Core77

An Historical Industrial Design Beef: Raymond Loewy vs. Virgil Exner

Rain Noe

Industrial design intrigue: Did you know Raymond Loewy and Virgil Exner, the man who turned Chrysler into a design force in the 1950s, didn't get along?

After World War II ended in 1945, U.S. automakers had to switch from wartime production back to making cars. But they had no new designs, so were essentially churning out the same vehicles they were making in 1942.

The race was on to be the first to release a postwar car design, and Studebaker was determined to win it. They hired Raymond Loewy Associates to design their new Champion/Commander sedan. (The Champion was the coupe version, the Commander the four-door.)

Loewy

At the time, Exner was an ambitious designer working for Raymond Loewy Associates. He was tapped by Loewy for the Studebaker project, having cut his teeth at GM as an automotive stylist. But the two men did not see eye to eye. Since it was Loewy's name on the company door, Loewy took credit for every project that came out of his studio, regardless of which designers had worked on it. This irked Exner, and the two argued about it.

The Studebaker execs thought Loewy's designs were too radical to produce. But they hit it off with Exner, who was more accommodating. To the point where Harold Vance and Roy Cole, Studebaker's President and Vice President, secretly asked Exner to develop an alternative design, working at home.

Exner did, and the Studebaker execs loved it.

Loewy found out, and was furious. He immediately fired Exner for disloyalty.

Exner didn't have to collect unemployment; Studebaker immediately hired him as their Chief Stylist.

In 1947, the Champion/Commander hit the market, and was indeed the first postwar car. Loewy received official credit, but the design was said to contain substantial Exner influences.

It had a crazy-for-the-time wraparound rear window. Loewy's idea, or Exner's? We'll never know.

Studebaker continued to retain Raymond Loewy Associates as an outside designer.

Loewy and Exner never reconciled, at least not publicly; in an interview, Exner's son recalled his dad saying he and Loewy "loathe each other."

At Loewy's studio, following Exner's dismissal, Loewy promoted designer Robert Bourke to take Exner's place. Bourke came to head up all of Loewy's projects for Studebaker (this is speculation, but perhaps so that Loewy wouldn't have to deal with Exner during Studebaker meetings).

Bourke and Loewy

In 1955, when Studebaker moved all of their styling in-house, Bourke jumped ship from RLA To Studebaker, becoming their new Chief Stylist. (By that time Exner had moved over to Chrysler.) Sounds like Loewy had a bit of an HR problem.

Exner at Chrysler

Unique Architectural Features: This Disappearing Balcony and Coronally-Rotating Window

Rain Noe

In the woods outside of Devon in the UK, sculptor Peter Randall-Page works out of the Art Barn, his studio and gallery. Designed by his son, architect Thomas Randall-Page of Thing Studio, the Art Barn features two kinetic tricks.

The first came about because "there was the desire to include a balcony," Thomas writes. "This seemingly impossible contradiction led us towards an unusual solution.

I began to draw ideas for a folding balcony in my sketchbook , originally inspired by castle drawbridges with their chain supports and counterweights. Through a series of iterations, I developed an idea for a vertically bi-folding design that allowed an upper leaf of cladding to become the floor of the balcony and the hinged lower leaf to form a triangulated support, removing the need for suspension cables.

Initially, through rough physical models and later through more accurate digital models, I was able to define a geometry and mechanism that folded to the correct form and incorporated two counterweighted elements to keep the whole system in balance.

The three counterweights consist of a pair of solid steel rods that slide up behind the cladding as the balcony opens, acting like sash weights for the upper leaf, and a large stone weight that is supported by extended arms on the lower leaf beyond the pivot, thus balancing the lower leaf's weight. This balanced system eliminates any need for motors and allows the balcony to be operated much like a manual garage door.

The next challenge was to provide a simple handrail that could also fold away behind the cladding. I finally arrived at a hinged goalpost-type module with a pair of hinged stays that lock when straightened. This bespoke assemblage folds flat into the zone between the glazed door and the upright cladding.

The second is a window that does not open up-and-down, nor swing in-and-out. Rather, it rotates on the coronal* plane.

