International Design Conference in Aspen: The First Decade

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You You You You You A Bright tent in a high meadow Meeting place for ideas Aspen for more than ten summers home of the International Design Conference Walter Pepke dreamed it up Characteristically he also made the moves and listed the support paid the costs to convert dream to reality Eero Saarinen designed a tent amphitheater and with the help of many other people dedicated to the idea IDC was a going concern in Aspen But why Aspen you might ask if you hadn't been there Other places undoubtedly match Aspen's attributes at least the ones pertinent to creatively oriented conclaves It couldn't be primarily the Old West aspects Certainly other Colorado towns loom larger on the historical scene This was amply demonstrated and definitive volume published in 1880 Which made much of some of the places you will pass through on the way to Aspen? Places like Denver of course and Silver Plume and Georgetown and Leadville Leadville was Colorado's second city in 1880 with 25 ,000 people Aspen's day was yet to come and It's still coming long after the digging is all done in Leadville and Georgetown and Silver Plume Coming to Aspen is still picturesque no matter how you negotiate And in the first ten summers of IDCA some 5 ,000 people made the dramatic trek one way or another But it wasn't the spectacular nature of the approaches that attracted them to Aspen they came to look To talk and to listen They came to be enlightened and to be entertained They came to get together and to get away They came for some or all of these reasons to Aspen They came to see and hear and talk with 159 panelists and to each other on such related subjects as communication human values direction of the arts Design and human problems the corporation and the designer in Ten years there were ten people who were involved in the development of the city Ten themes divided into 30 cycles These ten themes and 30 cycles and 159 panelists subdivided still further into an undoubtedly impressive but happily unrecorded number of smaller discussions Not necessarily related to the scheduled conference theme So much for the starkly statistical data and IDCA's first decade more important What is an Aspen design conference really like? What makes it go? The second question can be answered quickly the international design conferences work mostly because a relatively small number of devoted people Apply large amounts of their own time to make them work Since the permanent IDCA organization was incorporated in 1955 The executive committee elected every year by the membership Plans and governs each conference and provides the continuity of far -ranging effort Which keeps the organization moving ahead between conferences? Although programs are planned months even years in advance There is much to be done on the conference scene Breakfast meetings of the executive committee produced the first official business of each conference day These invariably expressed the purposeful informality which has come to be the Aspen style Conference sessions start at 930 in the tent attire is informal for the most part Humor is good as a rule Anticipation is keen or should be for no conference day is without its own special contribution to the Aspen story The feeling of which we hope to convey in this film Perhaps excerpts from many mornings across the first decade will impart something of the scope of IDCA It should be noted that the necessary departure from context has been carefully affected to minimize any detriment to the original communication Most conferences start with brief tributes to the setting and I find it To be here and to experience this charged atmosphere that is the design conference is a Simulating experience very soon.

However, the scheduled business has taken up But more words inevitably come before the recommended action Some of them relate not surprisingly to design and that is the good design Really good design can help a corporation achieve anything it wants to achieve including profit I Have not seen any example of where market research has destroyed good design in our company Maybe we haven't applied enough others as if anticipating future inquiry on the subject a Panelist five years earlier made this unequivocal statement We cannot help but be subjective if we are to be created We cannot help but fumble and broke most unscientifically if we are to create another panelist in another conference corroborated this judgment in his own way I think the biggest mistake a designer can make is that he thinks he is a businessman and Forget that he is an artist.

I Would like to suggest that we take a short break right now Interesting exhibitions are featured at every conference Ranging from the work of design students to examples of the creative efforts of current panelists Some delegates enrich their break periods with generous drafts of bracing Colorado air before reconvening for the morning's second round The special point of view of the imaginative businessman was frequently exemplified by the statements of Walter Pepke to the conference In this instance on the subject of leisure activity and the happiness it should promote I think you'll remember modest Gary once said that man only want to be happy.

This would be rather easy to accomplish But most people want to be happier than their neighbor and that's very difficult because we believe our neighbor to be happy and we are I think however the Aristotelian Thought which is undoubtedly the minds of many of us is Happiness is largely the Growing or the development to your highest potential Echoing the need for greater development another panelist made this point well, they the leadership on the one hand in our society and Group any a horrible form of group adjustment on the other we have to recognize the fact that most of our leadership Particularly in terms of leisure is now coming not from people but from institutions the institutions of TV a comic book and other destructive forces which are destructive not in themselves But in the way in which they're being used Professional standards and ideals must envision something Beyond what even the best in the society or the best of the group now has While discoursing on the need for intelligent city planning an earlier panelist reduced the design problem to architectural terms architectures most urgent mission is to convert chaos into order change Mechanization from a tyrant to a slave and thus make place for beauty where there's vulgarity and ugliness suburbia with phony Respectability and genuine boredom effectively isolated from the world by traffic jams And so a mosaic of morning sessions ends and the tent disgorges its assemblage for lunch a period of great possibilities gastronomical and sociable Directions initiated in the tent are often maintained in the colorful variety of luncheon settings provided by Aspen This extracurricular discussion tendency is not limited to restaurants.

