Bruce Archer; industrial designer (interesting)
Hyfler/Rosner
Mechanical engineer who established design as an academic
discipline
20 May 2005
Bruce Archer had just qualified as a chartered mechanical
engineer when the Festival of Britain took place. "I was
saved," he said later. "I heard of industrial design. I
could be an artist and an engineer at one and the same
time." Archer was to spend most of his working life in
schools of art and design, more than 25 years of it at the
Royal College of Art. Promoting the use of systems-level
analysis, evidence-based design, and evaluation through
field testing within industrial design, he led a
multi-disciplinary team which employed these methods in
practice - working on, among other things, the design of
what became the standard British hospital bed.
He was eventually head of a postgraduate research and
teaching department at the college, where he identified that
scholarly enquiry in design was just as vital as it was in
the arts, the humanities and the sciences, and argued that
design warranted its own body of scholarship and knowledge
no less than conventional academic disciplines. He proposed
that modelling be recognised as the fundamental competence
of design, just as numeracy underpins mathematics and
literacy the humanities and he believed that - like both
literacy and numeracy - it should be widely taught.
Archer trained a generation of design researchers, showing
them how the procedures of scholarly research based on
well-founded evidence and systematic analysis were as
applicable in design as in the more traditional academic
subjects. For design practice, he argued there was a need
for method and rigour, and for decisions to be recorded and
explained so that they could, if necessary, be defended.
Today, practitioners are familiar with these issues through
the requirements of quality assurance, while in academia the
research assessment exercise has pushed even the art and
design community into taking research seriously. Thirty or
forty years ago, however, Archer's ideas were radical and
pioneering, and the very existence of his research
department - in an art college - controversial. It was his
own force of character and his persuasive ability to argue
his case with absolute clarity and conviction that ensured
the department's survival, and provided him with the
opportunity to demonstrate that design is not just a craft
skill but a knowledge-based discipline in its own right.
Leonard Bruce Archer was born in London in 1922. His father
was a regimental sergeant major in the Guards and his mother
a dressmaker and a trained amateur artist. During his
schooldays, he wanted to be a painter, but he was
academically bright and not allowed to continue with art
beyond 15. His school certificates were in entirely
scientific subjects. The Second World War intervened before
he could go to art school or university and he joined the
Army, but left after failing to meet their physical
requirements. After giving him an aptitude test, the
Ministry of Labour said to him, as he recorded wryly: "You
seem to be a bit of an artist at heart. You can become an
engineering draughtsman."
So he did. He worked as an engineering designer in
manufacturing, designing jigs and tools and later process
plant. He attended evening classes for years at Northampton
College, London (now City University), where he trained as a
mechanical engineering designer, eventually gaining his
Higher National Certificate in mechanical engineering. He
became a member of the Institution of Engineering Designers
in 1950, and in 1951 was awarded its national prize for the
best thesis on design. In the same year, the year of the
Festival of Britain, he joined the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers.
In 1953 he left full-time employment in industry to set up
his own consultancy and started teaching evening classes at
the Central School of Art and Design, becoming a full-time
lecturer there in 1957. He began writing articles for Design
magazine, promoting what he called "a rational approach to
design".
At a party given by a colleague from the Central School, he
was approached by Tomas Maldonado, Director of the
Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm, and offered a job acting
as a bridge between two rival factions at the school -
"scientists" and "artists". Archer moved there in 1960 as a
guest professor to find two opposing belief systems. The
ergonomists and psychologists believed in analysis and
experiment as the basis for design, whereas the stylists
were mostly concerned with form, and had evolved design
rules about proportion, colour and texture which they
thought of as a logical system for creating the cool,
minimalist look for which Ulm became famous. Archer tried to
convey each side's belief systems across the divide, but
each group thought he had aligned himself with the other.
Maldonado had left Ulm even before Archer arrived, and he
found himself isolated. Later he said that learning how the
two cultures thought was a highly formative experience.
In 1961 Misha Black was appointed Head of Industrial Design
at the Royal College of Art and asked Archer to lead a
research project, "Studies in the Function and Design of
Non-surgical Hospital Equipment", funded by the Nuffield
Foundation. Archer returned to Britain in the summer of 1962
and, with a small team, identified four urgent design
problems: a receptacle for soiled dressings, a means of
reducing incorrect dispensing of medicines to ward patients,
the need for a standard design for hospital beds, and a way
to prevent smoke control doors being routinely propped open.
The team presented its report to the Nuffield Foundation at
the end of the first year. Unfortunately,
They hated it. They'd expected beautifully presented designs
for funny-looking cutlery for hospital patients to use in
bed. That was what art schools did.
