Some of this material is
covered in a book titled American Style:Classic Product Design from Airstream to Zippo by Richard Sexton,
1987.
KEY ELEMENTS AND ATTRIBUTES OF AMERICAN PRODUCT DESIGN:
GENEROUS USE OF RAW
MATERIALS WITH A CAREFREE QUALITY UNCONCERNED OF THE MATERIALS UTILIZED
SIMPLE, LOGICAL DESIGN
FUNCTIONAL, SOLIDLY BUILT, DEPENDABLE AND DURABLE
RADICAL REDESIGN RATHER
THAN INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS
FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION-
AMERICAN SHAKER STYLE FURNITURE AND CONSTRUCTION/DECORATION
LOUIS SULLIVAN
American designaffirms the power of human beings to create,
improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge,
technology and practical experimentation, and is thus is optimistic in its
essence.Some concepts of USA design include:
(1) the sense of forward-looking
contemporaneity, (2) the belief in the power and potential of the
machine and industrial technology
and (3) the emphasis on process.
The following page has two sections.
1. Product examples that do not generally feature outside influences and are pure American looking products.
2. Below the first section are the original trailblazers of
American Product design. Many blended various outside influences
and schools of design with the attributes listed above to create iconic
products.
Nothing States a product is Made In America as
much as a Product which "Looks American", with true USA Archetypes and
minimal design school influences . This list with visuals offers
some examples.
Section 1 Lotus1985
Products that when viewed instantly evoke the the USA.
CompuServe 1979
Shopping
Cart
Quaker Oats Cereal
cylinder packaging (so product is differentiated from other cereals on the
shelf)
Hershey
Bar
Six Pack
Faberware Coffee
Percolator- Model 142B
Hall
Ceramics
Tupperware
Wedgewood Stove 1930's and 1950's shown
Revereware
All American Pressure
Cooker- No 907
Mason Jar
Eureka Mighty Mite- 1982
Hamilton Beach
Drinkmaster- #30
Chromex Coffee Maker
Zeroll Ice Cream Scoop-
#24
Sunbeam Toaster- model
20030 and model I9; [slots]
Osterizer
Blender- Model 403
Bloomfield
Sugar Dispenser
Robertshaw
Minute Minder
Metro
Wire shelving system- Metropolitan Wire Goods Corp
Weber
Grill
Acme
Supreme Juicerator- Model 6001
Vemcolite Task Light-
VL-5; 1985
Kryptonite Bike Lock
Master padlock- #5
Hyde 5 in 1 Tool
Stanley
Tools- utility knife and ratchet driver
Maglight flashlight
Bell System #500 rotary
telephone
Rural US Mailbox
Colt Revolver- SSA .45
John Deere Lawn Tractor-
hydro 165
Lufkin
Red End Extension Ruler- 6 feet
Milwaukee Magnum Hole
Shooter Drill- ½” reversible 1974
Porter Cable Finishing
Sander- 330 speed block
Rolodex-
Model 5024x
Stanley steel Thermos-
No. A-943C
Eames / Evans Products /
Charles Eames-
Molded Plywood Chair
Formica Decorative
Laminate- white skylark
Bertoia
Diamond Chair
Smokador Ash Stand-
Servador table smoker ash stand
Fireplace designed by
Wendell Lovett
made by Condon-King and also Majestic company
Philco- Predicta
Television TV as high tech instead of furniture
Holophane Prismatic
Luminaire Light/lamp- #684 by Vearl Wince and Curt Franck
Abdite RLM Fixture-
RD150
GRA-Lab Timer- #300
Panavision
Panaflex golden movie camera
Bell and Howell 8mm
movie camera 1950's
Kodak Super8 movie camera 1960's
Kodak Carousel/Eketagraph AF2
US Navy G1 Aviation
Jacket- WW2
plan for post WW2 American Leather Jackets
Bulova
Accutron Watch
Brook
Brother’s Diary
Halliburton Luggage- attaché case model 2H-10451938
Gillette swivel
disposable razor1981
Hobie Cat cameron - #16
Frisbee
Airstream Trailer
Buck Knife- model #110
Coleman
Lantern model 201- from Hydrocarbon Light Company
Head tennis racquet- Edge
Composite version
Tinker Toys- set # 330 from Toy Tinkers
Gibson
Les Paul- cherry sunburst
Fender Telecaster Bass- 1972
model
Steinberger Bass- XL-2
Advent Radio- Model 400
Mcintosh Amp
Acoustic
Research turntable1957
Corvette String Ray-
1964
Ford Thunderbird- 1957
gun metal grey
Chris Craft Motorboat-
Capri 191956
Learjet- 250
Mercury Outboard-
Mercury 20
Jeep Cherokee- 1974
Videoconferencing 1968
Computer Mouse
Computer Graphics, CAD and CAM 1960's
Graphic User Interface Xerox Parc 1970's
Graphic User Interface 1980's
-- Section 2 --
Classic
American Designers. Although their work is deemed classic
American Style they were highly influenced by prevailing trends
as noted by each of their names
Walter Dorwin Teagure Bauhaus, Art Deco, Modernism
Geddes in 1939 forecast the future using a 1 acre model
BuckminsterFuller was an
American architect,
systems
theorist, author, and designer. Between stints at
Harvard, Fuller worked in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill,
and later as a laborer in the meat-packing
industry. He also served in the U.S.
Navy in World War I, as a shipboard radio operator, as an editor
of a publication, and as a crash
rescue boat commander. After discharge, he worked again in the
meat packing industry, acquiring management experience. Fuller
taught at Black
Mountain College in North
Carolina during the summers of 1948 and 1949,
serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. There, with the
support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a
project that would make him famous: the geodesic
dome. Although the geodesic dome had been created some 30 years
earlier by Dr. Walther
Bauersfeld, Fuller was awarded United States patents. He is
credited for popularizing this type of structure.
In
1949, he erected his first geodesic dome building that could sustain
its own weight with no practical limits. It was 4.3 meters (14 feet)
in diameter and constructed of aluminum aircraft tubing and a
vinyl-plastic skin, in the form of an icosahedron.
To prove his design, Fuller suspended from the structure's framework
several students who had helped him build it. The U.S. government
recognized the importance of his work, and employed his firm
Geodesics, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes for
the Marines.
Within a few years there were thousands of these domes around the
world.
Fuller's
first "continuous tension – discontinuous compression"
geodesic dome (full sphere in this case) was constructed at the
University of Oregon Architecture School in 1959 with the help of
students.
These continuous tension – discontinuous compression structures
featured single force compression members (no flexure or bending
moments) that did not touch each other and were 'suspended' by the
tensional members.
For half of a century,
Fuller developed many ideas, designs and inventions, particularly
regarding practical, inexpensive shelter and transportation. He
documented his life, philosophy and ideas scrupulously by a daily
diary (later called
the Dymaxion
Chronofile), and by twenty-eight
publications. Fuller financed some of his experiments with inherited
funds, sometimes augmented by funds invested by his collaborators,
one example being the Dymaxion
car project. Fuller was awarded 28 United States patents.
LOUIS SULLIVAN:
American designer that created Modernism, and all the offshoots thereof,
actions and reactions. Mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.
An American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism".
He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was
an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor
to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of
architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School. Along with
Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan is one of "the
recognized trinity of American architecture".
"Form follows function" is attributed to him although he credited the
origin of the concept to an ancient Roman architect, engineer and author
named Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. Lewis took the neglected concept
and illuminated the world. He worked for William LeBaron Jenney,
the architect often credited with erecting the first steel-frame
building. After less than a year with Jenney, Sullivan moved to Paris
and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts for a year. He returned to
Chicago and began work for the firm of Joseph S. Johnston & John
Edelman as a draftsman. In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan. A year
later, Sullivan became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning
of Sullivan's most productive years. The culminating project of
this phase of the firm's history was the 1889 Auditorium Building
(1886–90, opened in stages) in Chicago, an extraordinary mixed-use
building that included not only a 4,200-seat theater, but also a hotel
and an office building with a 17-story tower with commercial storefronts
at the ground level of the building, fronting Congress and Wabash
Avenues. After 1889 the firm became known for their office buildings,
particularly the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis
and the Schiller (later Garrick) Building and theater (1890) in
Chicago. Other buildings often noted include the Chicago Stock Exchange
Building (1894), the Guaranty Building (also known as the Prudential
Building) of 1895–96 in Buffalo, New York, and the 1899–1904 Carson
Pirie Scott Department Store by Sullivan on State Street in Chicago.
In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote:
It is the pervading law of all things
organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all
things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of
the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in
its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law
Sullivan, however, attributed the concept to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman architect, engineer, and author, who first asserted in his book, De architectura,
that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas,
utilitas, venustas – that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful.
This credo, which placed the demands of practical use above aesthetics,
later would be taken by influential designers to imply that decorative
elements, which architects call "ornament", were superfluous in modern
buildings, but Sullivan neither thought nor designed along such dogmatic
lines during the peak of his career. Indeed, while his buildings could
be spare and crisp in their principal masses, he often punctuated their
plain surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau and something such as
Celtic Revival decorations, usually cast in iron or terra cotta,
and ranging from organic forms, such as vines and ivy, to more
geometric designs and interlace, inspired by his Irish design heritage.
Terra cotta is lighter and easier to work with than stone masonry.
Sullivan used it in his architecture because it had a malleability that
was appropriate for his ornament. Probably the most famous example of
ornament used by Sullivan is the writhing green ironwork that covers the
entrance canopies of the Carson Pirie Scott store on south State Street
Another signature element of Sullivan's
work is the massive, semi-circular arch. Sullivan employed such arches
throughout his career—in shaping entrances, in framing windows, or as
interior design.
