Bauhaus furniture

("House of Building" or "Building School") is the common term for the Staaatliches_Bauhaus.ogg Staatliches Bauhaus, a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933.
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.
The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1927, Hannes Meyer from 1927 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by the Nazi regime.

Bauhaus and German modernism

Defeat in World War I, the fall of the German monarchy and the abolition of censorship under the new, liberal Weimar Republic allowed an upsurge of radical experimentation in all the arts, previously suppressed by the old regime. Many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated: Gropius himself did not share these radical views, and said that Bauhaus was entirely apolitical.[2] Just as important was the influence of the 19th century English designer William Morris, who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no distinction between form and function. Thus the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design.
However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as far back as the 1880s, and which had already made its presence felt in Germany before the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism. The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus - the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit - were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The German national designers' organization Deutscher Werkbund was formed in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to harness the new potentials of mass production, with a mind towards preserving Germany's economic competitiveness with England. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the authoritative body on questions of design in Germany, and was copied in other countries. Many fundamental questions of craftsmanship vs. mass production, the relationship of usefulness and beauty, the practical purpose of formal beauty in a commonplace object, and whether or not a single proper form could exist, were argued out among its 1,870 members (by 1914).
The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen. Beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products, standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent corporate identity, built the modernist landmark AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel. Behrens was a founding member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meier worked for him in this period.
The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist ("spirit of the times") had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity. An entire group of working architects, including Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Hans Poelzig, turned away from fanciful experimentation, and turned toward rational, functional, sometimes standardized building. Beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a "minimal dwelling" written into the new Weimar Constitution. Ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, and sometimes fierce public debate.

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and also painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style. He was born in Switzerland, but became a French citizen in his 30s.
He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, and modern furniture designer.

Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray was born on 20 August 1878, into an aristocratic family near Enniscorthy, a small market town in south-eastern Ireland. Gray was the youngest of five children. Her parents, Eveleen Pounden Gray and James Maclaren Gray were of Scottish/Irish descent. Gray’s father, James, was a painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic interests. He took his daughter on painting tours of Italy and Switzerland which and encouraged her independent spirit. Gray spent most of her childhood living in family homes, either in Ireland or South Kensington in London.
In 1898 at the age of twenty, Gray attended classes at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she studied painting. Whilst enrolling, she made acquaintances with Jessie Gavin and Kathleen Bruce.
In 1900 (the year of her father’s death), Eileen Gray and her mother went to Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle; this was Eileen’s first visit to Paris. The Exposition Universelle was a world’s fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century in hopes of encouraging new work in the next. The main style there was Art Nouveau. Gray was a fan of the work that Charles Rennie Mackintosh had exhibited there.
Soon after, Gray moved to Paris along with her friends from the Slade School, Gavin and Bruce. Eileen Gray continued her studies at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. For some four of five years after the move, Gray moved back and forth from Paris to Ireland to London, and then in 1905, she settled back in London as her mother took ill. Eileen Gray made use of her time in London and rejoined the Slade, but found that her drawing and painting courses were becoming less satisfying.
Gray came across a lacquer repair shop in Soho where she asked the shop owner whether he could show her the fundamentals of lacquer work as it had taken her fancy. The owner had many contacts from the lacquer industry and when Gray moved back to Paris in 1906, to an apartment where she remained for much of her working life, she met one of them; Seizo Sugawara (or Sugawara-san). He originated from an area of Japan that was known for its decorative lacquer work and emigrated to Paris to repair the lacquer work exhibited in the Exposition Universelle. She found after working with Sugawara for four years that she had developed the lacquer disease on her hands, however she persisted in her work and it was not until she was thirty-five that she exhibited her work. When she did, however, it was a success.
In 1914, when World War I broke out, Gray moved back to London, taking Sugawara with her. At the end of the war, they returned to Paris and Gray was given the job of decorating an apartment in the rue de Lota. She designed most of its furniture, carpets and lamps, and installed lacquered panels on the walls. The result was favorably reviewed by several art critics who saw it as innovative.
Given a boost from the success of the apartment on rue de Lota, Gray opened up a small shop in Paris, Jean Desert, to exhibit and sell her work and that of her artist friends.

E1027 table by Eileen Gray

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Gray was involved with the Union des Artistes Modernes which had well-known members. She designed and furnished herself a new home, Tempe à Pailla outside Menton, and continued to work there with keen interest. In 1937, she agreed to exhibit her design for a holiday center in Le Corbusier's Esprit Nouveau pavilion at the Paris Exposition.
During World War II Gray, along with all other foreigners, was forced to evacuate the coast of France and move inland. After the war discovered that her flat in Saint-Tropez had been blown up and that E.1027 had been looted.
Gray returned to Paris and led a reclusive life. She continued to work on new projects, but was almost forgotten by the design industry. When she was around seventy, she started to lose her sight and hearing, yet when she was eighty, she transformed a dilapidated agricultural shed outside Saint-Tropez into a summer home; she soon moved there and continued to work.
Shortly before her death, Gray’s work was shown in an exhibition in London and her work was remembered fondly by the public. At the age of ninety-eight, Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray died in her apartment on rue Bonaparte in Paris. Throughout her career she had been independent and did not often work alongside others. She was quite unusual in her life as there were very few female designers around. It was not until after her death that her work was truly appreciated.

