Sightlines

Philippe Starck Goes to the Top of the Class of Yacht Design.

- Michael Peters

One Monday morning I gleefully announced to my second-year architecture professor, “I designed an 80-foot yacht this weekend.”

To which he responded, “that just shows how much you still need to learn about design.” I hadn’t a clue that a simple profile drawing did not constitute design—it was the first major slap to my young design aspirations.

I would soon receive direct tutelage from perhaps the greatest designer of the 20th century, when I worked briefly for Charles Eames. While working on the Charles Lindbergh exhibit for the Smithsonian, he scolded me harshly for not listening to the established criteria and going offtrack on my own. The Eames mantra was that the “criteria” was the design and the execution was all about the details and connections. It was said 40 years ago that every person in the civilized world had sat in an Eames designed chair, even if they didn’t know it.