(*There are three axes of rotation, relative to the position of the human body: Sagittal, coronal and transverse. In a nutshell: Bicycle wheel = sagittal, steering wheel = coronal, helicopter blades = transverse.)

Encouraged by the success of the balcony and keen to explore more unusual opening systems, I set about designing a window for the Winter Studio, the cabin within the barn. This aperture forms the connection between the Winter Studio's control room-like position and the main gallery space half a storey below.

The internally mounted glazing was designed to swing 90 degrees so that, when viewed from the gallery, it would sit completely out of view when open. Once again, a counterweight was employed, positioned on the exterior of the Winter Studio.

I managed to procure a suitably heavy cast iron powerlifting weight and mount it to a custom-fabricated galvanised arm welded to a greased steel rod that slides through a sleeve in the wall and connects to the corner of the window frame. The weight attaches to the arm on a slotted connection, allowing it to be adjusted to perfectly balance the glazed unit and its steel frame.

Autodesk's Own Luke Mihelcic on Judging the Fusion Forward Competition

Core Jr

Most Fusion Forward jurors are evaluating what Autodesk's tools make possible. Luke Mihelcic helped build them. As a product marketing leader at Autodesk, he brings a rare vantage point to the jury: someone who has worked as an educator, application engineer, technical marketer, and product marketer, giving him a firsthand understanding of how a design idea actually moves from concept to reality, and where Fusion's tools fit into that journey.

Luke Mihelcic, Senior Manager, Product and Technical Marketing at Autodesk

That range shapes how he evaluates entries. With decades spent at the intersection of design and engineering technology, Mihelcic brings an industry-informed eye to creativity, technical execution, usability, and real-world impact — not just whether a concept looks compelling, but whether it holds up.

Ask what excites him most right now, and Mihelcic points to sheer possibility. "Advancements in technology, design tools, AI, simulation, manufacturing, and collaboration are opening doors that simply were not available before," he says. "Problems that once felt too complex or out of reach are becoming approachable in new ways." For him, that expansion of what can be imagined and realized is the most exciting part of design itself.

But that optimism comes with a caution. Mihelcic's concern isn't AI as a tool, it's what happens if designers lean on it too heavily. "We may begin to outsource too much of our creativity and critical thinking to AI," he says. "Design is not just about producing something quickly or beautifully. It is about judgment, context, empathy, taste, curiosity, and the ability to understand why something should exist in the first place." His worry, he's careful to clarify, isn't the technology. "It is complacency. It is the possibility that we let convenience replace curiosity, and automation replace intellect.

For entrants preparing their Fusion Forward submissions, Mihelcic's advice cuts straight to what he'll be looking for. "Design for possibility, not novelty," he says. "The best work will not simply add technology or create an interesting form; it will show how thoughtful design, material intelligence, and computational tools can make everyday life at home easier, more beautiful, and more sustainable."

Fusion Forward: Design for Home is now open for entries. Three categories to choose from, $9,750 in prizes. Deadline for entry September 28.

A Permanent Stainless Steel Toothbrush with Replaceable Bristle Heads

Rain Noe

This Berninox 316 is a toothbrush that reduces plastic waste. Designed by Swiss product designer Julien Bernard, it features a handle made of 316L stainless steel—the same stuff they make surgical tools out of—and uses replaceable bristle heads made of recycled plastic.

The heads simply pop on and off, and click into place.

The handle runs the equivalent of $36, and a three-pack of refill heads runs the equivalent of $14. I say the "equivalent of" because the product is sold in Europe and Asia, but not in the 'States.

Industrial Design Trio Invents a Tile System for Three-Dimensional Space

Rain Noe

A good designer, we were taught at ID school, pays careful attention to the transitions where two surfaces intersect. So it's fitting that this DTILE system was invented by a trio of industrial designers: Arnout Visser, Erik Jan Kwakkel and Peter van der Jagt, who all hail from the Netherlands.

Rather than merely producing flat tiles, the DTILE system also includes curved, corner, edge and transition pieces that allow the tiled surface to follow a three-dimensional shape.

Furthermore there are utility tiles and allow for shelves, hooks, vents, electrical outlets, drawers and the like.

Together these allow for designs that would be difficult to impossible to execute with ordinary tiles:

The trio first conceived of the concept in the '90s, launched their brand in 2010 (with in-house manufacturing), and today they sell in over 50 countries.

