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art DECORATIVE art
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Premières pages de l'ouvrage, en accès libre.
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DECORATIVE ART 1 9 5 1 - 2
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UNISON CURVE
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Decorative Art 1951-2 The Studio Year Book EDITORS: RATHBONE HOLME & KATHLEEN FROST THE STUDIO PUBLICATIONS LONDON & NEW YORK
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Acknowledgments The Editors wish to express their grateful thanks to all the architects, interior decorators, designers and manufacturers who have provided photographs and information for inclusion in this volume. Special appreciation is due to our correspondents and friends overseas: Miss Carmen Valdes of Saber Viver (Argentina); Mrs Gwen Morton Spencer and Mr Robert Haines (Australia); Mr D. W. Buchanan (Canada); Mr Sten Moller (Denmark); Mrs G. L. de Snellman-Jaderholm (Finland); M. Pierre Vago (France); Mr Shinji Koike, of Kaigai Bunka Chuo Kyoku (Japan); Mr Knut Greve (Norway); Mr Stig Bjorkman of Svenska Hem (Sweden); and Mr Bryan Holme (United States of America). --- PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY THE STUDIO LTD, 66 CHANDOS PLACE, W.C.2, AND IN NEW YORK BY THE STUDIO PUBLICATIONS INC., 432 FOURTH AVENUE PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W. S. COWELL LTD, AT THE BUTTER MARKET, IPSWICH
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Contents Foreword: The Editors --- American Architecture Today: Richard J. Neutra --- Apartment in St John’s Wood, London --- House at Brentwood, California --- House at Westhampton, Long Island, New York --- House in West Vancouver, British Columbia --- House in Pilar, Argentina --- House in Tokyo --- House in Vienna --- Interiors and Furnishing --- Kitchens and Bathrooms --- Textiles --- Wallpapers --- Lighting --- Glass --- Ceramics --- Tableware --- Metalware --- Decoration --- Index ---
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FOREWORD THE response evoked by our annual invitation to architects, designers and manufacturers to submit photographs of their current work in furnishing and interior decoration is always on a large and gratifying scale, but the selection from which this issue has been compiled appears to be without precedent. It has been made necessary for us to exclude literally hundreds of beautiful designs of all kinds, for the simple reason that this book is not large enough to contain them. The quantity to which we refer does not, however, take precedence over quality. We believe that this year the things we are showing are better than ever, and we are able to draw the conclusion that designers and producers of furniture and of decorative and useful objects for the home are beginning to reap the fruits of past experiment inasmuch as a stability of attitude toward meeting the requirements of the individual is surely becoming manifest. This does not mean that experiment has become stagnant, but rather that it is following a more logical course of progression, that confidence in new materials and a growing knowledge of their potentialities and limitations is making itself visible. The old-established materials are likewise being employed with a mixture of good sense and flair for design, whilst in the building of homes—where the contribution of Great Britain remains pathetically small—evidence of free and uninhibited thought continues to flourish. Focus on the United States for leadership in domestic architecture and interest in the latest developments continues to intensify and the outsider looking in on the fascinating work being done on this vast continent may well feel envious. America, however, is not so trouble-free as her achievements might lead us to suppose, and, as her problems and her methods of tackling them are of interest to all, we invited that outstanding American architect, Richard Neutra, whose own work has been a mid-century inspiration of international value, to review the situation for us. This he has done in an entertaining and revealing manner in the following feature, which will appear as part of a new book to be published by Oxford University Press, New York. (It should be observed that many of his points are relevant to situations elsewhere.) At the same time he sent us a number of photographs of his own work which, though not attempting a comprehensive coverage of the many facets discussed, are nevertheless related to his theme and have been included as example. THE EDITORS
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In 1927 Richard J. Neutra designed the steel frame, the reinforced shot concrete shell, and all the furnishings and interiors, the pool, the patio and terraced gardens of the Health House at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California. It was a performance of contemporary integration, at once recognized in all leading European art magazines as peculiarly American. Today, after so many years, this building by no means looks outmoded, depreciated or obsolete. It has proven the stability and the economic value of modern design concepts, which cater to health and physiological human needs. AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE TODAY by Richard J. Neutra Author of Survival through Design; Neutra, Buildings and Projects; and Mystery and Realities of the Site. Architecture with a capital ‘A’ is perhaps a word that does not bring minds close to problems of biological necessity. Yet Architecture should be a shell executed around pulsating life and aid the healthy activities and metabolism of the human community and individual existence. We are organisms perhaps less lucky than those lowly animals which carry around with them their own shells, and are independent of fluctuating market conditions when it comes to Housing. We in America, the supreme country of industrialized technology, if we want to get housed, must busy ourselves transferring moneys from a bank to a contractor and twenty-two subcontractors, or to a prefab-manufacturer. Most American consumers, in order to get ideas of how to house themselves, must beat the path to the drugstore magazine rack and pick up a lot of color-printed Home-Happiness-magazines, brimful of fascinating suggestions addressed to the prospective house builder. Life is pictured to him and especially to her, as full of a comfort quite unexpected by the majority of people in other places. A Yucatan Indian, bound for married life, will, with the help of the other peasants of his village, in two days put up in the jungle clearing a one-room elliptical mud hut with a roof of twigs. There he will rear a lot of babies who will not have much privacy in growing up and perhaps less night fright and isolation than more civilized babies suffer from. Incidentally, the man we speak of is also an American; in fact, compared with him Christopher Columbus was a foreigner, and a cumbersome Un-American immigrant at best. But the man of Yucatan has in his primitivity of Housing much in common with a billion Hindus, Indonesians, Albanians, Brazilians,
