A FLEXAGON OF STRUCTURE AND DESIGN
An Exhibition of the Work of Arthur A. Carrara
Arthur A. Carrara, Edward H. Dwight [foreword]
Arthur A. Carrara, Edward H. Dwight [foreword]: A FLEXAGON OF STRUCTURE AND DESIGN [An Exhibition of the Work of Arthur A. Carrara]. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Center, 1960. First edition [2,000 copies]. Square quarto. Stapled printed vellum wrappers. [48] pp. Multiple fold outs and paper stocks. Elaborate graphic design throughout by John J. Reiss. Primary photography by John Szarkowski. Former owner inked name to front wrapper and first catalog page. Vellum wrappers lightly worn and chipped along upper and lower edges. Textblock mildly thumbed, but a very good copy of this elaborate and uncommon exhibition catalog.
8.5 x 8.5 softcover exhibition catalog with 48 pages [many pages open to 13 inches] devoted to the architecture, city plans, furniture, prints, industrial designs, toys and collages of ArthurA. Carrara. Foreword by Edward H. Dwight; Statement by Artist and Chronology. Carrara is described by W. M. E. Clarkson as “a designer of museum shows, furniture and children's toys, artist, craftsman, city planner, teacher, and first of all, an architect.”
The Magnet Master was devolved in a partnership between Arthur Carrara, his brother Reno and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was suggested, by the magazine Everyday Art Quarterly, as a toy for people of every age or intellectual conditions. About the toy Carrara wrote, in the catalog of the exposition of 1960 at the Milwaukee Art Center: “Magnet Master grew out of my experiments with the new found magnetic and electromagnetic metals. Every idea of man is first employed as a toy or in a toy. Every scientific principle was at first presented in a toy form. Magnet Master grew out of a comprehensive study of man’s methods of fastening materials (...) joinery techniques. The uses inherent in Magnet Master for architecture and other fields are apparent. As a study method Magnet Master was first exhibited and manufactured with the tremendous encouragement and financial help of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which deserves the credit or whatever popular acceptance this adventure has received. The unit shown here has been distributed around the world, it is hoped with some good effect.”
”Arthur A. Carrara (American, 1914 – 1995) was a Chicago-based architect and designer whose work channeled Prairie School and modernist influences, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Buckminster Fuller. But for a stint in the Army during WWII, he remained based in Chicago, designing private houses, corporate offices, exhibitions, and industrial products. Unfortunately, his name is not offhand familiar today, and his work is largely off the radar. Fortunately, his idiosyncratic career was showcased in a retrospective exhibition circulated by the Milwaukee Art Center in 1960, and preserved in a graphically arresting though largely unobtainable catalog.“Titled “A Flexagon of Structure and Design: An Exhibit of the Work of Arthur A. Carrara,” the catalog provides a window into a fascinating and experimental body of work and thought.
“As pictured here, this work includes Magnet Masters, an architectural toy promoted by the Walker Art Institute and featured in “Everyday Art Quarterly;” Café Borranical, a model for a building incorporating hydraulic moving sections; a low-cost “keel chair” of stapled fir plywood; a model of a play sculpture submitted to a MoMA competition; a house designed for Edward Kuhn that projects a changing pattern of shade ornament; and a plastic “Inflata-Lamp,” described by the author of “The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in ‘68” as the first inflatable object for the home.
“As titular symbol, the flexagon carries particular meaning for Carrara. Discovered by a British mathematician in 1937, flexagons “are paper polygons, folded from straight or crooked strips of paper, which have the property of changing their faces when they are flexed.” Sort of a 3-D kaleidoscope-cum-origami, the flexagon expresses creative potential for Carrara, possessing, in his words, the qualities of “mystery and precision.” This combination of attributes—mystery and precision— describes Carrara as well, suggesting a mind capable at once of mathematical logic and wonderment.
“It is not surprising, then, that Carrara designed toys and play structures, and that the fulcrum of his work was imagination, play, fancy, and fun. As he said in writing about Magnet Masters, “every idea of man is first emphasized as a toy or in a toy.” Toys and play structures elicit creativity itself, introduce architecture and design as participatory acts, and embody notions of sculptural plasticity and motion. Unfettered creativity, plasticity, and motion are key elements of Carrara’s mature work, uniting his earliest and latest efforts, and his toys and buildings. In this regard, the Kuhn house takes on the aspect of a kaleidoscope and the Café Borranical that of a flexagon. Magnet Masters was suggested in “Everyday Art Quarterly” as a teaching tool for children of all ages—graduate art students included—while electromagnetism was imagined by Carrara as a method of building joinery.
“Perhaps the lack of exposure makes Carrara’s work appear fresh today, or perhaps his take on things is simply refreshing. If you are fortunate enough to get hold of a copy of “Flexagon” you can judge for yourself.
“An original edition of A Flexagon of Structure and Design remains both fresh-looking and elusive, while Carrara himself remains obscure. As designer and architect, Carrara merits re-evaluation—perhaps a thesis or monograph, or a museum show. In retrospect, the model of a play sculpture, pictured here, is to me the most dazzling image.” — Larry Weinberg
Carrara was born in Chicago to an immigrant Italian laborer who worked for the firm that supplied terra cotta ornament for the buildings of Louis Sullivan. Carrara grew up in the Lakeview neighborhood on the North side of Chicago, and continued to live there for most of his life. While in high school, one of Carrara's teachers recognized his nascent interest in architecture and accompanied Carrara and several other students to Frank Lloyd Wright's 1930 architectural exhibition and lecture, "To the Young Man in Architecture," at The Art Institute of Chicago. In 1931, Carrara graduated from the Smith-Hughes architectural course at Lane Technical High School, and began his study of architecture and engineering at the University of Illinois, from which he graduated in 1937. After college, Carrara worked briefly for Herbert B. Beidler, a Chicago architect, and John S. Van Bergen, formerly a draftsman in Wright's office.
During World War II, Carrara served with a topographic mapping battalion in the southwest Pacific theatre. While researching duplicating techniques for army engineer intelligence, he conceived the idea for the permanent transfer print, which he created several years later. In 1943, while stationed in Australia, he was commissioned by the Australian government to design the Cafe Borranical in Melbourne, a teahouse in which he incorporated his theories of the use of hydraulics and magnetics in architecture. In 1944, he was invited to assist in the organization of the City Planning Commission in the Philippines and in the planning for the rebuilding of Manila and Cebu. In 1947, Carrara was commissioned to design the Centro Escolar University in Manila, which had been destroyed during the war.
Carrara established his own architectural practice in Chicago in 1946 and opened a second office in Buffalo, New York, in the mid 1960s. The work he produced over the course of his career included not only private residences and corporate buildings but exhibition spaces and industrial products. He also exhibited his work in one-man shows and juried exhibitions and presented several lectures. Arthur A. Carrara died in 1995. [The Art Institute of Chicago]