrote in Design for the Real World. “This was shroud design: the design of external covering of the mechanical and electrical guts. It was my first, and I hope my last, encounter with appearance design, styling, or design ‘cosmetics’.” And further, he opined: “Only a small part of our responsibility lies in the area of aesthetics.”

In the same book, Papanek wrote: “Much recent design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires, while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer.”

Papanek created product designs for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). He worked with a design team that prototyped an educational television set that could be utilized in the developing countries of Africa and produced in Japan for $9.00 per set (cost in 1970 dollars).

His designed products also included a remarkable transistor radio, made from ordinary metal food cans and powered by a burning candle, that was designed to actually be produced cheaply in developing countries.

His design skills also took him into projects like an innovative method for dispersing seeds and fertilizer for reforestation in difficult-to-access land, as well as working with a design team on a human-powered vehicle capable of conveying a half-ton load, and another team to design a very early three-wheeled, wide-tired all-terrain vehicle.

As Papanek traveled around the world, he gave lectures about his ideas for ecologically sound design and designs to serve the poor, the disabled, the elderly and other minority segments of society. He wrote or co-wrote eight books. How could the designer, who must (like others) make a living actually serve ‘real needs’ of human beings? “I have tried to demonstrate that by freely giving 10 percent of his time, talents, and skills the designer can help.” In other words, a willingness to volunteer.

references

wikipedia


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