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The Ice Palace That Melted Away: Restoring Civility and Other Lost Virtues to Everyday Life
With The Ice Palace That Melted Away, Bill Stumpf, the designer of the first ergonomic chair, addresses the symbiotic relationship between design and the way we live, the often deadening effect of technology, and his hopes for a more humane future. As a designer associated with Herman Miller, Inc., for more than twenty years, Stumpf has been thinking about the profoundly positive or negative effect design can have on our culture. He is both an idealist and a pragmatist, and his wry, anecdotal style gently reveals his shrewd observations about American customs and values. Stumpf is convinced that good design can create the right atmosphere to inspire learning, rehabilitate criminals, and generally lift our spirits. Since technology has succeeded in distancing us from the real experiences of life and such former pleasures as travel, in this facinating book he proposes a playful redesign of the Boeing 747 and a jaunty carriage-like taxicab to put us back in touch with travel as it once was. But it is an event s
uch as the construction of the ephemeral ice palace in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the winter carnival--a source of joy and pride to adults and children alike--that encapsulates the idea of play, which Stumpf feels is essential to all our lives.
This provocative book asks whether we might want to do something about our ever-declining levels of "comfort, hidden goodness, play, personal worth, and helping others" to make our future society a truly civilized one.
uch as the construction of the ephemeral ice palace in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the winter carnival--a source of joy and pride to adults and children alike--that encapsulates the idea of play, which Stumpf feels is essential to all our lives.
This provocative book asks whether we might want to do something about our ever-declining levels of "comfort, hidden goodness, play, personal worth, and helping others" to make our future society a truly civilized one.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published September 22, 1998
37 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 22, 2022
The best designers aren't the ones that make pretty things, they're the ones who help us realize the beauty in things we take for granted. This book was a great way to open up my perspective yet again to some of the great things all around us.
October 12, 2017
I picked this books up knowing nothing about it, other than it was in the design section of the bookstore. It seems Stumpf is a fairly big name in the design world. Mainly famous for an office chair.
Anyway, I think he is pushing for a deeper mean for “Design”. He might have said about living in general that it is important not so much to have “A life well lived”, but instead “A life well designed”, although I kind of think he felt the two were part of the same package.
I think he means to say that good design comes from observing real things and real people before making any change.
…George Nelson told me long ago, “Study Life, not just design” Pg. xiv
The biggest intellectual stretch is that in order to put the “civility” back into “civilization” you are forced to be a designer. And designing and living in a civil world require awareness at every level of life, large and small, with the small things perhaps being a foundation that cannot be ignored
To preserve civility and even our civilization, we must become aware of, and attentive to, the great meaning in small gestures. Pg. 84
So he is definitely expanding the idea of what “design” is.
…I should say that by design I mean the process both physical and mental by which people give order to objects, community, environments, and behavior. Like many hard-to-define but profoundly important activities, design is both art and science. It aims to make our existence more meaningful, connect us to natural realities, show the advantages of graceful restraint, infuse serious work with playful humor, extend human capacity-physical and emotional and spiritual. Designers make ideas into things. Pg.5
He doesn’t just mean making our individual lives more meaningful, he means all of civilization. And this all sounds great and I agree, in principle. But throughout he is an optimist and I just can’t see people voluntarily putting curtains on jail cells and treating difficult others with compassion and kindness. I just do not see it happening. I agree that the end result would probably be a better world, but I think most of humanity and definitely the political forces in the U.S. are just too short sighted to make room for designs that consider the lives of people who would cause them to be taxed more.
He offers some very nice thoughts on a range of things and he often ties them to a philosophical point. For instance here he endorses being environmentally conscious not because it is good for the planet but for aesthetic reasons.
Ironically, at least for me, environmentalism is not the only motivation behind the idea of making things that last. It’s civility or humanism. Time wasted, material wasted is not the only point of this story. It is more about living versus consuming a life. Pg. 51
Even though it is not a heavy handed book on design there are many design insights (In my humble opinion).