Bangkok Project Studio's "Non-Architecture" Town-Hall Pavilion

Rain Noe

This example of "non-architecture," in the words of Thai architect Boonserm Premthada, is a striking example of form follows function.

This is the Neramit Town-Hall Pavilion, a community structure in Thailand's Chon Buri Province. It was designed by Premthada and his firm, Bangkok Project Studio. While the form might appear fanciful and arbitrary, the staggered roofing serves two functions: It provides both rain protection and ventilation, and the uneven edges arose from the desire to produce as few off-cuts as possible. Premthada explains:

This building and interior space are created out of a single large triangular roof structure. We based our roof design on standard square tubes, or tube steel, sized 100 mm x 100 mm x 6 meters, integrating the entire length of the tubes so as not to be left with any construction waste.

The roof is made of corrugated zinc sheets. The end of each sheet protrudes unevenly, preventing rainwater from splashing into the users' area. This method of roofing allows the roof to serve as a roof and a wall at the same time. It also offers good ventilation. The sunlight appears in layers as it goes through the gaps in the ceiling. At night, the light from the shows inside Neramit will shine through these gaps, making the whole structure look like a giant lantern illuminating the surrounding area.

I have three reasons for choosing steel in the form of square tubes as the main construction material.

1. Steel has been a staple construction material for centuries. We are used to using steel to provide strength, durability, and flexibility to buildings. Square tubes are lightweight and easy to assemble. I took this as a challenge to create aesthetic elements out of industrial materials, as in The Walk (2019), where deformed bars were transformed into a walking path. Designing ordinary square tubes to deliver the beauty of the structure and the material itself is something I learned from non-architecture.

2. I prioritize efficient budgeting. Every piece of steel must be used in the best possible way. We started by designing the structure that perfectly fit the standard-size square tubes to avoid creating metal scrap. When cutting the square tubes was unavoidable, we used them to compose the uneven edge of the roof, eliminating what otherwise would be considered an untidy part of the construction.

3. Steel is recyclable, dismantled, and reassembled into other structures or used in other ways. Not creating waste and making the most of what we have is what we learned from this building.

The roof structure of Neramit is moveable so that it can create interior and exterior spaces as desired to accommodate different activities.

Non-architecture: I am interested in non-architecture, defined as a structure that is simple to create, affordable, locally made, serves the needs of users, is compatible with climate and terrain, and is common. A building with a gable roof is an example of a commonplace non-architecture, particularly in rural areas. Each element of the structure makes sense and supports one another. Each piece is intertwined and connected to optimize load-bearing capacity with gravity and joints.

There are many questions, such as what kind of architecture contributes to good weather? What kind of architecture represents a healthy environment? What kind of architecture represents rural life? What kind of architecture expresses an agricultural way of life? But the central question is, what kind of architecture conveys the sense of non-architecture?

This building offers me several insights into the subject of non-architecture, such as the application of the shape of local wood and the shape of steel, merging the similarities and differences. We learned to convey emotion through the roof system made of overlapping, overhanging, and untidy pieces. We calculated the precise quantity and size of materials required for the building. We learned to add value to ordinary materials such as corrugated zinc sheets, a common roofing material, by turning them into a movable building with new shapes and flexible spaces.

You&Me Star: Designing Connection Before Sleep

Irene Guerrieri

Bedtime routines for parents and toddlers take many forms, typically focused on creating soothing and familiar sounds and experiences. This is the environment that You&Me Star helps to create through a combination of sound, light and touch.

Developed by Chicco, Artsana Group, in collaboration with students from La Sapienza University of Rome, You&Me Star is a night light built to do something more than simply light a room. It turns bedtime into a ritual of relaxation, play, and emotional connection.

The idea started during the Final Synthesis Course in Product Design at La Sapienza, taught by Professor Sabrina Lucibello and myself, a course built specifically to push academic thinking into manufacturing reality. The project represents a synergy between the academic and manufacturing worlds, an experience I am particularly proud of because it ultimately led to a tangible, finished product.