Nuffield refused to fund a second year, leaving Archer and
Black stunned. Undaunted, Archer took a job at the Eldorado
ice-cream factory in Southwark, loading ice-cream into
refrigerated vans every night and working at the college
unpaid during the day. Eventually, commercial funding was
found for the soiled-dressings receptacle, and in 1963
Archer gave up his evening job when support was obtained
from the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London to study the
medicine- dispensing problem. A radical solution was
devised - a medicine trolley on wheels which could be
securely padlocked to a wall when not in use.
The hospital-bed problem was also re-examined. The King
Edward's Hospital Fund became the King's Fund and was
seeking a major exercise to promote its new nationwide role.
It took on the standardisation of the hospital bed. Archer
was appointed to a working party, and in due course won a
contract for a standard specification and a prototype
design. After widespread consultation, evidence gathering
through direct observations, and extensive field trials
using mock-ups and test devices, the specification was
adopted by the King's Fund and became a British Standard; a
successful prototype was also developed at the college for a
commercial bed manufacturer. The fire-door problem was
solved by the use of electro-magnetic door-holders wired to
the fire alarm, which released the doors when the alarm was
triggered.
So solutions to all four of the original projects were
delivered. In the process, Archer had demonstrated that work
study, systems analysis and ergonomics were proper tools for
use by designers, and that systematic methods were not
inimical to creativity in design, but essential contributors
to it.
Generalising from his experiences in these and other design
projects undertaken by what became the Industrial Design
(Engineering) Research Unit, Archer presented his ideas at
design conferences and wrote the paper for which he is
perhaps most widely known, Systematic Method for Designers
(1965, first published in a series in Design). A 1968 MA
thesis, "The Structure of Design Processes", was published
by the US National Bureau of Standards in 1969. Both papers
were translated into several languages, and Archer continued
to receive requests for reprints for a decade or more
afterwards. Many of his ideas were brought together in 1971
in Technological Innovation: a methodology, a paper
published by the Science Policy Foundation.
Later that year, the Rector of the Royal College of Art, Sir
Robin Darwin, called Archer into his office and "gruffly
told me I was to become a professor in my own right,
independent from Sir Misha Black and with my own
department". Soon Archer's Department of Design Research had
a complement of more than 30 researchers. As they marched
daily into the college's Senior Common Room, they
represented quite a large body of people, and were not
entirely welcomed by staff from other departments. Archer
himself reluctantly became what he described as a
"travelling salesman" to ensure a steady flow of research
contracts.
After two or three years, there was a change of direction
following a college decision to turn the Department of
Design Research into a postgraduate teaching department like
every other, with funding from the Science Research Council.
Design graduates arrived to learn how to conduct research,
while others from disciplines like psychology and
mathematics learned to apply their skills to the discipline
of design.
Archer's own lectures ranged widely across the philosophy of
science, ethics, aesthetics, economics, innovation,
measurement and value theory, and were delivered with
directness and enthusiasm. The department itself was
organised in a highly systematic way, with procedural
memoranda setting out agendas for every type of meeting
including structured progress reviews for students. Every
event was meticulously recorded in Archer's daily log.
He was instrumental in the move to see design taught as part
of the school curriculum, campaigning to influence the
Department for Education and Science and running short
courses at the college for schoolteachers. He launched a
Department for Design Education at the college, giving
teachers the opportunity to undertake master's level
research into design.
In 1984, when Jocelyn Stevens was appointed Rector of the
Royal College of Art, he peremptorily closed the Department
of Design Research. It had operated successfully for exactly
25 years. Archer himself was appointed Director of Research
with college-wide responsibilities. Although he was
approaching retirement age, his knowledge of the workings of
the college and his academic credibility placed him in great
demand, and Stevens thought nothing of contacting him at any
time of day or night for advice.
After retiring in 1988, Archer ran in-service training
courses about research for art and design institutes and was
active as president of the Design Research Society. In 2004,
a dinner was held at the Royal College of Art organised by
the society at which he was presented with its Lifetime
Achievement Award. Archer himself, though frail, made a
typically forceful and eloquent acceptance speech in which
he acknowledged the contributions of his many co-workers,
and contrasted the skills of decision-making and advocacy
which typify design, with those of enquiry and analysis
which are essential in research.
Sebastian Macmillan
Leonard Bruce Archer, engineering designer: born London 22
November 1922; Lecturer, Central School of Art and Design
1957-60; Guest Professor, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm
1960-61; Research Fellow, Royal College of Art 1961-71, Head
of the Department of Design Research 1968-85, Professor
1971-88 (Emeritus), Director of Research 1985-88, Honorary
Fellow 1988; CBE 1976; married 1950 JoAnn Allen (died 2001;
one daughter); died London 16 May 2005.