Charles Eames

Charles Ormond Eames, Jr (June 17, 1907 - August 21, 1978) was born in 1907 in Saint Louis, Missouri. Charles was born the nephew of St. Louis architect William S. Eames. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending high school, Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first entertained the idea of one day becoming an architect).
Charles briefly studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis on an architectural scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university. Many sources claim, with little evidence, that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his interest in modern architects. Several websites claim that "In the report describing why he was dismissed from the university, a professor wrote the comment 'His views were too modern.'" This alleged comment has yet to be attributed to any specific member of the architectural faculty. Other sources, less frequently cited, note that while a student, Charles Eames also was employed as an architect at the firm of Trueblood and Graf.[1] The demands on his time from this employment and from his classes, led to sleep-deprivation and diminished performance at the university. It needs to be explored and researched further to determine the actual cause of his departure from the university, rather than repeating the old, unverified story of his being a victim of backward-looking faculty who supposedly threw him out simply for his points of view.
While at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia.
In 1930, Charles began his own architectural practice in St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. They were later joined by a third partner, Walter Pauley.

Charles Eames was greatly influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). At the elder Saarinen's invitation, Charles moved in 1938 with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to Michigan, to further study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department. In order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, Eames defined an area of focus - the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York's Museum of Modern Art "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition.[2] Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding (originally developed by Alvar Aalto), that Eames would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.

In 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento, California. He then moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they would work and live for the rest of their lives. In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine's "Case Study" program, Ray and Charles designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House, Case Study House #8, as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed within a matter of days entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture.

On June 17, 2008 the US Postal Service released the Eames Stamps. A pane of 16 stamps celebrating the designs of Charles and Ray Eames.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect.[1] He was commonly referred to and addressed by his surname, Mies, by his colleagues, students, writers, and others.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, along with Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of Modern architecture. Mies, like many of his post World War I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. He created an influential 20th century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strived towards an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, and is known for his use of the aphorisms "less is more" and "God is in the details".

Marcel Breuer

Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s. The Bauhaus curriculum stressed the simultaneous education of its students in elements of visual art, craft and the technology of industrial production. Breuer was eventually appointed to a teaching position as head of the school's carpentry workshop. He later practiced in Berlin, designing houses and commercial spaces. In the 1920s and 1930s, Breuer pioneered the design of tubular steel furniture. Later in his career he would also turn his attention to the creation of innovative and experimental wooden furniture.
Perhaps the most widely-recognized of Breuer's early designs was the first bent tubular steel chair, later known as the Wassily Chair, designed in 1925 and was inspired, in part, by the curved tubular steel handlebars on Breuer's Adler bicycle. Despite the widespread popular belief that the chair was designed for painter Wassily Kandinsky, Breuer's colleague on the Bauhaus faculty, it was not; Kandinsky admired Breuer's finished chair design, and only then did Breuer make an additional copy for Kandinsky's use in his home. When the chair was re-released in the 1960s, it was designated "Wassily" by its Italian manufacturer, who had learned that Kandinsky had been the recipient of one of the earliest post-prototype units.
In the 1930s, due to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Breuer relocated to London. While in London, Breuer was employed by Jack Pritchard at the Isokon company; one of the earliest introducers of modern design to the United Kingdom. Breuer designed his Long Chair as well as experimenting with bent and formed plywood. Breuer eventually ended up in the United States. He taught at Harvard's architecture school, working with students such as Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph who later became well-known U.S. architects. (At one point Johnson called Breuer "a peasant mannerist".[1]) At the same time, Breuer worked with old friend and Bauhaus colleague Walter Gropius, also at Harvard, on the design of several houses in the Boston area.

University of Massachusetts campus center (right), Amherst, 1965-1969

Breuer dissolved his partnership with Gropius in May 1941 and established his own firm in New York. The Geller House I of 1945 is the first to employ Breuer's concept of the 'binuclear' house, with separate wings for the bedrooms and for the living / dining / kitchen area, separated by an entry hall, and with the distinctive 'butterfly' roof (two opposing roof surfaces sloping towards the middle, centrally drained) that became part of the popular modernist style vocabulary. A demonstration house set up in the MOMA garden in 1949 caused a new flurry of interest in the architect's work, and an appreciation written by Peter Blake. When the show was over, the "House in the Garden" was dismantled and barged up the Hudson River for reassembly on the Rockefeller property in Pocantico Hills near Sleepy Hollow.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The 1953 commission for UNESCO headquarters in Paris was a turning point for Breuer: a return to Europe, a return to larger projects after years of only residential commissions, and the beginning of Breuer's adoption of concrete as his primary medium. He became known as one of the leading practitioners of Brutalism, with an increasingly curvy, sculptural, personal idiom. Windows were often set in soft, pillowy depressions rather than sharp, angular recesses. Many architects remarked at his ability to make concrete appear "soft".
Between 1963 and 1964, Breuer began work on what is perhaps his best-known project, the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City. He also established a Parisian office with the name "Marcel Breuer Architecte," from which he could better orchestrate his European projects. Also during this time, Herbert Beckhard, Murray Emslie, Hamilton Smith, and Robert F. Gatje became partners in Marcel Breuer and Associates. When Murray Emslie left a year later, he was replaced by Tician Papachristou, who had been recommended by Breuer's former student, I. M. Pei.

