viz. - design

New Forms for Old Needs in Norman Bel Geddes’s "House of Tomorrow"

Rachel Schneider — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:43:11 +0000

Walking through the Harry Ransom Center’s excellent Norman Bel Geddes exhibit, one thing that struck me is that while Bel Geddes is particularly famous for his large industrial designs—radios, cars, cities, and stadiums, for example—he also directed his talents towards the intimate spaces of the American home. Before Bel Geddes designed prefabricated homes for the Housing Corporation for America in 1939, or published his 1932 book Horizons, he wrote an article called “The House of Tomorrow” for the April 1931 issue of the Ladies Home Journal. The “twentieth-century style” he describes is one that he sees uniting form and function anew for the needs of the twentieth-century individual—or rather, what he imagines the twentieth-century individual to be.

Image Credit: Screenshot from Norman Bel Geddes's Horizons

Bel Geddes’ design philosophy is evident both within the article and in his manifesto Horizons, published the following year. As Bel Geddes and others saw himself principally as a set designer, he reframes his interest in industrial design as a kind of art for the modern era, where design has greater importance than ever before:

We are entering an era which, notably, shall be characterized by design in four specific phases: Design in social structure to insure the organization of people, work, wealth, leisure. Design in machines that shall improve working conditions by eliminating drudgery. Design in all objects of daily use that shall make them economical, durable, convenient, congenial to every one. Design in the arts, painting, sculpture, music, literature, and architecture, that shall inspire the new era. (4-5)

Bel Geddes here presents himself as an artist, who, like all others, “is sensitive to his environment” (6). He carefully notes the circumstances of life in 1930s America—post-industry, mid-Depression—and argues that they require new approaches to design in all these four phrases. He also works to break down the divisions between these different areas when he argues that “in the point of view of the artist who fails to see an aesthetic appeal in such objects of contemporary life as a railway train, a suspension bridge, a grain elevator, a dynamo, there is an inconsistency” (11). Bel Geddes argues that as modern life has centered increasingly around work, there is a greater need for conveniences, objects that function to promote ease and efficiency. Thus, while late nineteenth century art defined itself through Walter Pater’s formulation of “art for art’s sake,” Bel Geddes sees art in the perfect union of form and function

Visual design is concerned with form, space, color; with the proportioning of solids and voids and the rhythmic spacings of these elements. The governing factor as to what is pleasing to the eye is the idea, which is of an emotional nature—an emotion of pleasure, satisfaction, excitement, exhilaration, stimulation. (18)

What’s interesting here is how much emphasis Bel Geddes in this quotation places on the emotions of the artist. Elsewhere in Horizons, when he predicts that twentieth-century art will detach itself from galleries and statuary, he describes what he sees as the continuity between the art of the past and tomorrow: “The work of the artist always has been, and will be, a distinctly individual product—the antithesis of ‘machine-made.’ Fundamentally, the artist is an emotional person in that he relies more upon his feelings and intuitions than upon reasoning” (11). It’s easy to think that functional design must be based upon reasoning, but Bel Geddes flips the script to emphasize emotion, feeling, and intuition—language typically associated with the feminine.

Image Credit: The Harry Ransom Center

However, does publishing “The House of Tomorrow” in Ladies Home Journal necessarily imply that the twentieth-century figure he imagines is a feminine one? There could be a reading of the article that would point out the fact that the house is pink, that would consider the intertextual relationship between the drawings and discussion of design with the inset poem, “Hunches” by Elizabeth Boyd Borie, that would connect Bel Geddes’ intuitive designs with feminine thinking and feminine spaces. Yet such a reading might be incongruous with the Ladies Home Journal’s history, a magazine which published not only the muckraking work of Jane Addams but also Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural designs. This widely-read magazine, like Bel Geddes himself, often contemplated questions of function, questions Bel Geddes emphasizes in “The House of Tomorrow.”

In fact, Bel Geddes quickly establishes the reasons he sees for a change in home planning and design: “The keynote of all the good contemporary work is that it must perfectly suit its ultimate purpose. We have returned to simplicity because we have realized in this age that the overornamentation and elaboration of the past are not in keeping with us today. We are more forthright people than were our forefathers, we bother less with forms and conventions, and so it is surely fitting that we carry our ideas into our homes.” This description of the modern American individual is one perhaps that sounds suited equally to our age as to the 1930s; he neatly transitions from thinking about the people to the houses that should shelter such folks.

