The Shell project prepared by the Compagnie de l’Esthétique Industrielle in 1968: assessment and lessons of the design project that never was

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On the 3rd of May 1967, Raymond Loewy wrote to Monroe Edward Spaght, CEO of Shell International, and convinced him to entrust the Compagnie de l’Esthétique Industrielle (CEI) with a large and global design project. The CEI, founded in 1951 in Paris by Raymond Loewy, led this international project between 1967 and 1974. At the end of the 1960s, the sustained economic growth of France and Europe offered an attractive context for such an ambitious and holistic design program. This Shell assignment also fitted with Raymond Loewy’s previous design achievements. Loewy was known to be one of the founders of Streamline in the United States and he had always been passionate about mobility-related design projects. At that time he had numerous previous successes with major oil companies and his latest BP program had ended in 1967. Two talented and experienced CEI designers had competed with each other to design filling stations, the central aspect of the program. At that time within the CEI, René Labaune was head of Structural Design and Michel Buffet was head of the Retail and Transportation Department. Michel Buffet’s solution won and Raymond Loewy called it MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable). MAYA had previously been proposed by Loewy in the United States. This MAYA design for Shell has already been widely studied, including by Raymond Loewy and Michel Buffet themselves. In this paper, we shed new light on the design project that did not win. It was called Pitched Roof Philosophy (PR-X) and was led by René Labaune who has provided original documents and testimony for this research. His concept was distinctly different to the MAYA solution and it promoted scarcity and recommended discretion. The filling station concept resembled ‘a home that blends into its environment’. We illustrate the complex and strategic role played by Raymond Loewy throughout the whole project. He was the one who approached Shell International’s top management and who closed the deal, in addition to choosing the team within the CEI and recommending the bold MAYA solution. According to René Labaune, Evert Endt and Michel Buffet, the CEI was one of the few design agencies in France able to provide such a holistic design program at the end of the 1960s. Buffet’s MAYA concept was an innovative business solution with a poetic and playful design spirit that has not been adequately recognized by some critics who accused Raymond Loewy and the CEI for being too business oriented at the expense of creativity and sound design.