Scionic: Purpose-driven Gestalt. The End of Design?

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Axel Thallemer

Jens Reese

ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany, 2010, English

Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

7.9 x 7.9 inches, paperback, 456 pages, 900 illustrations

ISBN: 9783897903128

Suggested Retail Price: $70.00

From the Publisher. Defying the widely prevailing opinion that design is about furniture, lifestyle accessories, or things that are not really necessities of life, an attempt is made in this book to show solutions to problems that ensure improvements and advances above and beyond conventional notions.

In the present book, the associative compilation of utilitarian forms – the assemblage of many ideas – should be viewed as a source of inspiration for all creative designers. The standard handbook for designers who are interested in an approach to innovation that pushes the envelope far beyond merely fashionable product attributes.

The pivotal question in the design process is knowing about “the whys and wherefores.” And it is these “whys and wherefores” that are worked up and documented in a – here non-associative – abstract workshop with students of industrial design. Models are digitally fabricated via robot, bypassing standard Rapid Prototyping processes. Exciting approaches and inspiration that can also be put to use in the daily work situation. The “whys and wherefores” issue is a motive when what is at stake is a probing analysis of desired or enforced creativity processes in the framework of product design, development and willingness to innovate in business. The core concept is “designing” as an approach to problem solving.

This compendium is a source of inspiration for long-term investment in innovative design. The author, Professor Axel Thallemer, has been director of the industrial design course in Linz, Austria, since 2004 and has been a visiting professor in the US, China and Taiwan. Repudiating stylistic “prettifying,” the scientific methodology practised in Linz under scionic I.D.E.A.L. leads to the university degree of Diplom-Ingenieur in industrial design at Bachelor and Master levels.

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