Image Credit: Alcade / The Harry Ransom Center

His solutions include moving the bedrooms from the front of the house to the back, nearer to the sunshine and expansive yards that are beautiful to behold. Even as he proposes to build more with steel girders and concrete, which might sound ugly, he notes that “in pursuit of light and air, since we are not bound down by any arbitrary limits, we can make our windows stretch the whole length of our rooms,” and likewise turn our roofs into flat spaces suitable for gardens. The emphasis he places on light, convenience, and the unity between interior and exterior design all bespeak his interest in making the home a place that does not trap its inhabitants but allows them “to take full advantage of all the innumerable aids to more convenient living that have been evolved in the past few years.” This emphasis on function is much in line with the kinds of rhetoric used in 1940s and 1950s advertising that encourages women to buy appliances to help with their domestic labor, but what’s refreshing is how ungendered his language is throughout the piece. If Bel Geddes expects the modern house “to assure complete satisfaction of every material and psychic need of the owner” (138-9), it seems that ownership is shared equally between the men and women in the space. Women have since the Victorian period been seen as the domestic goddesses, but Bel Geddes contemplates a twentieth century where their needs and interests extend beyond the interiors outward. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, considering that Bel Geddes changed his name to include the “Bel” when he published his early writings alongside his first wife and collaborator Helen Belle Sneider, but Bel Geddes’s futurism offers new forms for old needs for women as well as men.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

The Lesser Known Bel Geddes: An Assessment of the Harry Ransom Center Exhibit

Chris Ortiz y Prentice — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:43:29 +0000

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

The Divine Comedy, scene rendering: In a path of blue-white light Beatrice steps down from her chariot to meet Dante, 1921-1930

Norman Bel Geddes lived a sixty-five years that connect two worlds, the Victorian past of 1893, the Atomic Age of 1958. His work reflects and resists that trajectory. The current exhibit on Bel Geddes at the Harry Ransom Center (UT Austin) divides his career into phases or stages of development. A highly creative childhood segued into a successful career as a stage and costume designer for New York Theater. Of all his work—in industrial design, in architecture, in “futurism”--his set and costume design remains my favorite. But in an important sense, Bel Geddes never left the theater.

In his thirties, Bel Geddes painted some wonderful watercolors of his stages and costumes. The famous one is of his most ambitious—indeed wildly ambitious—production of The Divine Comedy. There’s a great story attached to this endeavor. Bel Geddes recounts in his autobiography a period of creative fallow. He had set his desk against a blank white wall, so over-active and confused was his imagination. He says he learned every crack, contour, and bump of that white wall. One day, looking up at one such barely perceivable irregularity of texture, it appeared to expand and swirl. Soon it was a horrible vortex. Bel Geddes rose from his desk, stumbled backwards, crashed against the bookshelf and fell to the ground. As he recovered from this vertigo he recognized that his eyes were fixed on a book that had fallen next to him. It was Dante’s great work. Bel Geddes opened a page at random, so the story turned myth goes, and decided to employ his imagination in a massively scaled, and complete, production of The Divine Comedy.

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Figures of dancers for Palais Royal Cabaret, 1922.

The watercolors from this period of wonderful creative exertion should strike to the heart of any fan of science fiction, anime, or fantasy. It was in this same foundational period of Bel Geddes creative life that he decorated the Palais Royal Cabaret, one of Paris’s most fashionable spots between the wars.

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Costume design for Gypsy Woman in The Miracle.

Bel Geddes turned next to industrial and interior design. I find his work of this period—including a range stove that influenced design for decades—understated, sleek, modern. Seltzer bottles for 1939:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

In this period, Bel Geddes designed an energy-conserving house, which was less practicable than provocative. Bel Geddes, the stage man, persisted throughout his career.

It was in the booming forties and fifties that Bel Geddes’s ambitions could be matched by material resources. It seems to me that Bel Geddes was better when pressed by limitations. Ambition turns monomaniacal when it is paired with fame—which Bel Geddes had by then come by—and seemingly unlimited resources. Bel Geddes started modeling cars of the future, tanks for the army, a cruise-liner, an ocean-liner of the skies, baseball parks, and of course the Futurama for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Image Credit: GM Media Archives, General Motors LLC.

