60s and 70s

The golden '60s. A fresh, young and exciting era. Years of change, prosperity, space conquest and technological progress. Design reigns supreme with bright geometric forms, vibrant colours and the number one material is undoubtedly plastic, which displaces other traditional materials. The gap that once stood between high and low art is suddenly a source of inspiration, and one influences the other. Designers, like artists, are beginning to speak the language of pop art and to use its means of communication - the colourfulness, the bluntness, the inspiration of big city culture and everyday life. Alongside Pop Art, which celebrates consumer society, there is a current in 1960s industrial design called the Space Age, fascinated by the conquest of space and new technical possibilities. It is characterised by the use of white and silver tones, rounded shapes, reflective surfaces and futuristic forms. Some designers have experimented with 'smart furniture' designs or furniture assemblies reminiscent of the interior of spaceships.

In the housing sector, Italian design has been gaining ground in addition to Scandinavian design since the 1950s. In later years, Italy would become a design mecca. Italian designers, who combined functionalist creative methods and the demands of functionality with elegance, designed in the style of the so-called Elegant Modernism. However, there were also those who questioned and rejected the basic principles of modernism and began to pave the way for future postmodernism with their designs and experiments. Germany was not left behind, following the tradition of the Bauhaus and promoting rationalist design based on scientific discipline, clarity and precision.

The optimism of the 1960s was replaced in the following decade by a sharp sobering and global problems stemming from the oil crisis and the subsequent economic crisis, as well as the threat of environmental change. Designers had to realise the limits of plastic use and the ecological impacts associated with its production. Questions are beginning to be asked and discussions opened on the social responsibility of the design profession. In response to the crisis and exhaustion of modernism, postmodernism, characterised by eclecticism, metaphor, ambiguity of spatial solutions, paradox and irony, is beginning to take shape against the backdrop of the global social crisis. Postmodern design has bright colours, fantastic shapes and is created from different materials, is ambiguous and emphasises the individual values of each piece of furniture.

In the industrial sector, the consumer electronics boom continued in the 1970s. Its gradual shrinking made it cheaper and more accessible to mainstream society, but the great rise of computers was still a decade later. Initially in architecture, but gradually also in design, the neo-modernist industrial style of High-tech, inspired by modern technology and characterised by visual simplicity and the use and accentuation of the specific qualities of industrial materials, began to manifest itself.

Barbora Kovářová

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