Students Luca Montanaro, Fabio Mattei, Leonardo Marongiu, and Paolo Maurizi took the question and split it in two: what sounds does a baby remember from before birth, and what does a baby need to feel safe enough to stop fighting sleep? Their research followed auditory memory down one path and light down the other.

The first question was fascinating; could sounds experienced before birth become part of a baby's auditory memory? Research into prenatal auditory perception suggests that fetuses can respond to sounds and melodies during pregnancy, and that familiar sounds may elicit recognizable responses after birth. The students saw an opening- sound as a bridge between the world before birth and the one after it.

The second thread concerned the role of light in the transition to sleep. Studies of circadian rhythms have shown that light wavelengths matter enormously to melatonin production, the hormone that governs when we sleep and when we wake. The longer wavelength of red light has drawn attention as a gentler alternative to the blue-heavy glow of most evening lighting, one less likely to jolt a drowsy brain back awake.

Sound and light, memory and biology. Together they became the blueprint for a night-time play lamp built to meet a child on both fronts at once, engaging them just enough to settle them, and building something reassuring and familiar out of the process.

Concept development sketches

From auditory memory to play

Given how many sounds a baby absorbs in the womb, the students narrowed their focus to relaxing melodies, ones calm and consistent enough to travel with a child from pregnancy into their first months outside it. The intention was to create a familiar auditory experience that could accompany the child from pregnancy into the first months of life, associating the melody with a feeling of safety and comfort.

The result fuses three elements, sound, light, and shape, into a single object that functions both as a night light and toy.

It comes in two pieces. A portable element carrying the sound unit becomes the part a child plays with, while a fixed base holds the light source steady on a shelf or nightstand.Once those functional pieces were locked in, the real design work began: a search for a form that felt natural rather than manufactured, two parts that could hold their own individual character while still belonging together. In the initial idea the answer came from the sea, in the pairing of a starfish and a piece of coral. Subsequently, in product development, the coral also became a starfish. So two stars meet in an embrace, one soft and one hard.

The soft starfish is the toy, and it lives a double life. Its two faces carry different colors and textures. The material itself, soft and forgiving, was chosen with small hands in mind, the same texture families already reach for in comfort objects and baby gear.

The hard starfish, meanwhile, becomes the base, its five arms reaching upward to cradle the soft starfish so it can rest securely on top. Look closer and that arrangement reads as something else too: a handshake, a small architectural nod to connection, love, union, protection.

Switch it on and the plastic starfish glows a soft, warm red, and just like that, the daytime toy quietly becomes the anchor of the bedtime ritual.

From university project to real product

What I keep coming back to with You&Me Star isn't just the finished object. It's everything that had to happen for it to exist at all. This is what it looks like when design education and industry meet in the middle; students get the rare chance to carry research and raw creative thinking all the way through to something that ends up in a child's hands.

The students started with abstract questions about memory, sound, light, the emotional weight of bedtime, and had to land somewhere concrete: an object a child can hold, listen to, watch glow, and fold into a nightly routine.

That's what pushes You&Me Star past the ordinary night light. It functions as an emotional mediator, quietly wiring together sound, memory, light, play, and the bond between parent and child.

It's a small object built around a large idea: that design can take one of the most ordinary moments of the day, going to sleep, and turn it into a moment of real connection.

The Summertime Temperature Differences of a Black Car vs. a White Car

Rain Noe

We all know that when it's hot and sunny out, white clothing keeps you cooler than black clothing. Lighter colors reflect the sun's heat while darker colors absorb it.

How does this difference play out in car colors? Researchers at Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division did a study to find out. On a sunny summer day in Sacramento, they parked two Honda Civics, one black and one silver, in a parking lot. Over the course of the day, they measured the temperatures of the exterior and interior surfaces, as well as the cabin air temperature.

They found that the black car reflected just 5% of sunlight, while the silver car reflected roughly 58%. This meant that the roof on the black car was up to 45° (25° C) hotter than the roof of the silver car.

That temperature differential extended to the interior, though not as starkly. The temperature of the interior cabin air, measured at the rough location of the driver's head, was about 10° (5.5° C) hotter in the black car.