Mart Stam

Mart Stam (Aug 5, 1899, Purmerend - Feb 21, 1986, Zürich) was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and chair designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle Factory", an important modernist landmark building in Rotterdam, buildings for Ernst May's Weimar Frankfurt housing project then to Russia with the idealistic May Brigade, to postwar reconstruction in Germany.
Stam studied at the Royal School for Advanced Studies in Amsterdam, then worked as a draftsman in an architectural practice through the year 1922. In Zurich in 1923 he co-founded the magazine 'ABC Beitrage zum Bauen' (Contributions on Building) with architect Hans Schmidt, future Bauhaus director and Swiss communist Hannes Meyer, and El Lissitzky.
Stam is also credited for at least part of the design of the Van Nelle Fabriek in Rotterdam, built from 1926 through 1930 (dates vary). This coffee and tea factory is still a powerful example of early modernist industrial architecture, recently rehabilitated into offices. An embarrassing dispute over the authorship of this design caused Stam to leave the office of Leen Van der Vlugt, the credited designer.
After moving to Berlin, Stam devised a steel-tubing cantilever chair, using lengths of standard gas pipe and standard pipe joint fittings. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became aware of Stam's work on the chair during planning for the Weissenhof Siedlung and mentioned it to Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus. This led almost immediately to variations on the cantilevered tubular-steel chair theme by both Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer, and began an entire genre of chair design. In the late 1920s, Breuer and Stam were involved in a patent lawsuit in German courts, both claiming to be the inventor of the basic cantilever chair design principle. Stam won the lawsuit, and, since that time, specific Breuer chair designs have often been erroneously attributed to Stam. In the United States, Breuer assigned the rights to his designs to Knoll, and for that reason it is possible to find the identical chair attributed to Stam in Europe and to Breuer in the U.S.
Stam contributed a house to the 1927 Weissenhof Estate, the permanent housing project developed and presented by the exhibition "Die Wohnung" ("The Dwelling"), organized by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart. This put him in the company of Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens, Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig, and Walter Gropius, and the exhibition had as many as 20,000 visitors a day.
In 1927 he became a founding member, with Gerrit Rietveld and Hendrik Petrus Berlage, of the Congrès Internationaux d`Architecture Moderne (CIAM).
In 1930 Stam became one of the 20 architects and urban planners organized by Frankfurt city planner Ernst May who traveled together to the Soviet Union to create a string of new Stalinist cities, including Magnitogorsk. The "May Brigade" included Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, her husband Wilhelm Schütte, Arthur Korn and Hans Schmidt. Stam was there in February 1931 to participate in the struggle to build rational worker housing from the ground up, an effort ultimately defeated by adverse weather, corruption, and poor design decisions. Stam moved to planning activities in Makeyevka in Ukraine in 1932, then to Orsk, with his friend Hans Schmidt (again) and with Bauhaus student and future wife Lotte Beese, then to the copper-mining Soviet city of Balgash. Stam returned to the Netherlands in 1934.
Stam was later named director of the Institute of Industrial Art in the Netherlands. From 1948 to 1952 he moved to postwar Germany, with its major reconstruction projects. In 1948 he took a professorship at the Academy of Figurative Arts in Dresden and began advocating a modern, strict structure for the heavily destroyed city, a plan which most of the citizens rejected as an "all-out attack on the identity of the city", and which would have obliterated most of the city's remaining landmarks. In 1950 Stam became director of the Advanced Institute of Art in Berlin. Returning to Amsterdam in 1953, beginning in about 1966 Stam and his wife moved to Switzerland and withdrew from public view.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – December 10, 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, and watercolourist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow on 7 June 1868 to William McIntosh (note spelling) and Margaret Rennie as the fourth out of eleven children and the second son. The young Charles attended Reid's Public School and the Allan Glen's Institution.[1] At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to architect John Hutchinson, where he worked from 1884 until 1889 when he apprenticed at the architectural practice of Honeyman and Keppie. In 1890 Mackintosh was the second winner of the Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship, set up for the "furtherance of the study of ancient classic architecture, with special reference to the principles illustrated in Mr. Thomson’s works."[2] With his prize money, Mackintosh embarked on a sketching tour of Italy. Upon his return, he resumed with the Honeyman and Keppie architectural practice where he commenced his first grand architectural project, the Glasgow Herald Building, in 1893.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh met fellow artist Margaret MacDonald at the Glasgow School of Art. Members of the collaborative group known as “The Four”, the two married in 1900. After several successful building designs, Mackintosh became a partner of Honeyman and Keppie in 1903. During his time with the firm, Charles Rennie Mackintosh refined his architectural style. In 1906 he designed the Scotland Street School, which would become his last major architectural commission. When economic hardships were causing many architectural practices to close, he resigned from Honeyman and Keppie in 1913 and attempted to open his own practice. Unable to sustain his office, Mackintosh and his wife took an extended holiday in Suffolk where he created many floral watercolors. Upon return a year later, the Mackintoshes moved to London where Charles continued to paint and create textile designs. In 1916 Mackintosh received a commission to redesign the home of W.J. Bassett-Lowke. This undertaking would be his last architectural and interior design project.
Due to financial hardship, the Mackintoshes moved in 1923 to the south of France, as Port Vendres was a comparably cheaper location in which to live. During this peaceful phase of his life, Charles Rennie Mackintosh created a large portfolio of architecture and landscape watercolor paintings. The couple remained in France for five years, before being forced to return to London in 1927 due to illness. That year, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was diagnosed with throat and tongue cancer. A brief recovery prompted him to leave the hospital and convalesce at home for a few months. Necessity resulted in Mackintosh being admitted to a nursing home where he died on December 10, 1928 at the age of 60.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld

Wilhelm Wagenfeld (* April 15, 1900, Bremen, Germany — † May 28, 1990, Stuttgart, Germany) was an important German industrial designer of the 20th Century, disciple and teacher of Bauhaus. He designed glass and metal works for the Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen., the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke in Weißwasser, Rosenthal, Braun GmbH and WMF. Some of his designs are still produced until these days. One of his classics is a timeless tablelamp, known as Wagenfeld Lampe, 1924, which he designed together with Karl J. Jucker. In cooperation with Charles Crodel his works found their way in exhibitions and museums. Thereto Crodel developed a patented decoration technique for the industrial mass production.
There is a school in Bremen named after him, the Wilhelm-Wagenfeld-Schule.
Wilhelm Wagenfeld's grandson Malte Wagenfeld is senior lecturer and program director for industrial design at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

Philippe Starck

Philippe Patrick Starck (born January 18, 1949, Paris) is a French Product designer and probably the best known designer in the New Design style. His designs range from spectacular interior designs to mass produced consumer goods such as toothbrushes, chairs, and even houses.
He was educated in Paris at École Nissim de Camondo and in 1968, he founded his first design firm, which specialized in inflatable objects. In 1969, he became art director of his firm along with Pierre Cardin.
Starck's career started to climb in earnest in 1982 when he designed the interior for the private apartments of the French President François Mitterrand.
Starck has worked independently as an interior designer and as a product designer since 1975. Most notably, in 2002, he created a number of relatively inexpensive product designs for the large American retailer Target Stores.
His most recent notable designs include an optical mouse for Microsoft[2], yachts, and even new packaging for a beer company. He was commissioned to design the Virgin Galactic "spaceport" in New Mexico[3] (Foster and Partners are its architects).
He made the exihibt Democratic Ecology with Pramac.
Unlike most other New Design artists, Starck's work does not concentrate on the creation of provocative and expensive single pieces. Instead, his product designs are of usable household items which Starck himself helps to market for mass production. His products and furnishings are often stylized, streamlined and organic in their look and are also constructed using unusual combinations of materials (such as glass and stone, plastic and aluminum, plush fabric and chrome, etc.).
Two of Starck's designs include stylized toothbrushes (1989) and a sleek juicer dubbed the Juicy Salif created for Alessi in 1990. The Juicy Salif has become an affordable and popular cult item. In 2008 he created wireless speakers for the iPod and iPhone : Parrot Zikmu.
Regarding Starck's furniture designs, he is famous for his designs for the Italian manufacturer Kartell, many of which are made from polycarbonate plastic. World famous products he has designed include the transparent Louis Ghost chair, Ero|S| chair, Bubble Club sofa, and La Bohème stool. He has also been involved in the relaunch of the World War II-era Navy Chair in the U.S., designing a classic furniture collection around it.
The Bubble Club chair is featured prominently in the television series Boston Legal. A pair sit on the balcony outside Denny Crane's office, where he and Alan Shore end each episode with a cigar and a glass of Scotch while discussing the events of the episode.
Among his interior designs for restaurants, Starck design the Felix restaurant-bar at the The Peninsula Hong Kong, a classic hotel facing the Hong Kong harbour on the Kowloon side. This design, located on the 28th floor, is known for several design features including the men's washroom, which features urinals facing glass, and a spectacular view of the Kowloon cityscape.
In 1988, Starck was commissioned by famed nightclub impresario Ian Schrager, former co-owner of Studio 54, to refit the Royalton Hotel on New York's West 44th Street.[9] It was a design moment that has since changed the hotel industry; boutique hotels, where design is an important factor, became the industry buzz. However the Schrager hotels are also known for their celebrity and publicity orientations that attract attention to the hotels.
The Starck-Schrager design hotel partnerships continued in New York at the Paramount hotel, and then spread to Miami with the opening of the Delano Hotel[10] in South Beach in 1995, to Los Angeles with the Mondrian Hotel in December 1996, to London with both the St. Martins Lane hotel in 1999 and the Sanderson hotel in 2000,[15] to San Francisco and the Clift hotel, and finally back to New York with the Hudson hotel, with what is described as "Cheap Chic".
The look and feel of Starck-Schrager hotels has been highly influential, including the approaches at Starwood's W hotels.
Starck also designed Jia, the first Philippe Starck-designed boutique hotel in Asia.
From 2007 until 2022, Starck is under an exclusive contract with nightclub mogul Sam Nazarian to design Nazarian's new hotel brand, SLS Hotels. The first property, SLS Los Angeles at Beverly Hills (a massive renovation of the former Le Méridien At Beverly Hills), is currently scheduled to open on October 28, 2008, and will be entirely designed by Starck. The hotel lobby will feature unique Starck-designed display cases featuring rotating design items curated by gallerist Murray Moss.
From December 2007, Philippe Starck and his daughter Ara were involved in the redecoration of public areas at Le Meurice, Paris.
Through residential design company Yoo Ltd, Starck has been involved in the development of several properties featuring Starck interiors.
Phillipe also has a line of Starck watches with the Fossil watch company.
His work with the Pramac energy group, has produced a design for windmills that also function as wind instruments.

