Industrial Strength Design

How Brooks Stevens shaped your world

Glenn Adamson

300 pages, parution le 17/03/2005

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Résumé

Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World is a long overdue introduction to the work of visionary industrial designer Brooks Stevens (1911-1995). Believing that an industrial designer "should be a businessman, an engineer, and a stylist, in that order," Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products -- including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ("There's nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," he explained.) He invented a precursor to the SUV by turning a Jeep into a station wagon after World War II, and streamlined steam irons so that they resembled aircraft. It was Brooks Stevens who, in 1954, coined the phrase "planned obsolescence," defining it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." This concept has since been blamed for everything from toasters that stop working to today's throwaway culture, but Stevens was simply recognizing the intentionally ephemeral nature of a designer's work. Asked once to name his favorite design, he replied, "none, because every one would have to be restudied for the tastes of tomorrow."

This book, which accompanies an exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum (the repository for Stevens's papers), includes 250 illustrations of designs by Stevens and his firm, many in color. Glenn Adamson, exhibition curator, contributes detailed studies of individual designs. John Heskett, Kristina Wilson, and Jody Clowes contribute interpretive essays. Also included are a description of the Brooks Stevens Archive and several key writings by Brooks Stevens.

L'auteur - Glenn Adamson

Glenn Adamson is curator at the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee.

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Sommaire

The Desire for the New: The Context of Brooks Stevens's Career
Brooks Stevens, the Man in Your Life: Shaping the Domestic Sphere, 1935-1950
Brooks Stevens: "Ego-Inspiring Styling" and the American Dream
Career and Designs
Less than Perfect: Early Influences and First Designs, 1911-1934
The Right Place at the Right Time: Becoming an Industrial Designer in the Midwest, 1935-1940
The Prophet of the Profit: Stevens in Wartime, 1941-1945
The Organization Man: Stevens's Best Years, 1946-1955
The Enfant Terrible of Industrial Design: Planned Obsolescence and Other Crimes Against Modernism, 1956-1978
The Sheer Who made Milwaukee Famous: Reluctant Retirement, 1978-1994

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	The MIT Press
Auteur(s)	Glenn Adamson
Parution	17/03/2005
Nb. de pages	300
Format	24 x 28
Couverture	Broché
Poids	1200g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780262511865
ISBN13	978-0-262-51186-5