Designer Investigation

Ferdinand Porsche - longer review

The first designer I have selected is Ferdinand Porsche. I initially selected him after learning that he started one of my favorite car companies, but after finding out that he also was the first to make a hybrid car, and that he created the Volkswagen Beetle and the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, I believe he has had a very big impact on the automotive world and is a very interesting person. Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Mattersdorf, North Bohemia, which is now part of Czechoslovakia. Early in life he helped his father in his mechanical shop and by night attended the Imperial Technical School, showing great skill in both. When he turned 18 he got a job in Vienna at the Bela Egger Electrical Company. While in Vienna he would sneak into a technical university at night to sit in on classes, this was the last of any “formal” education he would have.

In 1898 Porsche would get his first exposure to the automotive world when he got a job at the Jakob Lohner & Co factory. This company mainly produced high end coaches but in 1896 began construction of automobiles. Here Porsche helped create an electric car, running on two electric motors powered by batteries. This was built for speed but did not do well on hills because the large batteries and the batteries gave it a very limited range. After this in 1900 he created the first hybrid car, he replaced the batteries on his electric car with an internal combustion engine which powered a generator and was assisted by a smaller battery pack. Despite Porsche being drafted in 1902 into military service, over 300 of these were sold until 1906 and it broke several speed records.

After his time in the military the company Austro-Daimler recruited him as their chief designer and by 1916 he had advanced to the Managing director. His best car he designed here was his Model 27/28, better known as the Prince Henry and it won the first three prizes at the Prince Henry Trial in 1910. In 1917 he received an honorary doctorate degree from the Vienna University of Technology. He left this job in 1923 and became the Technical Director at the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft company and for his work here he also received another honorary doctorate and the honorary title Professor. His work here was also in producing race cars and his most successful was the Mercedes-Benz SSK which was at the top of its class in motor racing in the 1920’s. This company joined with Benz & Cie in 1926 and they began producing Mercedes-Benz. Porsches designs were not pleasing the board though and left the company for another but soon the great depression left him unemployed.

After all this Porsche decided to start his own company and in 1931 he started his consulting firm where he recruited several of his old co workers to work with him. They had several commissions and his business grew. This lead him to start working on his own car designs again and after losing several sponsorships he started another company, High Efficiency Engines, in 1932 to produce race cars. This lead to his design of the P-Wagon, which weighed less than 750 kg which is about 1650 pounds.

In 1933 at the Berlin Motor Show Adolf Hitler announced two new programs for his country. The first was that every German should own a car, and the second was to develop a “high speed German automotive industry.” For these Porsche received two projects and lead to more projects for Nazi Germany over the next decade including military vehicles. These initial programs lead to Porsche making the Volkswagen Beetle which was produced in what is now called Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen Company is still there today.

After the war Porsche continued his work on the Volkswagen in France but the French government did not support what he was doing and in December 1945 he was arrested and jailed for 20 months. His son Ferry continued the company and got the money to get him out of jail. After this the company started work on the first Porsche brand car, the Porsche 356, which was built by manual labor. He began to sell these cars to Volkswagen dealers and after gaining financial stability he started producing more of these and over the next 17 years 78,000 were made. He later died of a stroke in 1951, but his Porsche 356 and the royalties from the Volkswagen Type 1 made him very financially successful. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1999 and won the award of Car Engineer of the Century.

All of his work has leads me to conclude he is one of the most influential car designers ever. Making the first hybrid car was ground breaking and will help many future generations. Also his contributions to Volkswagen and his development of the Porsche Company established two major car companies with great influence on the automotive history.

 

Norman Foster

The second designer I have selected is Norman Foster, I became interested in him because of his very unique architectural design. Foster was born in Reddish, Stockport, England in 1935 where he attended private and grammar schools.  At 16 he left school to work for the Manchester City Treasurers office and later joined the Royal Air Force. After his service in 1956 he went to the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture and City Planning and later on to the Yale School of Architecture and received a master’s degree. After college he made his own architectural practice called team 4 with Richard Rogers, who he meet at the Yale School of Architecture, and the sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman. Team 4 quickly got a good reputation in high-tech industrial design, but in 1967 split up and Foster and Wendy Cheesman started Foster Partners. A year after starting this Foster started to collaborate with the American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, working with him until Fullers death in 1983 the two displayed a very environmentally sensitive approach to design.  

Fosters first breakthrough building was the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich, United Kingdom. The outside of the building is all glass up to the ceiling and here Foster made the first open-plan office floors. After this Foster designed many more buildings including one of his most famous, the Swiss Re London headquarters nicknamed “The Gherkin.” This was known for its all glass façade and its ability to let in air for cooling and to vent it back out after warming. In foster’s earlier work he shows a sophisticated and high-tech vision but later in his work he moved more toward modernity with sharp edges.

Foster sold his share of his company in 2007 and is currently on the Board of Trustees of an architectural charity, Article 25, which makes innovative, safe, and sustainable buildings in rough regions of the world. For all of his work he has received much recognition including being knighted, winning the Stirling Prize twice, and the Minerva Medal.

I found all of Fosters design to be very interesting because of its futuristic or very modern look. I like that’s most of his buildings are not a typical square or rectangle but they are rounded or have many curves or corners.

 

Poul Henningsen

The third designer that interested me is Poul Henningsen for his unique designs of lamps. I had never seen a light fixture that looked like this or be designed in this way before so they immediately interested me. Henningsen was born in 1894 in Copenhagen, Denmark where he grew up and in 1911 he started his education as an architect.  He never graduated though and then tried to become a painter or an inventor.

After this Henningsen was well on his way into design and had started a traditional functionalist architecture practice. His focus soon changed to lighting and he formed a lifelong collaboration with Louis Poulsen lighting and with this he released his PH-lamp. This was a simple light that hung from the ceiling with several layers to reflect light in different directions. In designing this and all his work he strongly supported the functionalism of the piece, and the structures, shadows, glare, and color reproduction of the light. The income from the PH-lamp created some economic stability for him and allowed him to make his later works. Some of these include the PH Artichoke lamp, the PH 1941 lamp, and the PH Lampan, all of these similar to the first with emphasis on the function and the bending of light.

Another thing he was famous for was his edited of the left wing periodical, Kritisk Revy, in which he showed his negative opinion on old fashion style and cultural conservatism. This gave him a literary breakthrough and lead to him editing many other papers with left wing views. He also edited the Louis Poulsen company magazine “NYT.”

I really like Henningsen’s work because I like things that are designed not to look like the norm and like how he improved a simple thing like light which some people would not even address.