Architecture | Jessica Svendsen

Eero and Aline

13 November 2009

Design Observer published a compelling article yesterday about the architect, Eero Saarinen (the designer of my Yale residential college, Morse) and his wife Aline Saarinen. The article comes at a time when the exhibition, “Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” is touring the country and with the online publication of the Aline and Eero Sarinen Papers at the Smithsonian (including a splendid collection of photographs). After reading the papers, Alexandra Lange discovered a charming and encompassing love story between these two design celebrities.

This account and much more correspondence between and by both Saarinens is available online, digitized by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian as the Aline and Eero Saarinen Papers, 1906-1977. Their letters, particularly Aline’s history of their romance quoted above, provide a sometimes shockingly intimate look at an apparent coup de foudre of two equals, both stars in their respective firmaments, and both with previous entanglements (him, a wife and two children; her, an engagement and two children, plus her journalism career).

Eventually, the article develops into a consideration of design power couples (I think of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, Peter Eisenman and Cynthia Davidson, Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, and even Josef and Anni Albers). Saarinen contemplated the benefits and drawbacks of such matrimony by drawing a chart (featured below):

Analyzing the situation of their (future) marriage, he ranks many of the design couples he knows on a chart, the scale based on their percentage of happiness. This was the kind of numerical analysis he performed on airports and corporations, and he saw no reason not to let it carry into his private life. The chart can be seen at AAA (Page 25), as well as at MCNY. Up at the top, between 100 and 90 percent happy are his parents, architect Eliel Saarinen and textile designer Loja Saarinen, and “Charlie” and Ray Eames (Ray was also a second wife). Between 70 and 80 percent, the Girards; 30 and 40 percent the Knolls, the Louchheims and Eero and Lily Saarinen “before degeneration.” Locked apparently in a loveless marriage were the George Nelsons, down at 15 percent. He might have added Henry and Doris Dreyfuss; she ran his office, where she was known as “Miss Marks” in order to separate public from private roles.

Designing Bauhaus

11 November 2009

Architecture, Graphic Design, Typography

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Picture 201 Designing Bauhaus

The monumental exhibit, Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity finally opened at the MoMa this past Sunday. On the MoMA website, the director of the design department posted a behind-the-scenes article on the graphic design for the exhibit. After generating numerous typographic treatments, and under the enormous weight of the design legacy of the Bauhaus, the type featured above is a redrawn version of Herbert Bayer’s idea for a universal lettering (featured below).

Picture 172 Designing Bauhaus

Read the entire article here (which includes how they also slightly altered Hoefler & Frere-Jone’s Knockout for the exhibition signage).

Soulellis Studio

6 November 2009

Architecture, Graphic Design

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I’ve already expressed my fondness for architecture school posters, but these, designed by Soulellis Studio for Cornell University, are incredible. Soulellis Studio has designed the identity of the Architecture, Art, and Planning program, unifying all the printed materials (posters, annuals) with a swiss sans-serif typeface.

I can’t wait to see the Fall 2009 poster, featured above and below. The lines match an alphabetized list of lecturer names to a chronological calendar of events. Each line is also color-coded to a specific type of event—whether a lecture, symposium, or exhibit.

The Bauhaus Legacy

28 August 2009

Architecture, Interiors and Furniture

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David Barringer, recent author of There’s Nothing Funny About Design, published a fabulous article on Design Observer, entitled “Is There Bauhaus in IKEA?”

Though I look to Paul for expertise on the Bauhaus (though I am determined to read more about the Bauhaus and Josef Albers before the pivotal MoMA exhibition this fall), I do have direct experience with IKEA—the cheapness that falls apart after one academic year. It is repulsive to me how they mimic the design of German and Swiss modernism, but they fail to mimic the function, or what Barringer terms, the “lasting value.” It “does not follow function. It follows price.”

Here are some of the highlights, but you should read the article in its entirety.

IKEA clearly tips the Bauhaus balance in favor of business. IKEA’s success, however, might prove that consumers care less about the Bauhaus emphasis on lasting value and a humane society than they do about buying cheap stuff right now. (IKEA’s sales were up seven percent in 2008, and to its credit, in 2008 IKEA announced its GreenTech initiative, in which it was investing in green technologies for the development of products, like solar panels and more efficient lighting, to sell in its stores; of course, the payoff is years away.) For IKEA, form does not follow function. It follows price. IKEA claims it battles elitism, but it really battles cost. “Our biggest idea is the smallest price,” reads an IKEA catalog. Compare this (rather unfairly, I realize) with a statement by Walter Gropius: “We aimed at realizing standards of excellence, not creating transient novelties.”…

In the first half of the twentieth century, design reacted to industrialization, world wars, poverty, inflation, and class divisions. The Bauhaus arose out of a reaction to disastrous world politics and the inhumanity of urban living conditions, from the bullying architecture of the powerful to the class divisions perpetuated by luxuries only the rich could afford. By contrast, IKEA has evolved over time to refine a much narrower, and perhaps humbler, mission: to make home furnishings look good and cost less. The Bauhaus responded to the social urgencies after the First World War. What has succeeded the social inspiration of the Bauhaus is the business inspiration of retail giants like IKEA, which pursues a business model for the global marketplace.

Today, with the crash of world markets, design must more fully confront and re-evaluate its role in global business. This is what Bauhaus principles are all about: taking stock of the present states of technology, business and culture and crafting reasonable designs for the way we live now. A glut of cheap, uniform products in the marketplace can no longer be a virtue of global business. To pursue Bauhaus principles in the future, IKEA will have to increase the personalization of its products, improve ergonomics, reduce wastefulness and increase quality in order to create lasting value for the consumer.