Design is much more than talk or sketches or plans, which almost any person can engage in. Design, like music, offers up its true meaning and significance only in performance. Pg. 135
You can tell he comes from an earlier era, because he has an objection to consumerism that now borders on the quaint. After all, we now know that we prosper only when everybody is all buying stuff all the time.
The late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr writes that “in the end, consumption is not a heroic enough ideal” to sustain a culture. Sooner or later we will have to wake up… Pg. 42
We need a new ethic: replace consumption with play; finding an enduring and sustainable way of coexisting with the environment and one another; remove the tether of debt; lose the fear of being unfashionable. Pg. 4
Like I said, it is all so quaint now. He yearns for civility, compassion, community, and a big sense of shared purpose with others that. But in the age we all know that any of that requires money and he never touches that area. Who will pay for these curtains he wants in the Mayberry type jails? And who will continue to pay for these temporary Ice Castle when businesses don’t feel charitable?
That said, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Being the pessimist I am, I just don’t see a path to achieve his life affirming design.
Below is my counterpoint...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
W.B. Yeats
Anyway, I think he is pushing for a deeper mean for “Design”. He might have said about living in general that it is important not so much to have “A life well lived”, but instead “A life well designed”, although I kind of think he felt the two were part of the same package.
I think he means to say that good design comes from observing real things and real people before making any change.
…George Nelson told me long ago, “Study Life, not just design” Pg. xiv
The biggest intellectual stretch is that in order to put the “civility” back into “civilization” you are forced to be a designer. And designing and living in a civil world require awareness at every level of life, large and small, with the small things perhaps being a foundation that cannot be ignored
To preserve civility and even our civilization, we must become aware of, and attentive to, the great meaning in small gestures. Pg. 84
So he is definitely expanding the idea of what “design” is.
…I should say that by design I mean the process both physical and mental by which people give order to objects, community, environments, and behavior. Like many hard-to-define but profoundly important activities, design is both art and science. It aims to make our existence more meaningful, connect us to natural realities, show the advantages of graceful restraint, infuse serious work with playful humor, extend human capacity-physical and emotional and spiritual. Designers make ideas into things. Pg.5
He doesn’t just mean making our individual lives more meaningful, he means all of civilization. And this all sounds great and I agree, in principle. But throughout he is an optimist and I just can’t see people voluntarily putting curtains on jail cells and treating difficult others with compassion and kindness. I just do not see it happening. I agree that the end result would probably be a better world, but I think most of humanity and definitely the political forces in the U.S. are just too short sighted to make room for designs that consider the lives of people who would cause them to be taxed more.
He offers some very nice thoughts on a range of things and he often ties them to a philosophical point. For instance here he endorses being environmentally conscious not because it is good for the planet but for aesthetic reasons.
Ironically, at least for me, environmentalism is not the only motivation behind the idea of making things that last. It’s civility or humanism. Time wasted, material wasted is not the only point of this story. It is more about living versus consuming a life. Pg. 51
Even though it is not a heavy handed book on design there are many design insights (In my humble opinion).
Design is much more than talk or sketches or plans, which almost any person can engage in. Design, like music, offers up its true meaning and significance only in performance. Pg. 135
You can tell he comes from an earlier era, because he has an objection to consumerism that now borders on the quaint. After all, we now know that we prosper only when everybody is all buying stuff all the time.
The late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr writes that “in the end, consumption is not a heroic enough ideal” to sustain a culture. Sooner or later we will have to wake up… Pg. 42
We need a new ethic: replace consumption with play; finding an enduring and sustainable way of coexisting with the environment and one another; remove the tether of debt; lose the fear of being unfashionable. Pg. 4
Like I said, it is all so quaint now. He yearns for civility, compassion, community, and a big sense of shared purpose with others that. But in the age we all know that any of that requires money and he never touches that area. Who will pay for these curtains he wants in the Mayberry type jails? And who will continue to pay for these temporary Ice Castle when businesses don’t feel charitable?
That said, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Being the pessimist I am, I just don’t see a path to achieve his life affirming design.
Below is my counterpoint...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
W.B. Yeats
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews