SAF Lecture: Modernism for the Masses

  • Thursday, April 23, 2015
  • 5:30 PM
  • Herald-Tribune, 1741 Main Street, Sarasota, FL 34236

Registration

  • Full-time student with ID

The 1939 World’s Fair in New York City introduced many new products and ideas about the future of the American home, promoting industrial design and new materials. But where could the average consumer touch, feel and buy modern design? And how could they learn how to choose, and use, the revolutionary new shapes, products and appliances? This lecture will demonstrate how modern design was popularized for the American consumer, highlighting the importance of designers like Russel and Mary Wright, curators like Alexander Girard and John McAndrew, and shopkeepers like Benjamin Thompson at Design Research or Kitty Weese and Jody Kingrey at Baldwin Kingrey.

Alexandra Lange is an architecture and design critic. Her essays, reviews and features have appeared in Architect, Domus, Dwell, Medium, Metropolis, New York Magazine, the New Yorker blog, and the New York Times. She has a monthly Opinion column at Dezeen. During academic year 2013–2014 Lange was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), as well as the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism (Strelka Press, 2012). She has long been interested in the creation of domestic life, a theme running through Design Research: The Store that Brought Modern Living to American Homes (Chronicle Books, 2010), which she co-authored with Jane Thompson, as well as her contributions to Formica Forever (Metropolis Books, 2013) and Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006). Visit www.alexandralange.net

5:00 to 5:30 pm Check-in
5:30 to 6:30 pm Lecture
6:30 to 7:00 pm Q + A
7:00 to 8:00 pm Reception

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