THE ARCHITECTURAL FORUM October 1940
Design Decade 1930 – 1940
Will Burtin [Art Director]
Will Burtin [Art Director], Architectural Forum [Editors]: DESIGN DECADE 1930-1940 [Special issue of The Architectural Forum]. Philadelphia: Time, Inc., Volume 73, No. 4, October 1940. Slim Quarto. Thick printed wrappers. Wire spiral binding. 108 [cxviii] pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Wrappers lightly soiled and creased. Textblock lighhtly thumbed. The spiral binding is in good condition and does not bind any pages when opened. A very good copy.
8.75 x 11.75 spiral-bound magazine with 104 pages of editorial content showcasing the Architectural and Industrial Design of the American Streamline Moderne Machine Age aesthetic. This is Volume 73, No. 4, October 1940 -- the legendary Design Decade 1930-1940 special issue designed by Will Burtin. This special 104-page special section of the Architectural Forum is devoted to a review of the 1930s as the era of the "Machine Age" showing a "substantial accomplishment in relating machine inspired design to a machine inspired way of life."
630 black and white images were carefully assembled by Art Director Burtin to tell the visual story of American Design from 1930 to 1940. The effect is stunning to say the least. Many designers were commissioned to produce projects specifically for the Design Decade issue, including R. Buckminster Fuller, Raymond Loewy, Isamu Noguchi, Edward Durell Stone, Schweiker and Elting, J. Gordon Carr, Harwell Hamilton Harris and others.
Art Director Burtin divided this issue into the following sections with a magnificent single-page photomontage to introduce each section:
Introduction
Work
Recreation
Home
Health
Trade
Education
Transportation & Communication
FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "The story, of “DESIGN DECADE" is the story of the machine, the story of what has happened to the machine, to the objects and to the environment it produces. For countless generations men made things with their hands or with tools that were ingenious extensions of their hands. For countless generations, too, a few men made machines, but they generally ended up as toys in the court of some bored potentate or as implements of war: there were enough slaves or serfs to do the work. This story is concerned only with the machine since it first became a significant factor in production. And because it is largely an American story, it follows that this land of extremes has produced the worst as well as the best manifestations of the contemporary design approach. Finally, the critical observer must conclude that the decade just closed, nearly two hundred years after the Industrial Revolution, has for the first time shown a substantial accomplishment in relating machine inspired design to a machine inspired way of life."
Designers, architects, manufacturers, artists and photographers include: William Lescaze, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ely Jacques Kahn, Carl Preis, Harold Van Doren, Albert Kahn, Henry Dreyfuss, Brooks Stevens, Raymond Loewy, Egmont Arens, Margaret Bourke-White (Burke-White), William Van Alen (Allen), George Howe & Robert Heller, Paul Schweikher, Theodore Lamb, Winston Etling, John Gordon Rideout, Herbert Rosengren, Roland Wank, TVA, J. Gordon Carr, 1939 New York World's Fair, Ray Patten, Walter Drowin Teague, Paul Bry, Lurelle Guild, George Switzer, Alden B. Dow, William Muschenheim, William Wilson Wurster, Merry Hull, Robert Geissmann, Isamu Noguchi, Ben Schlanger, Louis Abramson, Winold Reiss, Peter Muller-Munk, Ernest Hagerstrom, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Jan Ruhtenberg, Clarence Mayhew, Robert Trask Cox, Richard Neutra, Edward Durell Stone, Dan Cooper, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Donald Deskey, Gardner A. Dailey, George Fred Keck, John Yeon, Henry Wright, James Eppenstein, Lee Simonson, Russel Wright, Russell Barnett Aitken, Morris B. Sanders, Kenneth Day, Tommi Parzinger, Marguerita Mergentime, Walter Von Nessen, Waylande Gregory, Royal Metal Manufacturing Company, Ben Nash, John Vassos, The Bartos Company, Rilbert Rohde, Heywood-Wakefield, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Artek, Bruno Mathsson, Ann Franke, Dorothy Liebes, Antonin Raymond, Wharton Esherick, Joseph Platt, Laurits Christian Eichner, Teresa Kilham, Samuel Marx, William Pahlmann, Robert Gruen, John Funk, Walter Bogner, Frederick Kiesler, Leo Jiranek, Stansilav V'Soske, Joseph Allen Stein, George Sakier, Alsonso Iannelli, William Hamby, George Nelson, Louis Werner, John Mills, Richard Garrison, Buckminster Fuller, Gustav Jensen, Oscar Stonorov, Albert Kastner, Frederick Ackerman, George Fred Pelham, Frederick Backus, Vahan Hagopian, John Holabird & John Root, John Dinwiddie, Steuben Glass Company, Morris Ketchum, Victor Gruenbaum, Ira Schwam, Eleanor LeMaire, Hans Foy, Orrefors Glass Company, Richard Bennett, and many others. There are also an excellent assortment of vintage trade advertisments that espouse the depression moderne streamline aesthetic quite nicely. You have been warned.
This is truly one of the finest original documents of 1930s American Design in the Industrial and Architectural Arts. My highest recommendation.
Will Burtin (1909 -1972) studied typography and design at the Cologne Werkschule, then practiced design in Germany before emigrating to the US in 1938. He worked for the US Army Air Force designing graphics and exhibitions before becoming Art Director of Fortune magazine in 1945. His work for Fortune was marked by innovative solutions to presenting complex information in graphically understandable ways. In 1949 he established his own firm. Among his clients were the Upjohn Company, Union Carbide, Eastman Kodak and The Smithsonian Institution. Burtin's great genius was in his ability to visualize complex scientific and technological information. He created several award winning exhibitions including the 1958 model of a human blood cell. Burtin believed that through his work he could become the "communicator, link, interpreter and inspirer" who is able to make scientific knowledge comprehensible.
Burtin developed a design philosphy called Integration, in which the designer conveyed information with visual communication that is based on four principal realities:
the reality of man as measure and measurer
the reality of light, color, texture
the reality of space, motion, time
the reality of science
Using this approach to design problems was essentially the birth of what later became known as multimedia. By integrating all four realities into a design solution, Burtin could solve seemingly insoluble puzzles.
The mid to late 40s saw Burtin expand his role in professional organizations, serving as Director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). In 1948, Burtin's Integration: The New Discipline in Design exhibit opened at the Composing Room in New York City. In the introduction to the exhibition, designer Serge Chermayeff stated: "This new art of 'visualization,' of giving visual form in two or three dimensions to a message, is the product of a new kind of artist functionary evolved by our complex society. This artist possesses the inclusive equipment of liberal knowledge, scientific and technical experience, and artisticability . . . Among the small band of pioneers who have developed this new language by bringing patient research and brilliant inventiveness to their task is Will Burtin."
Most noteworthy, Burtin served for 22 years as both Upjohn's design consultant and art director of its in-house publication, Scope. His work on Scope continued his use of graphics and imagery in communicating complicated journal text. He worked to create a unique corporate identity for Upjohn, a new concept at the time. For Upjohn, Burtin produced some of the most celebrated exhibits of his career: the Cell, the Brain, and Inflammation: Defense of Life. These immensely popular walk-in exhibits provided a clear, visual interpretation of abstract scientific processes. [xlist_2018]