xvi, 233 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm
Type:
Biography
History
Biographies
Place:
United States
Date:
2018
20th century
Notes:
CHM copy Purchased from the Cooper Hewitt Endowment.
Contents:
Becoming a Practical Visionary: Bel Geddes's Youth and Early Career -- Transforming Audiences: Stage Design to Industrial Design -- Horizons: Publicizing the Visionary Designer -- A Machine-Age Architecturalist: Planning the Factory, Service Station, and the Mass-Produced Home -- Streamlining: From Imagined Ideal to Commercial Reality -- Consumer Research: Imagining the Ideal Consumer, Developing a Popular, Modern Aesthetic -- The Production and Consumption of Model Worlds: Futurama and 'War Maneuver Models' Exhibition, 1937-1944
Summary:
Norman Bel Geddes has long been considered the 'founder' of American industrial design. During his long career he worked on everything from theatre design, world fairs and cars to houses and product and packaging design.0Nicolas P. Maffei's magisterial biography draws on original material from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, and places Bel Geddes' work within the fast-changing cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. Maffei shows how Bel Geddes' futuristic but pragmatic style - his notion of 'practical vision' - was central to his work, and highly influential on the professional practice of American industrial design in general
