Design-wise, the twentieth century started with a bang. Victoriana, with its heavy decoration and fanciful flourishes, was the vogue. Industrialization brought mass production, removing form and emphasizing function. Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts fought back with handmade ardor. Soon Art Deco retaliated with streamlined efficiency.

It's been that way throughout the century--the decorative then the minimalist then back again. Just as the nature of design has changed, so has its role. You may not even realize it, but if you're trying to balancing home and work, design can help keep the scale level. A well designed home office lessens the divide between what's "home" and what's "work" and makes it easier to accept the papers and computers and file cabinets that crowd what used to be personal space. Because of the merging of home and office space, it seems that design has taken on a new immediacy for many of us.

We wanted to know more about the relevance of design, so we called some design experts--curators, authors, educators, practitioners--and asked them two questions.

The first concerned how design's role has changed over the years. Does design play a greater or lesser, or just different, part in our modern lives?

The second was more difficult. Which items, we asked, stood out in their minds as the design icons of the twentieth century? Which ones epitomized for whatever reason this long and incredibly diverse 100 years?

This month, and then again in December, we'll present 10 of their selected icons (in no particular order), reaching our "20 of the twentieth century."

Frank Maraschiello, furniture specialist at Sotheby's
Connor Kalista, curatorial assistant, 20th-century design, Art Institute of Chicago
Susan Yelavich, assistant director, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum
Katherine McCoy, design professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
Peter Loughrey, owner, L.A. Modern Auctions
Kathryn Hiesinger, curator, decorative arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Donald Albrecht, independent curator
Aaron Betsky, architecture and design curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Sohrab Vossoughi, president, ZIBA Design, a Portland, Oregon-based industrial design firm

Frank Maraschiello, furniture specialist at Sotheby's
"People are much more aware of design that they ever were in the past," contends Maraschiello. "Everybody can buy pieces that are architect-designed for specific use in the home, right down to the Michael Graves teapot.

To Maraschiello, that whimsical 1980s teapot marks a turning point where designer goods--real designer goods--became instantly accessible and affordable even to those who couldn't afford the services of celebrity architects. "In the old days, the only way you could enjoy furnishings by Joseph Hoffman or Charles Rennie Macintosh or Frank Lloyd Wright was to commission them to build your home," he observes.

To see what Graves hath wrought, you need only look around the nearest strip mall. Graves himself has created a line of kitchen appliances for Target, Martha Stewart's making beds at K-Mart, and Philippe Starck is offering $10 toothbrushes and $30 wastebaskets. "There's been a real commodification of design," Maraschiello observes, without saying whether that's good or bad.

But because the century spans so many design trends, Maraschiello, like many, was hard-pressed to choose just one icon. Looking back to earlier decades, he thought of the Tiffany Lamp. "The name 'Tiffany' may be the most recognizable decorative artist ever," he says. "And I think the leaded and stained glass lamps of between 1890 and 1920 in particular sum up the Tiffany studio's work and its impact. Every lamp with a glass shade out there these days comes down to Tiffany."

The Tiffany lamp is a smart choice for another reason. It nicely sums up the burgeoning industrialization of the country at the turn of the century in that it merges a new technology--electricity--with artistry. Dragonflies are the most popular motif, with sculptured bronze bases shaped like trees or flowers enhancing the organic effect so important to decorative arts of the time.

Connor Kalista, curatorial assistant in 20th-century design, Art Institute of Chicago
"Design began to assume a greater social role when mass reproduction made it a more easily acquired status symbol," comments Kalista. "Manufactured design also made it possible for design to simultaneously address needs such as utility and value, not just beauty."

These thoughts lead Kalista to cite the skyscraper as the 20th-century icon of design. "It was the monument to industrialization, from the first phase of its construction, to its actual existence, right down to its one day being razed." Being Big Shoulders-centric, Kalista chooses the 1974 engineering feat of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill--the Sears Tower--as the epitome of the glass skyscraper.

At 110 floors, the building was technically inventive. Nine independent units of varying heights--only two reach to the top, at 1450 feet--are stacked to form a whole, giving the tower its famous notched profile. "It was the tallest building in the world for two decades and it's the most dominant building of the Chicago skyline," comments Kalista. "What more can I say?"

Indeed. But other experts--many of whom also noted the contributions of the skyscraper--have cited the much earlier New York icons, the Woolworth, Chrysler, and Empire State buildings. Still, Chicago, not New York, is generally credited with being the birthplace of the skyscraper, especially since as Kalista points out, architects were treated to a blank slate after the Great Fire of 1871.

Susan Yelavich, assistant director, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum
"To me, the role of design has most changed in the way we describe it," says Yelavich. "Design in its current usage is where we're talking about objects and the process of creating those objects." To Yelavich, the object that best exemplifies this movement is one near and dear to the hearts of many home workers. "The I-Mac is the first popular technology product that is visually sexy," she says. "It very successfully brings together those two design elements, the project and the process. After all, the computer is nothing but a box. The I-Mac takes that and makes it even more prominent and more culturally acceptable by making it look like a piece of jewelry. It doesn't try to hide its technology, but very cleverly accents it."

The I-Mac announced its colorfully adorable presence just about a year ago, and has won rave reviews from all sectors for bringing vivacity and playfulness to a grey and beige industry. Its fanciful palette--dubbed blueberry, strawberry, tangerine, lime, and grape--became an instant best-seller, with plenty of peripheral makers quickly springing into action and producing colored external hard drives, mouses, and keyboards.

Katherine McCoy, design professor, Illinois Institute of Technology. "The biggest change in the nature of design over the course of the century has been the development of the field itself. There were no design professionals, except for architects, 100 years ago," says McCoy. "It was only during the first three decades or so that we saw industrial design and graphic design develop as specializations. And when these fields emerged, there began to be a real consciousness about the need to make ordinary products appealing and usable in the marketplace."

One of the first--and most successful--applications of this new philosophy was the Henry Dreyfuss black Bakelite telephones designed for Western Bell in the mid-1950s. "Just about everyone under the age of 30 grew up with this telephone," McCoy says. "It quickly became the very image of what we think of as a "phone," a real standard." Unlike previous phones, this one was more ergonomically fit for the human hand and ear, she adds, and much more easily mass-produced. "It's the perfect idea of design coming into play in the manufacture of an everyday object and in actually accelerating the entry of that product into the arena of the commonplace."

Peter Loughrey, owner, L.A. Modern Auctions
"When I was growing up, the Eames molded plastic chair was everywhere," he says. "And more so than with other icons, the fiberglass shell has remained pervasive--we still see it everywhere." Husband-and-wife team, Charles and Ray Eames, designed the incredibly light chair using new materials in new ways as part of their ongoing quest to create high-style furniture that was at once comfortable and affordable.

And their durability and longevity is evident not only in today's schoolrooms and airports, where the chairs and their descendants play host to many a patient sitter, but in modern icons such as Herman Miller's Aeron chair. It's that respect for the human form--Charles used Ray's posterior as a model for the "potato-chip' shape of the seat--that may be the Eames' greatest legacy, says Loughrey. "In producing a very thin chair with no stuffing that was nevertheless incredibly comfortable, the Eames made a radical statement," he says. "If any icon is recognizable and everlasting, and also proves to have real usability, this has got to be it."

Kathryn Hiesinger, curator, decorative arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art
"Furniture has gone through so many changes during this short 100 years, challenging our ideas over and over again of what a 'chair' is and what a 'couch' is," says Hiesinger, "that I really have to look to that broad category as the source for my icon. Given that, if I had to name one period, I'd say the Bauhaus furniture of the 1920s and 1930s because it was so innovative in both its form and its use of materials."

Bauhaus--like its concurrent movement, Art Deco--came about in reaction to the florid, heavily decorative Art Nouveau furniture of the turn-of-the-century. But whereas Art Deco strove for a handcrafted simplicity reminiscent of the much earlier French Empire period, Bauhaus was thoroughly modern. Its emphasis on mass-produced quantities and machine-age materials--with a firmly artistic, "designer" bent behind it--resulted in furniture the likes of which had never been seen before. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's chrome and leather Barcelona chair and Marcel Breuer's sloping tubular steel chaises are with us till this day, though, and they're likely to be with us another hundred years from now.

Donald Albrecht, independent curator
"The big news in design during the 20th century is that it eventually became irrelevant." Instead, he adds rather provocatively, "television became a design object, this huge amorphous thing that takes over any kind of environment it sits in. You can't help but notice it, whether you're at the airport, at a bar, or sitting in your living room. Because it's gone beyond object and entered the realm of 'presence,' it's truly the one design icon that stands out most in my mind."

Although Albrecht's talking about the essence of TV, and not really its specific design, several early televisions could objectively be defined as "icons." From the huge early console versions that situated the TV as a piece of wood furniture to the early '60s bubble-shaped ones that spoke of a groovy Jetsons-era object to the Sony Watchman, the television--like the laugh-track infused programming it emits--has changed and kept up with its times. Whether it's been the dynamic influencer or the benign reflector of those times, however, is one question that's likely to remained unanswered.

Aaron Betsky, architecture and design curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
"I could name all of the standards--the Corbu chaise, Mies' Barcelona chair, the Apple Mac, the plywood and fiberglass chairs of the Eames," says Betsky, "but since the 20th century is so much about mass production and branding, I really feel that it's the classic logos such as Levi's and Coca-Cola that are most symbolic of the century." If the notion of what's iconic in design is that of something that embeds itself into our consciousness and via a memorable look entices us to buy, well, then, what does that better than an enduring and distinctive logo? And the two that Betsky cites are especially appropriate since they have been around for nearly the entire century.

Sohrab Vossoughi, ZIBA Design
"From its beginnings in 1947 right through to the end of the century, the Volkswagen Beetle has stayed with us as a great car that exemplifies the principals I value as good design," says Vossoughi. "There's a humanity, a connectivity with the user. How many items, no less cars, have such a place in our hearts and souls?"

First conceived in 1923 by Adolf Hitler (well, nothing's perfect....), the VW Bug was supposed to be the "people's car." The manifestation of Hitler's dreams only came into being after the war ended, when the fledgling Volkswagen factory produced just under 9,000 of the cars, designed by Ferdinand Porsche, who went on to build some of the world's most legendary sports cars.

Hitler's vision eventually became the best-selling car ever, with more than 20 million sold. Its famous advertising campaign of the 1970s ("think small") is itself a classic, representing the first time a product poked fun at itself. Reintroduced in updated--and even cuter--form last year, the by-now $18,000 car instantly assumed new popularity. "Through all of its models, the Beetle retained what I call a 'delight' factor," says Vossoughi. "I think that comes through in its roundness, in the fact that it seems to have a face. It's a great example of how, in the middle of the century, design evolved from being about beautiful objects to something that offered wonderful experiences."

JoANN GRECO is a contributing editor to Art & Antiques, where she writes frequently on decorative arts.