What is a Phaidon Design Classic?

A Phaidon Design Classic is an industrially manufactured object of aesthetic value and timeless quality. A wide range of international design-world insiders, including academics, critics, historians, curators, journalists, designers and architects were asked to select industrially manufactured objects that conform to Phaidon's definition of a Design Classic.

Phaidon selected the Maclaren Baby Buggy as a Design Classic because it is:

• A definitive model of lasting influence and enduring significance;
• Innovative in its use of new materials and unites technological advances with beautiful design;
• Characterized by simplicity, balance and purity of form;
• Perfect in its design and has remained unchanged since its creation in 1967.

Here's what Phaidon has to say about Maclaren:

Maclaren 1967 to 1976
Source: Phaidon Design Classics, Volume One, 001-333

At first glance, the Maclaren Baby Buggy appears to be little more than a stripy canvas deckchair on wheels. But it is a design that revolutionized the world of baby carriages by a retired aeronautical engineer who had worked in the aviation industry. The buggy's British inventor, Owen Finlay Maclaren, after struggling to carry his granddaughter's unwieldy stroller through an airport, decided to use what he had learned from aviation to bring buggies into the jet age. This is most visibly evident in the Maclaren's double wheels, which allow for better steering than a single wheel and were inspired by the landing gear of jet planes. More importantly, Maclaren applied the aeronautical industry's principles of lightweight construction to his new design. Consequently, the buggy is built around a tubular aluminium frame that weighs only 3 kg/6.5 lb. And, thanks to its two X-shaped hinge mechanisms (one at the back and one underneath), the buggy folds away as neatly as landing gear, to a size much smaller than any buggy that came before. Where previous strollers had simply folded in half, Maclaren's folded in half and in on itself (like an umbrella) as well. Indeed, so innovative was Maclaren's transfer of technology, that the original he created still looks remarkable modern and the company he founded remains one of the market leaders today. When the buggies first went on sale in 1967 Maclaren produced 1,000 in a stable he had converted into a workshop. By the time of his death in 1978 more than 280,000 had been exported.