on the job


60 SECONDS WITH… STEPHEN BAYLEY


The author, critic and curator, whose latest book Inform Persuade Adjust explores the cultural impact of PR, waxes about class, design and cars


Q1


You’ve written about social classes before. Do you think it’s something we get too hung up on? Certainly, it’s a pre-occupation, but a natural one that we shouldn’t be squeamish about. Civilisation is all about making distinctions. Class is one of them. It’s a game of categories which anyone can - should - play. Socially, I like the competitive thing of being on a precarious gradient.


Who is the most inspirational person you’ve worked with? Q2


The first was Quentin Hughes, a radically old-fashioned Liverpool-Welsh architect-soldier-conservationist who never relaxed his vigilance about the look of things and always found time for conversation (and a glass of wine). The second was Terence Conran, sometimes a difficult man, but, on a good day, a witty hedonist with a wonderful eye. He detests it when people say he invented ‘lifestyle’. But he did and I am very glad.


Which designer or architect do you think has had the greatest effect on modern life? Q3 Q4 Q5


Too many to say, but I am daily grateful for Rudolf Diesel’s Rational Heat Engine, although it may not be universally agreed to be a benefit. I think we should all be very grateful too for that anonymous medieval artisan who created the glazed window.


What was the last piece of design you saw that had a profound effect on you?


I’m not sure it’s about profundity; design, for me, is more the ordinary thing extraordinarily well done. A Coke bottle, for example. I prefer understatement to ostentation. I prefer the everyday to the exceptional. And it’d be tiring to be profoundly affected every hour of every living day.


You’ve written extensively about cars. Can you pick a favourite?


For me, 1959 was a good year for favourites. For mechanical artistry, a Ferrari 250 GT SWB. For ingenuity, a Mini of the same year. For the glorious vulgarian absurdity of it all, a Cadillac Eldorado. The range of intention, expression and achievement in that strange little trinity suggests why cars are so very interesting.


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