George Nelson

George Nelson (1904–1986) was one of the founders of American Modernism, along with Charles and Ray Eames. George Nelson was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He died in New York City.
For a person born in Hartford, the insurance capital of America, George Nelson would become one of the greatest risk takers in the history of design. In fact he would come to redefine what a designer is. After graduating Hartford Public High school in 1924 Nelson studied architecture at Yale University, where he graduated in 1928. When Nelson began his studies at Yale he had no Idea he'd become an architect. Nelson only happened upon the architecture school at Yale only because of a rain storm. Nelson ducked into the building in order to get out of the rain. While walking through the building he came upon an exhibit of student's works entitled "A Cemetery Gateway." While still an undergraduate student at Yale Nelson met with some early recognition. He was published in "Pencil Points" and "Architecture." Nelson’s early prominence as a drafter would however be eclipsed by his eloquent writing style. During his final year at Yale Nelson was hired by the architecture firm Adams and Prentice as a drafter. In 1929 Nelson was hired as a Teacher's Assistant while getting his second Bachelor's degree at Turkey and was planning for a life in academia. In 1931 He received his degree in Fine Arts. The next year Nelson entered the Rome Prize competition in Architecture as a preparation for the Paris Prize and won, although Nelson didn’t win the Paris Prize. In the ensuing years George Nelson would spend a great deal of his time with the other founders of the modernist architecture movement of the forties.Eliot Noyes, Charles Eames, and Walter B. Ford all of which he would later collaborate with. The award for the Rome Prize was a year in Rome studying architecture with a healthy stipend and accommodations in a palace down town Rome.
Based in Rome, he traveled through Europe where he met a number of the modernist pioneers, whom he interviewed for the purpose of writing articles for Pencil Points. While interviewing Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Van Der Rohe asked about Frank Lloyd Wright whom Nelson was embarrassed to say, he didn't know much about. Years later he would work with Wright on a special issue of "Architecture Forum" which would come to be Wright's comeback from relative obscurity. While in Rome Nelson married Frances Hollister. A few years later he returned to the United States to devote himself to writing. Through his writing in Pencil Points he introduced the work of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Gio Ponti to North America. At Architectural Forum he was first associate editor (1935–1943) and later consultant editor (1944–1949). He defended sometimes ferociously the modernist principles and irritated many of his colleagues who as "industrial designers" made, according to Nelson too many concessions to the commercial forces in industry. Nelson believed that the work of a designer should be to better the world because, in his view, nature was already perfect but, man only ruined it when he began making things that didn't really follow the rules of nature. “The contemporary architect, cut off from symbols, ornament and meaningful elaborations of structural form, all of which earlier periods processed in abundance, has desperately chased every functional requirement, every change in sight or ornamentation, every technical improvement, to provide some basis for starting his work. Where the limitations were most rigorous, as for example in a factory, or in a sky scraper where every inch had to yield it’s profit, there the designers were happiest and the results most satisfying. but, let a religious belief or a social ideal replace the cubic foot costs or radiation losses, and nothing happened. There is not a single modern church in the entire country that is comparable to a first rate cafeteria, as far as solving the problem is concerned.”[1] At this point in Nelson’s career he was still mainly involved in writing for architecture magazines but, not in actually designing the solutions to modern living that he would later become famous for. By 1940 George Nelson had drawn popular attention with several innovative concepts. In his post-war book co-authored by Henry Wright, "Tomorrow's House", he introduced the concept of the "family room" and the "storage wall". The storage wall was actually a creative solution to an interesting non architectural problem. While writing the book Nelson's publisher was pressuring him to finish the section on storage. Neither Wright, nor Nelson could find any new innovations that were meeting the demands of consumerism when, Nelson posed the question, "What's inside the wall?"[1] It was then that the idea of utilizing the space in between walls for storage was born. What made "Tomorrow's House so great was that it didn’t look at modern design as a case of styles but, instead looked at the way things needed to be solved.[1] Nelson said that we have no way or reason to design in any other way than modern. We have to live like the normal 20th century people with the problems that we have today.
Until 1945 the Herman Miller Furniture company was a predominantly wood based design house. that had only begun to move into the realm of modern furniture. When Chairman of Herman Miller, D.J. Depree read "Tomorrow's House" he knew that George Nelson would be the next Director of Design. The only problem was that Nelson hadn't really ever designed furniture. Depree was more interested in Nelson’s insight into the best way to make useful furniture. Because of a contract that allowed Nelson freedom to work outside of the Miller company and also allowed use of designs from the numerous other architects Nelson had worked with, the deal was done. That same year the first George Nelson produced Herman Miller Catalog started a collaboration that would result in some of the most famous home furnishings of the past century.Ray and Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, Richard Schultz, Donald Knorr and Isamu Noguchi all worked for Herman Miller. Although both Bertoia and Noguchi expressed later on regrets about their involvement, it became a uniquely successful period for the company and for George Nelson. He set new standards for the involvement of design in all the activities of the company, and in doing so he pioneered the practice of corporate image management, graphic programs and signage.
George Nelson's catalog design and exhibition designs for Herman Miller close a long list of involvements designed to make design the most important driving force in the company. From his start in the mid-forties to the mid-eighties his office worked for and with the best of his times. At one point Ettore Sottsass worked at his office. Nelson was without any doubt one of the most articulate and one of the most eloquent voices on design and architecture in the U.S.A. of the 20th century. This was both the result of Nelson’s time as a magazine editor and because of the unique writing voice Nelson uses. Because of this skill, he helped legitimize and stimulate the field of industrial design by contributing to the creatation of Industrial Design magazine in 1953.[1] He was a teacher and he wrote extensively, published several books and organized conferences like the legendary Aspen design gatherings, where for more than 30 years he was the guiding spirit.[1] In 1971 he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for his project "Hidden Cities". One of the lasting contributions George Nelson made to not only to the architectural world but, more so to common life was his great desire to produce a cleaner city. Through his attempts to reduce pollution be it visual, audio or chemical George Nelson gave the world the idea for the outdoor malls we see in every suburb. He first used the idea in a proposal for the city plan of Austin which wasn’t used.