All of these elements are found in Sullivan's widely-admired Guaranty Building,
which he designed while partnered with Adler. Completed in 1895, this
office building in Buffalo, New York is in the Palazzo style,
visibly divided into three "zones" of design: a plain, wide-windowed
base for the ground-level shops; the main office block, with vertical
ribbons of masonry rising unimpeded across nine upper floors to
emphasize the building's height; and an ornamented cornice perforated by
round windows at the roof level, where the building's mechanical units
(such as the elevator motors) were housed. The cornice is covered by
Sullivan's trademark Art Nouveau vines and each ground-floor entrance is
topped by a semi-circular arch.
Because Sullivan's remarkable
accomplishments in design and construction occurred at such a critical
time in architectural history, he often has been described as the
"father" of the American skyscraper. In truth, however, many architects
had been building skyscrapers before or contemporarily with Sullivan.
Chicago was replete with extraordinary designers and builders in the
late years of the nineteenth century, including Sullivan's partner,
Dankmar Adler, as well as Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root. Root
was one of the builders of the Monadnock Building (see above). That and
another Root design, the Masonic Temple Tower
(both in Chicago), are cited by many as the originators of skyscraper
aesthetics of bearing wall and column-frame construction respectively.
Some consider him the first modernist. His
forward-looking designs clearly anticipate some issues and solutions of
Modernism, however, his embracement of ornament makes his contribution
distinct from the Modern Movement that coalesced in the 1920s and became
known as the "International Style". To
experience Sullivan's built work is to experience the irresistible
appeal of his incredible designs: the vertical bands on the Wainwright
Building, the burst of welcoming Art Nouveau ironwork on the corner
entrance of the Carson Pirie Scott store, the (lost) terra cotta
griffins and porthole windows on the Union Trust building, and the white
angels of the Bayard Building. Except
for some designs by his longtime draftsman George Grant Elmslie, and the
occasional tribute to Sullivan such as Schmidt, Garden & Martin's
First National Bank in Pueblo, Colorado (built across the street from
Adler and Sullivan's Pueblo Opera House), his style is unique. A visit
to the preserved Chicago Stock Exchange trading floor, now at The Art Institute of Chicago, is proof of the immediate and visceral power of the ornament that he used so selectively.
Sullivan is featured Ayn Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead as the fictional character Henry Cameron. Although Rand's journal notes contain in toto only some 50 lines directly referring to Sullivan, it is clear from her mention of Sullivan's Autobiography of an Idea (1924) in her 25th anniversary introduction to her earlier novel We the Living (first published in 1936, and unrelated to architecture) that she was intimately familiar with his life and career.
Indeed, the term "the Fountainhead," which appears nowhere in Rand's
novel proper, is found twice (as "the fountainhead" and later as "the
fountain head") in Sullivan's autobiography, both times used
metaphorically.
The fictional Cameron is, like Sullivan –
whose physical description he matches – a great innovative skyscraper
pioneer late in the nineteenth century who dies impoverished and
embittered in the mid-1920s. Cameron's rapid decline is explicitly
attributed to the wave of classical Greco-Roman revivalism in
architecture in the wake of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, just as Sullivan in his autobiography attributed his own downfall to the same event.
The major difference between novel and real
life was in the chronology of Cameron's relation with his protégé Howard
Roark, the novel's hero, who eventually goes on to redeem his vision.
That Roark's uncompromising individualism and his innovative organic
style in architecture was drawn from the life and work of Frank Lloyd
Wright is clear from Rand's journal notes, her correspondence and
various contemporary accounts.
In the novel, however, the 23-year-old Roark, a generation younger than
the real-life Wright, becomes Cameron's protégé in the early 1920s,
when Sullivan was long in decline.
The young Wright, by contrast, was
Sullivan's protégé for seven years, beginning in 1887, when Sullivan was
at the height of his fame and power. The two architects would sever
their ties in 1894 due to Sullivan's angry reaction to Wright's private
moonlighting in breach of his contract with Sullivan.
After decades of estrangement, Wright would again become close to the
now-destitute Sullivan in the early 1920s, the time when Roark first
comes under the likewise impoverished Cameron's tutelage in the novel.
Wright, however, was now in his fifties. Nevertheless, both the young
Roark and middle-aged Wright had in common at that time that they both
faced a decade of struggle ahead. After the triumphs earlier in his
career, Wright came increasingly to be viewed as a has-been, until he
experienced a renaissance in the latter half of the 1930s with such
projects as Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax Headquarters.
Italian-American architect, Paolo Soleri(1919–2013) unified the concerrent Arts and Crafts with Modernismeexemplified byAntoni Gaudí. Soleri worked under Frank Lloyd Wright while instilling many concepts of Modernisme under his banner named Arcology using a Frank Lloyd Wright American spin.
Arcosanti, wth construction since 1970 is located 70 mi north of Phoenix, AZ. His arcology concepts dictated use of design pragmatically within the site conditions and available construction
skill set, thus Arcosanti features a very functionalist
design. In a different location using different local
resources, the design would apprear completely different.