HORIZONS

Norman Bel Geddes

8 x 10.5 hardcover book with 294 pages and 215 b/w photographs, diagrams, illustrations and plans of theatre designs, commercial design, architectural projects, and general social concepts. First edition of Bel Geddes' stunning survey of modernist design, illustrated throughout with drawings, models and photographs of the author's utopic industrial innovation with chapters on motor cars and buses, railways, airports and airplanes, houses, theatres, restaurants, and more. Photographers include Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, Imogen Cunningham, Ralph Steiner and Francis Brugiere.

Contents:

• towards design
• speed--tomorrow
• motor cars and buses
• railways
• by air tomorrow
• new houses for old
• industrializing the theatre
• architecture for the amusement industry
• restaurant architecture
• what price factory ugliness?
• product design as approached
• unexplored fields for the designer
• in window display the play's the thing
• changing world

An American theatrical and industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes was the first person to seriously apply the concepts of aerodynamics and streamlining to industrial design. To Geddes, streamlining illustrated courage: "We are too much inclined to believe, because things have long been done a certain way, that that is the best way to do them. Following old grooves of thought is one method of playing safe. But it deprives one of initiative and takes too long. It sacrifices the value of the element of surprise. At times, the only thing to do is to cut loose and do the unexpected! It takes more even than imagination to be progressive. It takes vision and courage. "

In 1927, Bel Geddes left theatrical design and began designing cars, ships, factories and railways. He rapidly created streamlined forms for objects ranging from gas-ranges to trains, in addition to a revolving restaurant and, in 1929, a 9-deck amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra, a fully equipped gymnasium and a solarium.

Bel Geddes designed the famous General Motors Pavilion for the1939 New York World¹s Fair, which included the Highway and Horizons exhibit, more commonly known as the "Futurama".

Bel Geddes expounded a philosophy of "essential forms" evolved from their systems of use, in his seminal book Horizons, published in 1932. He helped to establish a new professional niche -- that of "industrial designer", arguing for a closer relationship between engineering and design.

Charles Niedringhaus graduated as one of 5 students in the first graduating class of the Institute of Design in 1942. As a student, he served as Institute Director László Moholy-Nagy¹s asssitant in the Basic and Product Design Workshop, as well as assisting the Director in two seminars on Contemporary Art and Design problems. The student Niedringhaus designed and built a prototype machine dubbed the ³Smell-O-Meter.² This device proved less useful than the machine he co-developed with Nathan Lerner for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school's furniture.

After graduation, Niedringhaus¹ skills in furniture design and production quickly came to the attention of Hans Knoll -- always on the lookout for designers to work for what was then Knoll Associates. Niedringhaus began his long and fruitful career with Knoll when he assisted Herbert Matter with the production of the KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS in 1950. Then Niedringhaus and Florence Knoll were granted a patent on July 21, 1953 for their design of a sofa/daybed on angular steel frame.

Throughout his long career with Knoll, Niedringhaus often acted as an artistic liaison linking the inspired visions of designers such as Isamu Noguchi with Knoll's engineers, draughtsmen, and marketing departments. This confluence of art and business was fundamental to Knoll's identity and success. That same confluence of art and business first encountered as Moholy-Nagy¹s student in Chicago helped Charles Niedringhaus secure his rightful spot in the pantheon of American Modernism.

Price: $300.00
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