General Motors, Futurama Spectators, ca. 1939

The massive Futurama could never again be matched. I think Bel Geddes understood that. The works of his middle and old age show a returning humility. Understated Bel Geddes, like understated Dickens, is a rare and fine commodity:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Prototype case for Emerson Patriot radio, ca. 1940-941

Very likely Bel Geddes could not do otherwise than imagine the future. I think there is a sort of futuristic old-fashionedism about Bel Geddes at his best. This style, which shows up in his stage and costume design, in his industrial design, in his home design--should be distinguished from the old-fashioned futurism, the supermans and skyscrapers that dominated the sci-fi pulp, of the 40s and 50s. Bel Geddes is an old-fashioned futurist when he does Futurama. But at his best, Bel Geddes was, I suggest, a futuristic old-fashionist, as in this never-completed plan for the British Imperial Hotel in Nassau:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Job No. 684, Colonial Hotel - Nassau, 1954-1956

Futuristic old-fashionedism: the will to conserve mated with the will to create. One among many strands of the modernist tapestry.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

Conspicuous Radios

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Before creating the “Patriot” radio, Norman Bel Geddes had long been involved with traditional, cabinet radio design. And while many of his cabinet radios follow the robust, furniture-esque aesthetic common to radios of the day this radio, created for the New York World Fair, 1939, breaks that mold. The “Patriot,” rather than simply blending into the décor of a room, forcefully makes itself known. This radio, rather conspicuously, embodies a particular patriotic flair. Most prominently, it features the seven red and six white stripes of the United States flag. Its knobs feature stars, and in most models red, white, and blue are the predominate colors.

Image Credit: Tube Radio Land

It would be unfair, though, especially in retrospect, to label the “Patriot” radio as something like nationalistic kitsch. Even if it was produced in order to “create an optimistic and useful emblem of American technology, industry, and identity” (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History) it carries with it an unabashedly forceful design that cannot be brushed aside. Rather than merely carrying the trappings of or a symbol for a nationalistic spirit this radio operated, specifically as an object, to promote itself more than any nationalism. So that while a flab might be mobilized to act as mere symbol this radio carries with it more weight. And unlike the various wood-paneled cabinet radios that worked to hide themselves, to blend into parlors, the “Patriot” radio works actively captures a user’s attention. The music it relays becomes a sideshow.

Image Credit: The Harry Ransom Center

Geddes also designed a portable shoulder radio for Philco in 1946. This predates the mass production of transistor based devices by roughly ten years. That it still relied on vacuum tubes rather than the significantly smaller transistors accounts for its relative size. Even taking tubes into consideration, though, this shoulder mounted radio imagines a future where music is nearly ubiquitous. In some ways, though, this imagined future isn’t ours. While our current musical commonplace is almost painfully private—headphones on every head and earbuds in every ear—Geddes’ shoulder radio trends toward both a publicly embodied object and a public sound. The radio, with its brilliant white speaker, draws the eye, so that publically it works on multiple senses. It presents mobile music and spectacle both, and we can begin to see this radio as the ancestor to the shoulder mounted boom boxes of the eighties.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Turning toward our current musicscape, though, and the exceedingly common iPod (and its progeny) there’s a vastly different design principle in play. These devices are conspicuously inconspicuous. For all of their sleek lines and glossy screens and solid weight they shrink away as objects. Instead, they present themselves, present their use, as accessories, devices, prosthetics for a particular attitude. They work exactly as they should, beautifully when used how they are intended to be used, but they do so underhandedly. These are objects that bottom from the top.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Upending the familiar hierarchy of use these objects become the users and the humans are cast as device. And while it isn’t anything uncommon for human’s to be used by objects—I think the case could be made that the outcome of good design is that the human user becomes the used—the iPod, especially, and its descendents are particularly pernicious in their deception. They order not only a specific relation between object and human but organize a breadth of relations. Our encounters with music (economically, situationally, emotionally, environmentally) are shaped now, in large part (whether or not you use an iDevice), by the force of Apples music player. And they do it by simply tucking into things—your pocket, palm, car, stereo, desk. They elide their own presence and appear as nothing more than a ‘natural’ extension to an already configured human body.

Art + Architecture: Diana Al-Hadid’s “Suspended After Image”

Lisa Gulesserian — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:01:16 +0000

Image Credit: Sandy Carson, taken from CultureMap Austin

For those of us interested in architectural sculpture, the last few months in Austin (especially on the UT campus) have felt like gifts from the art gods. I’ve already written about one exhibition (the recently-closed El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa show at the Blanton Museum of Art). This month ushered in a second sculptural exhibition. New York sculptor Diana Al-Hadid’s Suspended After Image, a site-specific installation at UT’s Visual Arts Center’s Vaulted Gallery, is a feat of texture and height. As a fantastic example of architectural art, Al-Hadid’s most recent work for the VAC asks viewers to circumambulate the sculpture and ponder the relationship between memory, built objects, and humanity.