They then ran the air conditioners, measuring the energy draw required to get the cabin temperature down to 77°. As you'd expect, it took more energy to cool the black car's interior. However, the energy cost was actually pretty modest: The silver car saved just 2% of fuel versus the black car. In other words, if both cars were driving around at the same speeds with the air conditioners set to the same temperature, the black car would consume 10 gallons for every 9.8 gallons of the silver car.

In other words, if you live in a sunny clime and are choosing between a darker and lighter car color, you're looking at no more than a 2% fuel savings. However, if you're a fleet operator, that adds up. That's why, if you look at fleet vehicles—cop cars, utility companies, contractors--in the American south or southwest, their vehicles are typically white.

Image: Robert Lafond, CC BY-SA 2.0

UPS is a standout, for branding reasons; they started painting their vehicles brown in the early 20th century, before cars even had air conditioning, when the main concern was hiding dirt. So they're paying that 2% price.

The Portable Rope Stool, Borne from a Swedish-Japanese Design Collaboration

Rain Noe

Last year Oshinsha, a Japanese retailer that sells and promotes work by Japanese craftspeople, set up an interesting initiative: The Tottori–Gothenburg Craft Exchange Project, linking Swedish creatives from Gothenburg with Japanese craftspeople in Tottori Prefecture. After securing funding from both Japanese and Swedish groups, six Swedes were brought to Tottori to collaborate with local craftspeople for three weeks.

Swedish artist/designer Esbjorn Grip teamed up with Japanese chairmaker Junsei Fujimoto on this Rope Stool. Their brief: Create a piece of furniture from a single, repeatable wooden element.

The stool is constructed entirely without screws or nails. Instead, it relies solely on the precise tension of rope, joining flat wooden boards into a stable, functional seat. Minimal in form yet ingenious in structure, the Rope Stool reflects both the practicality of everyday tools and the creativity of experimental craft, bridging tradition and contemporary expression.

Here's how it breaks down:

The stool is now in production and sold by Oshinsha.

A User-Repairable Smartphone Finally Comes to the 'States

Rain Noe

For over a decade, Europeans have been able to buy a modular, self-repairable smartphone that allows them to avoid expensive repairs. Called the Fairphone, it's made by a Dutch company of the same name. Now they're finally exporting their latest model, the Fairphone Gen. 6+, to the 'States.

The Fairphone Gen. 6+ has a 6.3" OLED display and three cameras: A 50MP main camera, a 13MP ultra-wide, and a 32MP front camera. It can shoot 4K video and has 256GB of storage, expandable to 2TB with a MicroSD card.

The phone's real appeal is that it comes with a T5 Torx screwdriver that allows you to replace a ton of components, should they break.

Here's what you can swap out, and what the replacements cost:

- Battery: $46

- Display: $104

- Main camera: $81

- Ultra-wide camera: $46

- Front camera: $41

- Top unit with flash and time-of-flight depth sensor: $46

- USB-C charging port: $23

- Earpiece: $23

- Loudspeaker: $29

- Upper back cover: $12

- SIM/microSD-card tray: $9

If you lose the screws, you can even order a set of those for $9.

The 5G phone runs Android, works with T-Mobile and AT&T, and retails for $650.

Architectural Renderings Created with a Sewing Machine

Rain Noe

UK-based Ali Hill is a textile artist, meaning she draws with her sewing machine.

Specifically, she creates these incredible architectural renderings:

Some she does by first drawing the image out, and tracing…

…other times she uses no pens or pencils at all, and just freestyles it:

Her accuracy and patience is astonishing.

Hill sells prints of her work on Etsy.

An Industrial Designer's Deconstructed Tape Measures Help Keep Ukraine Free

Rain Noe

These unusual tape measures are by Vitaly Fedorchuk, a Kyiv-based industrial designer. They're usable objets d'esign that he created specifically to fund Ukraine's defense efforts.

"All proceeds go to the unit protecting our skies, where my friend serves," he writes. "Each tape measure is handmade from aluminium and stainless steel and carries a unique number."

He sells them through his Instagram, though the most recent batch is sold out.

MIT & Sumitomo Develop a Better UI Design for Excavators

Rain Noe

I recently had a chance to operate a neighbor's mini-excavator, and the learning curve is steep. There are four joysticks total, which allow you to drive, rotate, and operate the boom, the arm and the articulated bucket. The controls are not intuitive, and I'm told it takes hundreds of hours to gain proficiency.

