Design

The TGV can fairly claim to be the most technologically and aesthetically innovative design of the Seventies. For the French, it conjures up a time when the blithe optimism of the "thirty glorious years" of rapid economic growth had not yet evaporated. It was the brainchild of two designers, Roger Tallon and Jack Cooper, recruited to help modernise Europe's railways. From design to production, the TGV took over twenty-five years to develop. Cooper and Tallon had to use new materials, rethink the shape of the train and revolutionise people's attitudes to rail travel. When the TGV was finally launched in 1981, at the same time as the Paris-Lyons route was inaugurated, it was a sensation. It combined new shapes and colours with technical innovations resulting in improvements in speed, comfort, safety, stability, sound-proofing and so on. The angular profile of the front carriage - its streamlined, aerodynamic "nose" - lowered the train's centre of gravity and allowed it to travel faster.

The lounge chair designed by American husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames in 1956 has come to symbolise the affluent 1950s. As soon as you looked at it, you pictured yourself relaxing with a drink in one hand and a copy of the New York Times in the other. The Eames wanted the chair to have "the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt". But the chair also reflects the prevailing Cold-War mentality of 1950s America, which the Eames' designs and advertisements actively and naively fed into. The plywood and black leather lounge chair initially owed its fame in part to the Eames' friendship with film-director Billy Wilder, but it has since become a star in its own right and a permanent feature of the design landscape - suitable for both chic office and private sitting-room, and an ideal psychoanalyst's chair.

The Swatch is an ideal subject for a deconstruction of the phenomenon of contemporary design. It was technical innovation - a reduction in the number of internal moving parts from 100 to 51 - that enabled the makers to slash production costs and manufacture the Swatch in greater quantities. But it owed its almost instant success to a carefully-thought-out look and clever advertising slogans that tuned into the mood of the design-conscious, "greed is good", consumerist Eighties. The Swatch was presented as an expression of individual identity, personalised time and the fast lifestyles typical of the decade.

The Vespa may be a global success-story, but it was created in a climate of post-War hardship. Its voluptuous curves and wasp-waist remind us of the New Look and the economic recovery of the 1950s, but it was actually designed in 1945, when Italy needed to provide its impoverished population with a means of transport that was cheap to buy and run. Its revolutionary design, in which the engine was concealed inside a "self-bearing" frame, was based on aeronautic principles. Comfortable, economical, and seductively rounded, the Vespa was immediately popular with the Italians. It was not just an industrial product, but a symbol of Italy, especially when it began to be exported all over the world. Its eventual screen stardom (in 'Roman Holiday', 'La Dolce Vita' and later 'Quadrophenia') was the logical outcome of an encounter between an object and an era.

The Leica is unique in the history of twentieth-century design - in terms of longevity, if nothing else. Designed in 1914 by an engineer named Bernack, it went into mass production in 1925. The ten-year interval between design and production reflects the uncertainty of a period in which war was followed by a series of political and economic crises. As the first camera that allowed the photographer to take snapshots, the Leica ushered in the photo-journalism of the late 1920s, and with it a totally new way of seeing the world.

At the Geneva Car Fair in February 1961, the Jaguar stand was knee-deep in journalists and car enthusiasts. Over 180 orders were taken for the E-type - a new model which combined staggering performance with extravagant shapes and revolutionary technical features. The vibrant pop culture of the Swinging Sixties, with its focus on youth and the breakdown of class barriers, was about to burst into life, and the costly E-type was rapidly to become a symbol of freedom.

Designed by Dieter Rams in 1956, the Braun Phonosuper SK55 won the 10th Milan Triennale prize in 1957. It was the first time it had been awarded to a German-designed object: German manufacturing had a reputation for quality rather than good looks. The Phonosuper did away with the idea that German design was ugly and boring. Its designer, Dieter Rams, started a vogue for right-angles and monochrome and became the leading light of the Ulm Design School, whilst German household objects soon outstripped the previous generation of pioneering American designs.