June 1922 was an exciting month in the period known as Modernism. News about daring adventures and innovations fueled the imagination and aspirations of people, regardless of their class, religion, or country. The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen set out on an expedition to the North Pole, the aviation pioneer Henry Berliner demonstrated a helicopter prototype, and the American President Harding became the first president to use radio broadcasts.

During that time, in Chicago, a competition was announced by the Chicago Tribune corporation, a newspaper publisher, for architects to submit proposals for "The world's most beautiful office building."

To this day, the Tribune's bold call for proposals is striking in its daring attempt to qualify a winning submission using a subjective measure. "Beauty" is after all, in the eye of the beholder. The image above includes some of the submissions to the competition. The wide range of approaches reflects all the major design philosophies of the time, philosophies that are still relevant today:

• Proposal A: The skyscraper is inspired by Gothic architecture dating centuries back, a style which was used to construct some of the largest cathedrals ever built, such as the Notre Dame in Paris.
  This is a juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern--an intricate brick layering, flying buttresses, and other traditional design elements, all for show. None of them actually perform weight bearing or support role unlike the original elements in giant medieval cathedrals. An invisible, state-of-the-art steel skeleton takes care of that. Instead, these elements support a design that aims to transpose the symbolic meaning and magnificence of those towering cathedrals to a commercial skyscraper. Elements so closely associated with religious settings are conjured to grace the secular, yielding an association that equates the two.
• Proposal B: While somewhat similar to A, the proposal provides a very different experience. The tapered shape and flat surfaces extenuate the structure's broad shoulders and the building's projection of modernity, confidence, and stability. This is very much the image that the city of Chicago has adopted for itself.
• Proposal C: Two very different approaches sharing a daring, out-of-the-box concept that generates a strong response even today. In the first, a giant Greek column, the design strips out all elements of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and leaves a single motif in the form of a giant, ridiculously massive Doric style column. The second concept, inspired by the contemporary excitement about rocketry is shaped like a giant cone that is reminiscent of a rocket.
• Proposal D: This concept was conceived by architect-designers who spear-headed the very influential Bauhaus movement. This was perhaps the only proposal that was driven by a very strong, ideologically infused philosophy of design and of the role of design in the lives of people.

In the end, proposal A won, and the building has been gracing Chicago's skyline since the completion of its construction in 1925. Thinking about these proposals, an interesting question to ask today, nearly a century after the competition, is which of these proposals has actually withstood the test of time, and has the winner indeed been the most beautiful building in the world? 

Modernism was a turning point in the approach to the role of design in creating an experience of the new in buildings, products, and wearables. Modernism was a philosophy and a movement that swept the world with the excitement of endless possibilities. Paul Klee's work, Tweeting Machine, shown in Figure 2, hints at the more sinister implications of experience in a design-heavy technological age. It is as relevant today as when it was painted in 1922

People have been creating amazing artifacts of great design value, and thinking about design philosophy and process for thousands of years. In recent centuries, industrialization, technological breakthroughs, and mass production have greatly popularized design thinking and philosophy, restoring the interest in questions such as:

• Should the designers believe in, stick to, and apply a single design philosophy to guide their entire design work, regardless of what they are asked to design?
• Should the designers be agnostic to design-philosophy and use any design approach that best fits the product they are asked to design?

Few designers are in a position that allows them to practice the first option, but the philosophical debate among practitioners is still lively. Naturally, designers are drawn to design approaches that fit with their personal preferences.