NORMAN BEL GEDDES: AN EXHIBITION OF THEATRICAL AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS
Jennifer Davis Roberts

Jennifer Davis Roberts: NORMAN BEL GEDDES: AN EXHIBITION OF THEATRICAL AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS. Austin: Michener Galleries/Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 1979. First edition. A very fine softcover book in stiff, printed wrappers. Unmarked, but a deaccessioned copy from the Bel Geddes Archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas.

8.5 x 11 softcover, perfect-bound catalogue with 60 pages and 26 b/w photographs, diagrams, illustrations and plans of theatre designs, commercial design, architectural projects, and general social concepts s culled from the Bel Geddes Archives.Includes footnotes, chronology, bibliography.

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 Worldıs 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.

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