![]() What does this mean for design, and for what we do – and don’t – find desirable about it? Throughout history, our definition of desirable design has consisted of a combination of qualities, but what they are and how they relate to one another has changed constantly. Yet, our understanding of what may or may not be deemed tasteful has changed radically, and the same applies to rubbish. Wise words, which seem even sager over half a century after Banham wrote them in 1961. ![]() It was, of course, wrong to do so, not least because, as Banham pointed out, ‘tasteful rubbish is still rubbish’. The answer, Banham suggested, was that the CID based its judgements on aesthetics, without testing more important qualities, such as efficiency and reliability. Why then, asked the design critic Reyner Banham in the New Statesman, had the Council of Industrial Design – the government-funded arbiter of design quality – decided to include so defective a product in its list of ‘approved’ design projects? Not only did it leak after routine use, the lining tore, the metal fittings rusted and its handle fell off. It was a suitcase, though sadly not a well-made one, or so the Consumer Advisory Council discovered after submitting it to seven British Standards Institution tests: it was judged ‘poor’ on five of them.
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