Industrial design needs to clean up its act and save the rest of us the trouble
When did planes get so filthy? If passengers don’t hand over their garbage to the crew before landing, then all the pressure falls on a cleaning team that’s given just minutes to prepare an aircraft for its next journey. It’s why instead of having an engrossing book and toiletries in your carry-on, it might be wiser to take a duster and a miniature vacuum cleaner with you.
On a flight from Verona to London on Monday – and look at me all swanky in business class – the seat was crisp-strewn, the packet still in situ, the front pocket filled with empty drink cans. This is so commonplace that crews rarely apologise, they just take the rubbish from you without comment – it’s how life is now my dear.
You should be especially attuned to the potential need for a garbage-picking shift when you go on a long-haul journey. I recently found an apple core in an in-flight sock in my spot (a chocolate on my pillow would have been preferable) and, when I went looking for a dropped pen lid under my seat, I discovered a lost world of teaspoons, salt sachets and enough crumbs to bread a schnitzel. But there’s a bigger thing going on here – the failure of industrial design.
I went to a talk last year where an architect spoke about the potential touchpoints between cutting costs and doing good. For example, in say a hospital or industrial building where there will be tiled surfaces, he works out well in advance how to cover a wall without any tiles being cut (saves time, no wastage, good for the environment). But he also talked about something else that I now realise is vital – getting cleaning crews in at an early stage. Where will they keep their floor-buffing machines, their brooms? And, more importantly, will they be able to keep this space spotless without resorting to cherry-pickers or days of scrubbing?
I wonder how many times the makers of airline seats, the bosses of airlines, have emptied out packets of crisps on a new design, dropped a spoon (and a phone or two) into its recesses and asked a cleaning crew what they make of this contraption. Can they clean it in the seconds that they are given? In the meantime, if you don’t want to sit in an update of Tracey Emin’s bed, don’t forget to have Mr Sheen as your travel buddy next time you fly.
And Verona airport. It used to be cramped and a bit chaotic. Now they have lavished millions on a new terminal – and it’s charmless. The new infrastructure is part of the preparations for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics (this will be a key gateway) and, admittedly, it’s not all finished but you have to hope that it’s going to move on from its current blandness. Simple design details seem to have been forgotten. The plaster on the corners of walls, for example, has already been knocked off to reveal the metal framing underneath. Did the architects ask the building-maintenance crew for their advice?
Sometimes things go awry because of badly managed value engineering and poor designs – but worthy legislation is also to blame. Apart from turtles, does anyone actually like the screw cap being tethered to a bottle? I’m not bothered about how they scrape your nose. My issue is that they don’t work. They show signs of incontinence – bottles leak in bags if you attempt reattaching said linked lid. Or they flip position mid-flow, causing liquid to dribble down shirts. I’m sticking to bottles of rosé with corks this summer as I take a stand on this issue.
But there are some things in life where design is all. The perfectly planned wedding last weekend in Lana, Südtirol, of two former colleagues who met at Midori House (thank you, Nolan and Hyo). The hotel that we stayed in, Villa Arnica, where every element was considered and precise, restrained and beautiful. The sets at the Kylie Minogue concert on Tuesday. The book, The Anthropocene Illusion, by the photographer Zed Nelson, which I finally saw at a launch on Thursday (we previewed this amazing project in The Forecast). All moments when someone thought about how people would feel in a space or as they turned a page. Moments when good design won the day.