Image Credit: Sandy Carson (cropped)

Memory inspired the entire installation. Al-Hadid was stirred to create her sculpture “Suspended After Image” after seeing a Gothic painting of the Visitation which featured an intricate cloak. Working with twelve UT art assistants, Al-Hadid turned her memory of a two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional structure. “Suspended After Image” has a certain sinuousness to it—a river of faux-fabric permanently flows over more than half of the sculpture. I’m tempted to think that the sumptuous river of cardboard, wood, plaster, and metal evokes the way that memory works. Much as fabric folds and rivers flow, we remember in spurts and starts. In a recent article on Al-Hadid’s installation at the VAC, Austin blogger Michael Graupmann reviews the artist’s creation process: “images she sees often get stuck in her mind, (‘made sacred’) and stay with her until she transforms them through her work.” The curvy form of Al-Hadid’s piece seems to mimic its creation process.

Image Credit: Sandy Carson, taken from CultureMap Austin

And yet there is also a sharp jaggedness to the whole thing—paint globs create skyscraper-like structures that rise out of the ground. It’s safe to say that “Suspended After Image” is a work that mimics our built environment, as Al-Hadid’s creations often involve architectural tools and methods. For this particular piece, Al-Hadid used a 3D modeling program and CNC router to plan its structure. Intricate lattices and elaborate stairs need to be modeled, whether they are used for art or architecture.

Image Credit: Sandy Carson (cropped)

And behind every architectural design is a person. Al-Hadid’s sculpture doesn’t allow its viewers to forget the human element in architecture and art. While walking around the sculpture (which urges us to do so from multiple viewpoints, even from above in the VAC’s Mezzanine), we’re surprised that the artist planned for every angle to be seen by an ambulatory audience. The most surprising part of Al-Hadid’s “Suspended After Image” is the supple plaster body that is either disappearing into or emerging from the stairs at the bottom of the sculpture. Is the built environment oppressing this body into oblivion? Is it growing human loins? I’m unsure myself. But at least the human (in the sculpture and outside of it) isn’t forgotten.

See Diana Al-Hadid’s “Suspended After Image” yourself at the Visual Arts Center until March 10^th, when another Artist-in-Residence piece will take its place.

Re-Covering the Classics

Cate Blouke — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:09:40 +0000

Contest winning re-designed book cover by Philipp Dornbierer for The Fox Is Black

Elizabeth's post this week (about the Great Gatsby game) reminded me of a design contest I stumbled upon recently. TheFoxIsBlack.com, a blog about web and graphic design, has begun a series of monthly competitions inviting participants to redesign the covers of classic literature. Last month was The Great Gatsby (winner pictured above), and this month it's The Lord of the Flies. (The deadline is February 25th, so there's still time for you designers out there to get a shot at the $100 Amazon gift card).

Re-designed book cover by Matthew Gore for The Fox Is Black

It's interesting to think about the interaction of text and cover art, how the cover can shape our perception of and approach to a book. Aside from just being pretty cool to look at, the entries are fascinating to compare and could be used as a conversation starter in classrooms. For example, comparing the image above (Matthew Gore's entry) to the one below (Ian O. Phelan's entry). Though both feature the color green, what can we infer from the choice in hue? Also, the image above is more masculine and violent (with the broken glass), positioning Gatsby is the central figure, whereas the image below depicts a female figure and focuses our attention on Daisy.

Re-designed book cover by Ian O. Phelan for The Fox Is Black

How to write code for images

noelradley — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 21:45:29 +0000

This page is meant to provide the basics of how to code images for the web. This link is a starting point for learning to code images.

Obama's Design

LaurenMitchell — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:31:15 +0000

As far as design goes, Obama has already won the presidency according to this New York Times article.

Apparently continuity in design is crucial to a campaign in the same way that a consistent message is, and Obama has been out-doing McCain and Clinton at least in this arena. Branding expert Brian Collins says that “From the bold ‘change’ signs to their engaging Web site to their recognizable lapel pins, [the Obama campaign has] used a single-minded visual strategy to deliver their campaign’s message with greater consistency and, as a result, greater collective impact.” Obama is also able to send a coherent message via the multitude of different media sources that we’re using today. It doesn’t stop there though--even Obama’s font is hip.

He’s using Gotham, which is modeled after the font used on signs at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. According to Collins, it has a “blunt, geometric simplicity” but also manages to be “warm.” I don’t know about all that, but it looks good to me.

I also found it interesting that he’s been able to personalize his brand through the use of state-specific buttons that fuse a state’s abbreviation letters with his familiar “O” symbol.

I agree with Collins in that it’s appropriate for a man who is clearly in tune with the power of rhetoric to also understand the power of visual rhetoric and design.

Analysis of political campaign posters

John Jones — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:41:34 +0000

The New York Times has posted a slideshow by Ward Sutton, “Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos,” analyzing the posters and bumper stickers of presidential candidates.

via Boing Boing

MIT suing Gehry over impractical design

John Jones — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:29:50 +0000

Last month I posted a link to Slate’s photo-essay on functional architecture. That essay emphasized the trend in architecture toward functional buildings over flashy—and often impractical—works like those Frank Gehry is known for.