• 1946 Basic Cabinet Series
• 1946 Sofas, chairs, settees, and bedroom pieces all included in the first Herman Miller catalog
• 1946 Slat Bench a/k/a Platform Bench
• 1952 Rosewood Group
• 1952 Executive Office Group
• 1954 Miniature Cases
• 1954 Steel-frame Group
• 1954 Nelson End Table (and low coffee table)
• 1955 Flying Duck Chair
• 1955 Coconut Chair # (currently available in black leather only, but not the matching ottoman)
• 1956 Marshmallow Sofa
• 1956 Thin Edge Cases
• 1956 Kangaroo Chair
• 1958 Swagged-Leg (a/k/a/ Swag Leg) Group
• 1959 Comprehensive Storage System (CSS)
• 1963 Catenary Group
• 1964 Action Office I
• 1964 Sling Sofa

Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, the illegitimate son of Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who had gained great acclaim in the United States, and Leonie Gilmour, an American writer who edited much of his work.
Yone had ended his relationship with Gilmour earlier that year, instead planning to marry his true romance, Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes. After proposing to her, Yone left for Japan in late August, settling in Tokyo and awaiting Armes' arrival; their engagement fell through months later when she learned of Leonie and her newborn son.
In 1906, Yone invited Leonie to come to Tokyo with their son. She at first refused, but growing anti-Japanese sentiment following the Russo-Japanese War eventually convinced her to take up Yone's offer. The two departed from San Francisco in March 1907, arriving in Yokohama to meet Yone. Upon arrival, their son was finally given the name Isamu. However, Yone had taken a Japanese wife by the time they arrived, and was mostly absent from his son's childhood. After again separating from Yone, Leonie and Isamu moved several times throughout Japan.
In 1912, while the two had settled in Chigasaki, Isamu's half sister, Ailes Gilmour (known today as an early pioneer of the American Modern Dance movement) was born to an unknown father. Here the family had their own house built, a project that Leonie had Isamu "oversee". She also tried to nurture her son's artistic ability during this time, putting him in charge of their garden and apprenticing him to a local carpenter.[3] However, they moved once again in December 1917 to an English-speaking community in Yokohama.
In 1918, Noguchi was sent to the United States for schooling. He attended school in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. After graduation, he left with Dr. Edward Rumely to LaPorte, where he found boarding with a Swedenborgian pastor, Samuel Mack. Noguchi began attending La Porte High School, graduating in 1922.
After high school, Noguchi explained his desire to become an artist to Rumely;[4] though he preferred that Noguchi become a doctor, he acknowledged Noguchi's request and sent him to Connecticut to work as an apprentice to his friend Gutzon Borglum. Best known as the creator of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Borglum was at the time working on a huge set of equestrian sculptures for the city of Newark, New Jersey. As his apprentice, Noguchi received little training as a sculptor; his tasks included arranging the horses and modeling for the monument as General Sherman. He did, however, pick up some skills in casting from Borglum's Italian assistants, later fashioning a bust of Abraham Lincoln. At summer's end, Borglum told Noguchi that he would never become a sculptor, prompting him to reconsider Rumley's prior suggestion.
He then traveled to New York City, reuniting with the Rumely family at their new residence, and with Dr. Rumely's financial aid enrolled in February 1922 as a premedical student at Columbia University. Soon after, he met the bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, who urged him to reconsider art, as well as the Japanese dancer Michio Itō, whose celebrity status later helped Noguchi find acquaintances in the art world. Another influence was his mother, who in 1923 moved from Japan to California, then later to New York.
In 1924, while still enrolled at Columbia, Noguchi followed his mother's advice to take night classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. The school's head, Onorio Ruotolo, was immediately impressed by Noguchi's work. Only three months later, Noguchi held his first exhibit, a selection of plaster and terra cotta works. He soon dropped out of Columbia University to pursue sculpture full-time, changing his name from Gilmour (the surname he had used for years) to Noguchi.
After moving into his own studio, Noguchi found work through commissions for portrait busts, he won the Logan Medal of the arts. During this time, he frequented avant-garde shows at the galleries of such modernists as Alfred Stieglitz and J. B. Neuman, and took a particular interest in a show of the works of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Noguchi arrived in Paris in April 1927 and soon afterward met the American author Robert McAlmon, who brought him to Brancusi's studio for an introduction. Despite a language barrier between the two artists (Noguchi barely spoke French, and Brancusi did not speak English), Noguchi was taken in as Brancusi's assistant for the next seven months. During this time, Noguchi gained his footing in stone sculpture, a medium with which he was unacquainted, though he would later admit that one of Brancusi's greatest teachings was to appreciate "the value of the moment." Meanwhile, Noguchi found himself in good company in France, with letters of introduction from Michio Itō helping him to meet such artists as Jules Pascin and Alexander Calder, who lived in the studio of Arno Breker. They became friends and Breker did a bronze bust of Noguchi.
Noguchi only produced one sculpture – his marble Sphere Section – in his first year, but during his second year he stayed in Paris and continued his training in stoneworking with the Italian sculptor Mateo Hernandes, producing over twenty more abstractions of wood, stone and sheet metal. Noguchi's next major destination was to be India, from which he would travel east; he arrived in London to read up on Oriental Sculpture, but was denied the extension to the Guggenheim Fellowship he needed.
In February 1929, he left for New York City. Brancusi had recommended that Noguchi visit Romany Marie's café in Greenwich Village. Noguchi did so and there met Buckminster Fuller, with whom he collaborated on several projects, including the modeling of Fuller's Dymaxion car.
Upon his return, Noguchi's abstract sculptures made in Paris were exhibited in his first one-man show at the Eugene Schoen Gallery. After none of his works sold, Noguchi altogether abandoned abstract art for portrait busts in order to support himself. He soon found himself accepting commissions from wealthy and celebrity clients. A 1930 exhibit of several busts, including those of Martha Graham and Buckminster Fuller, garnered positive reviews, and after less than a year of portrait sculpture, Noguchi had earned enough money to continue his trip to Asia.
