Defining High-Technology:A Design Perspective

What is High-Tech for them?

• Is it just a matter of more technology?

High-tech as Cultural Expression

– “High”-lights the non-instrumental.– “High”-lights the non-technological.

Þ High-tech merely simulates technology.Þ Brings back a meaning of technology that has been

obscured in our modern conception: art and aesthetics.

Þ Form and Function become separated!

High-Tech Design:

“…a style or design or interior decoration that uses objects and articles normally found in factories, warehouses, restaurant kitchens, etc., or that imitates the stark functionalism of such equipment.” – English Dictionary Entry.

High-tech Aesthetics

What does this mean?

• In the culture of High-Technology, modern notions of technology are turned on their heads!– High-tech turns functionality and instrumentality

into something else. But into what?

So, What is the Age of High-tech?

• Technology becomes a matter of representation…

• …of style…• …of design…• …of image.

Having a High-Tech Style:

• From basketball shoes, to hair-cuts, to apartments (with pipes and ducts in the open, concrete floors, and glass walls, etc.), things are being described as having a high-tech style.

Þ in high-tech then, the modern view of functional form has been widely abandoned in favor of a technological look or style that need not be functional in any traditional sense.

High-Tech as StyleBush’s Aircrafts Saddam’s Aircraft

High-Tech as Style

High-Tech as Style

High-Tech as Style

High-Tech as Style

Dimensions of High-tech

• Is starkly minimalist, functionalist interior design high-tech?

• Is the complex circuitry of a microprocessor high-tech?

The dimensions of high-tech: 1) Minimalism (reducing objects to the most necessary

forms, miniaturize, streamline).2) Complexity (miniaturization requires “more in less”).

Evidence in the Marketplace?

Cell phones, PDAs

DVDs

Stereo systemsand speakers

Walkman

Laptops

Sneakers

Eye glasses

Night clubs, restaurants

Apartment buildings

Conclusion

• Our conception of Technology has shifted.• The dimension of High-tech can be found

somewhere at the intersection of two tendencies: minimalism and complexity.

• Design now a major site of (high-) technology innovation