Projects carried out by the avant-garde of the architectural profession, such as Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor or Rem Koolhaas show a surprising unanimity in one respect: the complete absence of "design" in the furnishing of their buildings. One looks in vain for so-called "designer fittings" or "designer lamps". Instead there are "standards" everywhere, not placed carelessly just anywhere but deliberately selected and carefully positioned. This phenomenon has caused Jean Nouvel, a further original thinker among architects, to create his own range of furniture for the Italian manufacturer Matteo Grassi. He expresses with great clarity a view which many of his colleagues share: "… I've got no room for caricatures of furniture which change and transform the special characteristics of a room. I despise fashionable objects which have been designed as style furniture, overloaded and with too many associations. I need simple objects, and so I design them. Anti-design, without imagination, black and angular, with ergonomic functionality. This is what is normal." There are few designers who receive the unreserved approval of architects. One of them, however, is Jasper Morrison, who is described as the representative of so-called "non-design": design which does not look to re-invent itself but is restrained and gains its characteristic form from perfecting both function and tried and tested solutions. One looks in vain here for ironic references or emotional gestures. Of equal popularity with architects are the products of Apple, the American computer manufacturer who has succeeded in fashioning its equipment as "simply" as possible but perfect in every detail. In this the Apple design team around the 37-year old Jonathan Ive has once more set a trend which other industries are sure to follow. This was the case with the first iMac in the mid-Nineties, which led to the wave of transparent materials in product design. Source: Architonic