Why? Because mapping a joystick's range of motion onto a machine modeled after the human arm is a flawed approach. So engineers at MIT, working in collaboration with Japanese heavy equipment manufacturer Sumitomo, have redesigned the UI. They've developed an articulated metal arm with a grab handle, allowing operators to simply move their arm and hand, and have the machine mimic their natural motion.

"This is a more intuitive way to command the machine," says Hermano Krebs, principal research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. "With this new interface, we can eliminate a lot of the mental maps that an operator would need to build in order to operate an excavator."

The project's inception came from Krebs talking to Sumitomo researchers. Japan's society is aging, and experienced excavator operators were retiring. Training new ones is time-consuming, and the company sought a way to accelerate the process.

MIT tested their new interface, which they call the World-Space Interface (WSI) with new operators on a simulator. For one hour a day for seven days, the newbies were trained on both traditional joysticks and the WSI. What they found was startling: While the newbies performed worse than expert users with the joysticks, with the WSI, "novices were just as good as experts from the start."

The next step is to add haptic feedback, the research team says.

Here's how the WSI works:

Two Experimental Mobile Drawer Designs

Rain Noe

Keiji Ashizawa has a background most architects don't: After gaining his degree, he worked with a metalworking shop that produced furniture and lighting. When he eventually set up his own architecture and design studio, the metal fabrication background continued to inform his work.

Ashizawa, who designs both buildings and furniture, created these two experimental mobile drawer designs that rely on a minimal amount of steel to provide a skeletal structure. Bon Drawer features gestural side supports joined by two horizontal bars.

Five small square-stock rails are attached to each support, and correspond with a groove in the drawers.

Two little wheels on the back allow you to move the unit, while the topmost crossbar serves as the handle.

Slybox uses even thinner tube stock, and preserves the same wheel-and-handles arrangement.

The drawers are graduated in size, and the topmost has a flip-up lid, allowing you to use it as a shelf or tabletop.

Ashizawa had both designs prototyped, but sadly these never made it into production.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (8-17-26 to 8-21-26)

Rain Noe

Here's what we looked at this week:

Core77

An Historical Industrial Design Beef: Raymond Loewy vs. Virgil Exner

Unique Architectural Features: This Disappearing Balcony and Coronally-Rotating Window

Autodesk's Own Luke Mihelcic on Judging the Fusion Forward Competition

A Permanent Stainless Steel Toothbrush with Replaceable Bristle Heads

Industrial Design Trio Invents a Tile System for Three-Dimensional Space

Bangkok Project Studio's "Non-Architecture" Town-Hall Pavilion

You&Me Star: Designing Connection Before Sleep

From auditory memory to play

From university project to real product

The Summertime Temperature Differences of a Black Car vs. a White Car

The Portable Rope Stool, Borne from a Swedish-Japanese Design Collaboration

A User-Repairable Smartphone Finally Comes to the 'States

Architectural Renderings Created with a Sewing Machine

An Industrial Designer's Deconstructed Tape Measures Help Keep Ukraine Free

MIT & Sumitomo Develop a Better UI Design for Excavators

Two Experimental Mobile Drawer Designs

Core77 Weekly Roundup (8-17-26 to 8-21-26)

In Holland, a self-powered river crossing for bikes.

The Leitz Portable Desk Organizer for hot-desking.

Sigma's minimalist unibody BF camera, by Iwasaki Design Studio.

An "aerial school bus" system for kids who commute from gorge to canyon rim for school.

CMPT's take on the apple box.

Felice Varini's optical-illusion interiors.

A clock that lives on the edge, by industrial designer HoHyeon Lim.

A sectional hiking stick with tools in each section.

The emergent low-effort way to share dimensions for plans.

Toyomitsu's brilliant design for a specialty construction tool.

In Switzerland, self-closing public benches that stay clean and dry.

In Japan, an e-biking attraction on an abandoned railway.

BikeBox: Bike-storing garden planters.

Transportation Design student work: A repairable vehicle for rural Scandinavia.

Mattias Stenberg's Hopper, a slick, minimalist height-adjustable side table.