Added: 03/20/2006 |
Learning About Pop Art Industrial DesignersExploring mechanical reproduction techniques and interest to line and geometry were striking characteristics of the movement. Before long, young pop art industrial designers started to adopt the techniques and concerns of the contemporary painters and thus contributed to pop revolution. Equally significant, Italian firms started the production of goods made of plastic materials. It gave pop art industrial designers a completely new working material.
This synergy of technological progress and creative endeavor helped create the atmosphere for the design boom. Gianfranco Frattini and Livio Castiglioni employed the special form of industrial polyvinyl chloride tubing in their famous Boalum for Artemide. Kartell designers conducted experiments with the malleability of metacrylite and ABS. A lamp KD27, design by pop art industrial designers Joe Colombo, combined smooth plastic curves with delicate geometric shapes. The lit lamp gives the effect of a sphere of light hovering in space.
One of the famous pop art industrial designers was an American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972). Henry Dreyfuss was born in New York. In 1929 he opened his own business and worked as a stage and industrial designer. In the same year, he won a competition organized by Bell Laboratories and started to work in 1930 in cooperation with Bell Company. This collaboration resulted in the "300" tabletop telephone with a transmitter and receiver in one combined set placed on a horizontal frame. This model was molded in black colored plastic. It was launched in 1937 and manufactured until 1950.
In 1933 Henry Dreyfuss created a new "flat-top" refrigerator for General Electric. The designer eliminated the refrigeration unit that previously was exposed and placed it beneath the cabinet. He also created a new washing machine called Toperator for Sears & Roebuck.
In 1934 George Nelson anonymously wrote "Both Fish and Fowl" article about Henry Dreyfuss in Fortune magazine. It had a big influence on pop art industrial designers and on Industrial Design on the whole. Henry Dreyfuss was employed by Westclox and for this company he created an alarm clock in 1935. In 1939 it was followed by their well-known Big Ben alarm clock.
In 1934 Henry Dreyfuss was hired by the Hoover Company, and created Model 150 vacuum cleaner in 1936. The main feature of this vacuum cleaner was plastic hood. In 1936 he worked for The American Thermos Bottle Company.
Henry Dreyfuss also designed Mercury locomotive (1936), new streamliner steam cars and engines (1938), John Deere Model A tractor (1938). During World War II he made four thirteen-foot rotating globes for Stalin, Roosevelt, Joint Chiefs and Churchill.
Another famous pop art industrial designer was Frank Gehry. He was born in Toronto, Canada in 1929. Gehry's work evolved from the corrugated-metal and plywood vernacular traditions to the immaculate concrete.
Yet, his works keep hold of a deconstructed sense of aesthetics that combines well with the disorganized culture to which these works belong.
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