Those Designing Europeans

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The quintessential Danish master is the founder of Dansk, Jens Quistgaard, 55, who still does the original designs for products that are now turned out in factories from Sweden to Japan. He regards the designer's job as one of almost Rousseau-like simplicity. "I believe that as much of nature as possible should be brought into your nest," says Quistgaard. "You should have as much around you as you can to remind you of good craftsmanship."

Another of the country's leading designers currently is Acton Bjorn, 64, who heads his own firm and has designed such non-hauteur items as a beer bottle for the Moote Cordonnier brewery in France, an electric iron for General Electric, even a special lightweight toilet seat for use in hospitals throughout Scandinavia.

ITALY: CARS AND KITCHEN SCALES. The professional automotive designer probably commands higher status in Italy than anywhere else. The undisputed heir to the tradition of the late Pinin Farina and Nuncio Bertone is a prodigious creator named Giorgietto Giugiaro, the son of a church gilder. Giugiaro went to work for Fiat at 17 and designed his first complete car, the Alfa 2000 Sprint, when he was only 21. At 36, the head of his own firm, Ital Design, Giugiaro has more than a score of auto designs in his gallery of achievements, including the new generation of post-bug Volkswagens, Ghia's classic De Tomaso Mangusta, the Fiat 850 Spider and a new South Korean car.

At Giugiaro's modern new plant in Moncalieri near Turin, 150 staffers design not only cars but also whole automotive plants, one more sign that designers increasingly think in aggregate rather than discrete terms. For the new South Korean car, Ital Design technicians prepared plans for an assembly line, machinery, tools and parts down to nuts and bolts, complete with precise calculations of the cost. Explaining this fascination with integrating design and production, Giugiaro says, "By the time I visualize the lines of a car door, say, I already know what it will cost to manufacture in terms of man-hours."

That philosophy would probably not be disputed by Ettore Sottsass Jr., 57, one of Italy's most versatile industrial designers. Best known for his revolutionary design of Olivetti's Valentine typewriter in 1969, the rumpled, droop-mustachioed Sottsass still devotes most of his time to that company's office systems and machinery but also creates ceramics and glassware for other European clients.

A wide variety of useful products has come from the drafting board of Marco Zanuso, including hairdryers, radios and kitchen scales.

FRANCE: TOUJOURS COUTURE. France has produced first-rank individual designers, some of whom created their most notable work abroad. Raymond Loewy, at 81 the dean of French designers, has lived for more than 50 years in the U.S., where he has produced hundreds of ideas, including the classic "double-fronted" 1953 Studebaker, the new Exxon corporate logo and the living quarters for NASA's Skylab. Next year the Smithsonian Institution will honor Loewy's work with a retrospective exhibition that will eventually be seen in Moscow as well.