Sometimes I am wondering what the Sixties were like. What made them so special? (I was a little too young then). What was it like when Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and the others were around?

A sentence by James Michener from his book "The Drifters" might have captured the spirit of that time:
"Every day there is one of them dying and more of us born" (Retranslated). Wow! Yet things didn´t turn out that way.

Soon the dream was over: Violence at the Rolling Stones Altamont concert in 1969.

"Something seems to have changed at the end of the 60s, maybe it was the loss of Morrison, Hendrix and Janis" Dennis Hopper once said.
And Joni Mitchell (with a smile):" In the mid-Seventies we found out, that we can´t change the world and we can´t change ourselves, so we started to make money".

Also Allen Ginsberg on Bob Dylan´s album "Desire": "1975.Dead protest?"

Jerry Garcia from the "Grateful Dead": "The time in the (70´s) music was basically on 4/4 with a big base drum on the 1s and 3s, so even white people could tell where it was".

John Lennon kept on dreaming that dream: "All we are saying is give peace a chance". Yet people didn´t listen.

Always changing with time but still keeping up that spirit, only a few of them remained, such as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Neil Young ( I recently saw him in concert - a very special experience !)

The Sixties and Seventies are also called the Space Age. In 1964 Artur C.Clarke and Stanley Kubrick had the idea for the movie: "2001 - A Space Odyssey" which was released in 1968.

A year later, man set foot on the moon and Armstrong said those famous words written by Norman Mailer.

The possibility of flying to the moon must have caused an enormous euphoria among mankind and inspired many, not least designers.

However, the next galaxies are far away, 2000 light years at least, like the Andromeda:

http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/background-text/phinterv.txt

(from: stsci.edu)

The Sixties were also the time of discovering the space within us, mind-expansion, spirituality and all. I am not sure if this is in the history books, nor do I know a great deal about it - still, searching for a higher self started to influence all aspects of life. Maybe it was the book from Aldous Huxley "Doors of Perception", the "Esalen Institute" near San Francisco, Timothy Leary, or maybe Asian philosophy starting with this.  

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Countries with rapidly growing economies such as Italy provided the ideal circumstances for designers, who were supposed to be a link between industry and art.
In Italy, the groups Archizoom and Superstudio developed "Anti-Design". Disdainful of the influence the industry took on their work, one of their ideas was not to realize their drafts.
Ironically, only a few years later, at the 1972 exibition of Italian Design in New York, they were already classics.
This is how fast those times were.

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Earlier on, Gino Sarfatti was so obsessed of his work to design and produce lights, he wanted to do it all by himself at his company Arteluce. No co-workers, only helpers were allowed at Arteluce. When Arteluce actually expanded, it was sold to Flos and he decided to set up a shop for stamps rather than working in a big company.

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In 1968, when Anders Pehrson introduced his lamp "Bumling" at a fair, people thought it was a joke. Most of them said it looked like a big chunk -  which is what "Bumling"means in Swedish.
Such fame he reached with that lamp that once a letter reached him that was addressed with "To Mr.Bumling, Sweden" only!

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When  Eero Saarinen gave an interview once, the radio reporter asked him to speak faster, as he did not have a lot of time on air.   Saarinen slowly took up his pipe, lit it and said: "If you do not have enough time, I just say less".

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This is a pic of Vienna (and an unusual lamp) as it looks now:

In his drama "Heldenplatz", Thomas Bernhard writes:  "Austria has reached its lowest point, not only politically, but also culturally and people-wise" (This was in 1988 already!) .

See here a pic of the Valentine at a street campaign against the government (Spring 2000).

One century before, things were different. Vienna was one of the cultural centres of the world at that time.
It was a time when Josef Hoffmann, Josef M. Olbrich, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and many others sat together and talked.

90 years ago, Adolf Loos said, that : "The evolution of culture means removing all ornament from every-day commodities".

In 1910 he built a house near the residency of the Emperor - without any ornaments, of course. The authorities, however, ordered him to incorporate ornaments. A struggle began which would last for 2 years and in the end, Adolf Loos put flower-pots in front of the house and the building was finished!  From then on, the Emperor refused to look out of his window, which faced it.

See here a foto of his "American Bar", which was built in 1906.

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When Walter Gropius came to New York in the late 30´s, the Vice President of the university, he would later teach at, took him on a tour around the city. He showed him the highest skyscraper and explained every detail to him. Gropius didn´t say a word. Only when the Vice-President pointed out that the skyscraper was also fire-proof, he replied: "This is its only mistake".

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Frank Lloyd Wright had to be a witness at court once. The judge asked him for his name.
"Frank Lloyd Wright" he replied. "Profession?", " I am the greatest living architect of the world".
"How could you say that?", a friend of him asked him later on.
"I had to,  I was under oath" was the answer.

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Around 1900, during one of Otto Wagner´s exhibitions, the son of the Emperor went up to him and said:
"Ugly, your concepts. You like those naked houses?"

You might know about today´s value of the original furniture of this house now (The Austrian post savings bank, built by Otto Wagner, 1904-1912).

This is a photo of the place, where he discovered the secret of dreams.

And not to forget Ludwig Wittgenstein: he was a genious. He wrote a philosophy book and found he had solved all philosophical questions there ever were. So he quit philosophy and became a teacher for small children in a little village. ( He did not stay there for the rest of his life). Still, his book was a great inspiration for philosophy.
(What you cannot speak about you should keep silent).

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Finally, Sir Karl Popper:
He said that "All living (creatures) is (are) looking for a better world.

This sounds simple. However, when it comes to designing things accordingly, it is not so simple.
Still,  there were quite a few people who managed to do so.

Here´s a pic of a Buddhist Pagoda. The black dot in the front is a JVC-TV)

Do you know the Zen-Stonegardens? Don´t they have the perfect form?

(Please let me know any stories about designers you might have heard)