Information About Newest Technology

Stylistic term applied to the expressive use of modern technology, industrial components, equipment or materials in the design of architecture, interiors and furnishings. It was first employed in print by Joan Kron and Susan Slesin in magazine articles of 1977. High Tech described the then-fashionable style of decoration using out-of-context, brightly coloured elements of industrial design (e.g. factory lamps, warehouse shelving, office chairs, work-benches, duct-work, glass bricks etc) in domestic interiors and shops. In their book High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Source-book for the Home (1978), however, Kron and Slesin cited a number of buildings, most notably the Centre Georges Pompidou (1971-7), Paris, by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, to add weight to their argument that 'the industrial aesthetic in design ...is one of the most important design trends today'. By 1980 this building (see PARIS, fig. 14) had become the standard exemplar of High Tech architectural design and remained a monument of definition thereafter. The bright colours of its exposed ducts, its transparent escalator tubes hung on the exterior of its boldly exhibited structural system and its general air of technological optimism made it a convincing large-scale demonstration of the Kron and Slesin aesthetic.