Noguchi left for Paris in April 1930, and two months later received his visa to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway. He opted to visit Japan first rather than India, but after learning that his father Yone did not want his son to visit using his surname, a shaken Noguchi instead departed for Peking. In China, he studied brush painting with Qi Baishi, staying for six month before finally sailing for Japan. Even before his arrival in Kobe, Japanese newspapers had picked up on Noguchi's supposed reunion with his father; though he denied that this was the reason for his visit, the two did meet in Tokyo. He later arrived in Kyoto to study pottery with Uno Jinmatsu. Here he took note of local Zen gardens and haniwa, clay funerary figures of the Kofun era which inspired his terra cotta The Queen.
Noguchi returned to New York amidst the Great Depression, finding few clients for his portrait busts. Instead, he hoped to sell his newly-produced sculptures and brush paintings from Asia. Though very few sold, Noguchi regarded this one-man exhibition (which began in February 1932 and toured Chicago, the west coast, and Honolulu) as his "most successful". Additionally, his next attempt to break into abstract art, a large streamlined figure of dancer Ruth Page entitled Miss Expanding Universe, was poorly received. In January 1933 he worked in Chicago with Santiago Martínez Delgado, on a mural for the Chicago International Fair, then again found a business for his portrait busts; he moved to London in June hoping to find more work, but returned in December just before his mother Leonie's death.
Beginning in February 1934, Noguchi began submitting his first designs for public spaces and monuments to the Public Works of Art Program. One such design, a monument to Benjamin Franklin, remained unrealized for decades. Another design, a gigantic pyramidal earthwork entitled Monument to the American Plow, was similarly rejected, and his "sculptural landscape" of a playground, Play Mountain, was personally rejected by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. He was eventually dropped from the program, and again supported himself by sculpting portrait busts. In early 1935, after another solo exhibition, the New York Sun's Henry McBride labeled Noguchi's Death, depicting a lynched African-American, as "a little Japanese mistake." That same year he produced the set for Frontier, the first of many set designs for Martha Graham.
After the Federal Art Project started up, Noguchi again put forth designs, one of which was another earthwork chosen for the New York City airport entitled Relief Seen from the Sky; following further rejection, Noguchi left for Hollywood, where he again worked as a portrait sculptor to earn money for a sojourn in Mexico. Here, Noguchi was chosen to design his first public work, a relief mural for the Abelardo Rodriguez market in Mexico City. The 20-meter-long History as Seen from Mexico in 1936 was hugely political and socially conscious, featuring such modern symbols as the Nazi swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the equation E = mc².
Noguchi returned to New York in 1937. He again began to turn out portrait busts, and after various proposals was selected for two sculptures. The first of these, a fountain built of automobile parts for the Ford Motor Company's exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, was thought of poorly by critics and Noguchi alike but nevertheless introduced him to fountain-construction and magnesite. Conversely, his second sculpture, a nine-ton stainless steel bas-relief entitled News, was unveiled over the entrance to the Associated Press building at the Rockefeller Center in April 1940 to much praise. Following further rejections of his playground designs, Noguchi left on a cross-country road trip with Arshile Gorky and Gorky's fiancée in July 1941, eventually separating from them to go to Hollywood.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment was reenergized in the United States, and in response Noguchi formed "Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". Noguchi and other group leaders wrote to influential officials, including the congressional committee headed by Representative John Tolan, hoping to halt the internment of Japanese Americans; Noguchi later attended the hearings but had little effect on their outcome. He later helped organize a documentary of the internment, but left California before its release; as a legal resident of New York, he was allowed to return home. He hoped to prove Japanese-American loyalty by somehow helping the war effort, but when other governmental departments turned him down, Noguchi met with John Collier, head of the Office of Indian Affairs, who convinced him to travel to the internment camp located on an Indian reservation in Poston, Arizona to promote arts and crafts and community.
Noguchi arrived at the Poston camp in May 1942, becoming its only voluntary internee. Noguchi first worked in a carpentry shop, but his hope was to design parks and recreational areas within the camp. Although he created several plans at Poston, among them designs for baseball fields, swimming pools, and a cemetery, he found that the WRA authorities had no intention of implementing them. Noguchi also realized that, despite his heritage, he had little in common with the internees, who he described as being mostly unintellectual, nonpolitical farmers. In June, Noguchi applied for release, but intelligence officers labeled him as a "suspicious person" due to his involvement in "Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". He was finally granted a month-long furlough on November 12, but never returned; though he was granted a permanent leave afterward, he soon afterward received a deportation order. The FBI, accusing him of espionage, launched into a full investigation of Noguchi which ended only through the ACLU's intervention.[28]. Noguchi would later retell his wartime experiences in the British World War Two documentary series The World at War.
Upon his return to New York, Noguchi took a new studio in Greenwich Village. Throughout the 1940s, Noguchi's sculpture drew from the ongoing surrealist movement; these works include not only various mixed-media constructions and landscape reliefs, but lunars – self-illuminating reliefs – and a series of biomorphic sculptures made of interlocking slabs. The most famous of these assembled-slab works, Kouros, was first shown in a September 1946 exhibition, helping to cement his place in the New York art scene. He also designed furniture and lamp designs for Herman Miller and Knoll, and continued his involvement with theater, designing sets for Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring and John Cage and Merce Cunningham's production of The Seasons. Near the end of his time in New York, he also found more work designing public spaces, including a commission for the ceilings of the Time-Life headquarters. In March 1949, Noguchi had his first one-person show in New York since 1935 at the Charles Egan Gallery.
In the ensuing years he gained in prominence and acclaim, leaving his large-scale works in many of the world's major cities.
In 1962, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Isamu Noguchi died on December 30, 1988 at the age of 84. In their obituary for Noguchi, the New York Times called him "a versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks of 20th-century art."
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum currently serves as Noguchi's official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum is the Artists Rights Society

Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann (December 15, 1870, Pirnitz (Brtnice), Moravia (today the Czech Republic) – May 7, 1956, Vienna, Austria was a Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods. Hoffmann studied at the Higher State Crafts School in Brno beginning in 1887 and then worked with the local military planning authority in Würzburg. Thereafter he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, graduating with a Prix de Rome in 1895. In Wagner's office, he met Joseph Maria Olbrich, and together they founded the Vienna Secession in 1897 along with artists Gustav Klimt, and Koloman Moser. Beginning in 1899, he taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. With the Secession, Hoffmann developed strong connections with other artists. He designed installation spaces for Secession exhibitions and a house for Moser which was built from 1901-1903. However, he soon left the Secession in 1905 along with other stylist artists due to conflicts with realist naturalists over differences in artistic vision and disagreement over the premise of Gesamtkunstwerk. With the banker Fritz Wärndorfer and the artist Koloman Moser he established the Wiener Werkstätte, which was to last until 1932. He designed many products for the Wiener Werkstätte of which designer chairs, a lamp, and sets of glasses have reached the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and a tea service has reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hoffmann's style eventually became more sober and abstract and it was limited increasingly to functional structures and domestic products. In 1906, Hoffmann built his first great work, the Sanatorium in Purkersdorf. Compared to the Moser House, with its rusticated vernacular roof, this was a great advancement towards abstraction and a move away from traditional Arts and Crafts and historicism. This project served as a major precedent and inspiration for the modern architecture that would develop in the first half of the 20th century, for instance the early work of Le Corbusier.[5] It had a clarity, simplicity, and logic that foretold of a Neue Sachlichkeit. Palais Stoclet.
Through contacts with Adolphe Stoclet, who sat on the supervisory board of the Austro-Belgischen Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, he was commissioned to build the Palais Stoclet in Brussels from 1905 to 1911 for this wealthy banker and railway financier. This masterpiece of Jugendstil, was an example of Gesamtkunstwerk, replete with murals in the dining room by Klimt and four copper figures on the tower by Franz Metzner. In 1907, Hoffmann was co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund, and in 1912 of the Österreichischer Werkbund. After World War II, he took on official tasks, that of an Austrian general commissioner with the Venice Biennale and a membership in the art senate.

Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (25 June 1888–27 June, 1965) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. One of the principal members of the Dutch artistic movement called De Stijl, Rietveld is famous for his Red and Blue Chair and for the Rietveld Schröder House, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Rietveld designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair's colors after becoming influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect. He designed his first building, the Rietveld Schröder House, in 1924, in close collaboration with the owner Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck. Built in Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has a conventional the ground floor, but is radical on the top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The design seems like a three-dimensional realisation of a Mondrian painting. The house is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
Rietveld broke with the 'De Stijl' in 1928 and became associated with a more functionalist style of architecture known as either Nieuwe Zakelijkheid or Nieuwe Bouwen. The same year he joined the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. He designed the "Zig-Zag" chair[1] in 1934 and started the design of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was finished after his death. He built hundreds of homes, many of which in the city of Utrecht.