Now, MIT is suing Gehry for his design of the Stata center, pictured above.

The school asserts that the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

Text or Image, why must we favor one over the other?

LaurenMitchell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:00:32 +0000

I just saw a talk given by Katherine Hayles here at UT. Hayles is arguing that literary criticism is missing something when it ignores the material aspects of a text. She calls for a new form of literary criticism that she terms media-specific analysis. This form of criticism views the material aspects of a text as contributing as much to the meaning of a text as the text itself. She showed two examples of electronic texts that make visual arguments at the same time that they make textual arguments.

One was Lexia to Perplexia by Talan Memmott. This text takes control away from the reader by using text that disappears suddenly, text that becomes unreadable when you roll the mouse over it. Essentially, the movement of the mouse can unexpectedly change what is on the screen. The words and images are fused in this text. The create significance together because the words are part of the images.
The other text that Hayles showed during her talk was Nippon by Young-Hae Chang. Nippon uses moving text and music at the same time. Half the screen is red with white English words and half white with red Japanese characters. The words and characters move at a readable pace and then too fast to be read. It alternates between the two. The size of the letters also changes as well as the method by which they appear on the page. The text is also synchronized with the music. So this text has audio, visual, and textual characteristics which contribute to its meaning.
These two texts are examples of a fusion of visual and textual rhetoric. One is not subordinate to the other in the way that captions are to images, or images serve merely as examples of what is being discussed in a text.

Functional architecture

John Jones — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:21:53 +0000

Slate has posted a slide show featuring functional architecture, emphasizing the function and versatility of buildings over Gehry-esque flashiness. This article from Good Magazine makes a similar point.

Invasion of the fashion snatchers: copyright or class conflict?

Jillian Sayre — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:51:10 +0000

This week the Village Voice reported that Anthropolgie is joining the legion of designers suing Forever 21, the chain that (re)produces trendy looks for the masses (read: their clothes are really cheap). Anna Sui campaigned against the store during Fashion Week (she handed out t shirts with the store's owners on a "wanted" poster) and Diane Von Furstenberg is lobbying Congress to "improve" copyright law when it comes to fashion.

DVF dress on the left, Forever 21 on the right

The chain, these designers argue, is too close for comfort on some of its clothes and it seems like the haute couture is determined to keep the hoi polloi out of their closets. But what is at stake here? Currently, you CANNOT copyright a dress, and many are suspicious of this debate because fashion has always looked to others for inspiration. So the designers focus on the details - like fabric instead of cut or resemblance to their trademark (Gwen Stefani). DVF's lawyers are actually arguing that someone might think that they are buying an original when they go for these knockoffs, but anyone paying $33 instead of $350 knows that this isn't just about getting a great deal. I think this has more to do with social capital than actual capital - no one I know who shops at Forever 21 (and I know a few) is choosing the store over a designer boutique: they don't have access to those modes of acquisition. Perhaps what scares these designers the most is the accessibility argued by the availability of their designs. By claiming copyright infringement and a "take back the dress" mentality, these designers are not only making claims of ownership over the clothes but over the clientele as well.

“A Soviet Poster A Day” delivers propaganda with commentary

John Jones — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:10:39 +0000

“A Soviet Poster A Day” serves up images of Soviet propaganda posters with commentary. This site would be a great resource for anyone studying propagandistic images. Here’s an entry on the Five Year Plan:

Let's accomplish the plan of great deeds!
Klutsis G., 1930

Industrialization in Russia took off in 1929. It was based on a 5 year plan, which implied building of more than 1500 of industrial sites: factories, powerstations, mines, refineries. This was an ambitious plan, which was made even more impossible to carry out because of Joseph Stalin’s call out: “Five year plan in four years!” Nevertheless, the industrialization proved to be extremely successful with heavy industry output to increase 3 times in only 4 years. The zero-level unemployment level was reached in 1930. And although the first Five year plan was not implemented fully in time, during the second one Soviet Union surpassed all world countries except the USA in gross industry output. The country was turning from agriculture to industry as the main source of its power and wealth.

This poster was created by Gustav Klutsis - a pioneering photographer and major member of the Constructivist avant-garde in the early 20th century. He was one of the apologists of photomontage technique, he managed to bring to an impressive level.

via boingboing

Also via boingboing is this list of satrical, photoshopped propaganda posters from Worth1000. Most are quite funny. (Warning: some of the posters are mildly not suitable for work.)