George Nelson : The Design of Modern Design

by Stanley Abercrombie

• ISBN13: 9780262511162
• ISBN10: 0262511169
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-28
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Honorable Mention, 1994 Joel Polsky Prize given by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) George Nelson (1908-1986) was a pioneering modernist who ranks with such outstanding American designers as Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, and Eliot Noyes. Nelson's office produced some of the twentieth century's canonical pieces of industrial design, many of which are still in production: the ball clock, the bubble lamp, and the sling sofa. Nelson also made major contributions to the storage wall, the shopping mall, the multimedia presentation, and the open-plan office system. The author of this definitive biography was given access to Nelson's office archives and personal papers. He also interviewed more than seventy of Nelson's friends, colleagues, employees, and clients, and obtained many previously unpublished images from corporate and private archives. The full range of Nelson's work is represented, from product and furniture design to packaging and graphics to large-scale projects such as the Fairchild house and the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Because Nelson was a serious and original thinker about design issues, Abercrombie quotes extensively from his published and unpublished writings, offering provocative new material to students of design theory and philosophy.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Ettore Sottsass, Jr.
Acknowledgments	xi
A Personal Preface	xv
Preparing for an Unknown Career	1	(22)
A New Cause: Modern Architecture	23	(26)
A New Profession: Industrial Design	49	(18)
The House	67	(16)
Furniture for the House	83	(58)
Education	141	(10)
Exhibitions	151	(34)
The City	185	(22)
The Office	207	(26)
Some Common Themes	233	(66)
Appendixes
Biographical Chronology	243	(4)
Chronology of Work	247	(20)
Awards and Honors	267	(4)
Writings by Nelson	271	(12)
Writings about Nelson and His Firms	283	(16)
Notes	299	(48)
Index	347