However any convenient wall patch of green sward or a poolside table Converts easily into a site for significant conversation In The afternoon the IDCA show moves out of the big tent and goes on the road With each of the day's panelists playing 45 minute stands in each of three seminar locations This decentralization permits less formal mutual investigation of the day's theme cycle by panelists and smaller segments of the general conference membership flanked by a seminar leader the panelists takes the questions as they come and Delegates get the opportunity to speak up for or against attitudes communicated by conference leaders By the time panelists have made all the seminar stops They have pretty tangible evidence of popular conference response to their points of view After seminar sessions IDCA delegates have some three hours for dinner and other forms of relaxation before the evening schedule These sometimes take the form of visits and interesting Aspen homes and studios Every year there's a big poolside party at the Hotel Jerome a high social point of Aspen week Restaurants galore take it from there and if you observe reasonable discipline on timing You will arrive at the Wheeler Opera House for the first of the week The night's films or slide presentations Filmfare at international design conferences has developed to the point of making the evenings add up to a veritable film festival Part of each program relates to the succeeding days conference cycle But additional selections are screened simply because they are of the caliber likely to be appreciated by the conference membership Wednesdays are traditionally unscheduled conference wise After two days of comprehensive consideration of the IDCA theme Conferees and panelists are set at liberty for the pursuit of happiness Which abounds in many seductive guises among the rocks and rills of Aspen Pleasures of the water rushing or otherwise appeal to many Others take the cable -threaded high road recently and reluctantly abandoned for the season by legions of skiers This time of year you may ride down with no fear of derision The Another Favorite junket is a highly scenic drive to the famed husky kennels at toklah The recreational opportunities are too richly variegated to catalog here Suffice to say Wednesdays in and around Aspen are memorable indeed Come Thursday the conference is back at its regular stand and the membership has a second wind with which to pursue the remaining portions of the theme It may be that there is somebody in this audience who has an idea.

I don't know if there is such people are very rare By Friday the subject has been sufficiently prepared for final assault by the full panel We have here on the platform the first panel of the conference Human resources of this conference the final act and often the highlight of each conference is the summary speech All of these have been noteworthy One in particular is often quoted that of England's Jacob Bronowski who summarized the 1957 International Design Conference Here are excerpts.

There would be no design problem If there were not machine production With the enormous markets to which it caters now the designers problem in this sense is really very simple and That is that it's often easier to create the illusion of fulfillment Then to offer people a real fulfillment but the designer has to choose between handing out something as a drug or as a food Now the difference between a drug and the food is the drug it creates the illusion of well -being and The food really adds to your well -being About this I would only say one thing that I am very sorry for drug addicts But what I should really hate to be is a drug peddler Well, that's pretty much the way IDCA works Each conference differs from the others in many small ways and in a few big ways But any and all of them are rewarding to attend There is little doubt that both design and designers have made progress since the first conference in 1951 It is the aim of this organization to strengthen continuously not only design and designers But all of the positive aspects of designs relationship to our total culture in the decades ahead

Identifier

F.2010-02-0342

Date Of Production

circa 1961

Abstract

Founded in 1950 by Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke, the Aspen Institute promotes the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and non-ideological setting through regular seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives. The institute's annual International Design Conference in Aspen was launched in 1949 in a then obscure former silver-mining town west of Denver, Colorado. Paepcke sought a forum "where the human spirit can flourish", with the goal to bring designers and business leaders together to foster understanding of what design could accomplish. With strong New Bahuas ties, Paepcke hoped that the conference would help business leaders recapture what he called "eternal verities": the values that guided them intellectually, ethically, and spiritually as they led their companies. This film was shot by Container Corporation employee, Rhodes Patterson, and looks back at the first ten years of the conference.

Run Time

0:20:33

Format

16mm

Extent

740 feet

Color

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Genre

Documentary

Form

Short

Subject

Design
Industrial design
Art
Nature

Related Collections

Rhodes Patterson Collection

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Colorado ➜ Aspen

Main Credits

Patterson, Rhodes (is director)

Additional Credits

Graff, Hans (is cinematographer)

Patterson, Rhodes (is cinematographer)

Jorstad, Stanley (is cinematographer)

Lunde, James (is cinematographer)

Massey, John (is contributor)

Graff, Hans (is editor)

Graff, Hans (sound)

Patterson, Rhodes (is writer)

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