Do-It-Yourself Design in Times of Oil Crisis: From Nomadic Furniture to Metamobile (1973–74)

This paper explores some of the consequences of the 1973 oil crisis on Western industrial design. Between 1973 and 1974, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, designers reacted to the uncertainty caused by the energy crisis with an unprecedented fascination for do-it-yourself solutions. This article discusses Victor Papanek and James Hennessay’s Nomadic furniture (1973–74) and Enzo Mari’s Proposta per un’autoprogettazione (1974), produced by Dino Gavina within the Simon International Metamobile series in the same year. The scope of this essay is to understand to what extent this sudden surge of interest in DIY furniture design, in the USA and in Italy, can be explained within the historical framework of the 1973 oil crisis.