Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History: A Guide to Type, Image, Symbol, and Visual Storytelling in the Modern World

273 Pages·2012·36.68 MB·English

by  Richard Poulin

G R A P H I C
D ES I G N
A R C H I T ECT U R E
A 20TH-CENTURY HISTORY
G R A P H I C
D ES I G N
A R C H I T ECT U R E
A 20TH-CENTURY HISTORY
A GUIDE TO TYPE, IMAGE, SYMBOL, AND
VISUAL STORYTELLING IN THE MODERN WORLD
RICHARD POULIN
CONTENTS
I II
PRE-20TH-CENTURY THE MODERN AGE
INFLUENCES 1900–1950
9 39
INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1
THE IMPACT OF INVENTION
1879–1933
13
FOREWORD BY
The Incandescent Lightbulb 41
JAMES STEWART POLSHEK, FAIA
Eiffel Tower 42
The Modern Billboard 43
17 Hector Guimard and the Paris Metro 45
FOREWORD BY
Commerce and the Urban Streetscape 46
DEBORAH SUSSMAN, HAIA, FSEGD
23 The Great White Way 48
Luna Park 51
Petrograms and Petroglyphs 26 New York City Subway 52
Stonehenge 26 One Times Square and the First Zipper 53
Hieroglyphics 27 Frank Lloyd Wright and
the Larkin Building Atrium 54
The Greek Iconic Alphabet 28
La Samaritaine Department Store 55
Roman Monumental Inscriptions 29
Michelin Building 55
The Pantheon 31
Horn & Hardart Automat 56
Church of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo 31
Grand Central Terminal 57
Chartres Cathedral 32
On the Road 59
Basilica of Santa Maria Novella 32
Georges Claude and Liquid Fire 60
Piazza Campidoglio 33
Hollywoodland 61
Taj Mahal 34
Burma-Shave 61
The Shaker Aesthetic 34
Edward Johnston, Henry Beck, and
Corn Palace 35
the London Underground 62
The Arts and Crafts Movement 35
83
CHAPTER 3
STYLE AND THE MASS MARKET
1924–1947
Miami Art Deco District 85
Exposition Internationale
des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes 86
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre 87
The New York City Skyscraper 88
Rockefeller Center and
65 105
CHAPTER 2 Radio City Music Hall 93 CHAPTER 4
ART AND TECHNOLOGY: A NEW UNITY Streamline Styling in America 97 BETWEEN THE WARS
1901–1928 1932–1945
The Drive-in Service Station 99
Douglas Leigh and the Sign Spectacular 100
Otto Wagner and Die Zeit 67 PSFS Building 106
The Modern Retailer 103
Peter Behrens and AEG 68 Century of Progress Exposition 107
El Lissitsky and Proun 69 Fascist and Nazi Propaganda 108
Aleksandr Rodchenko and Mosselprom 70 New York World’s Fair 109
Gerrit Rietveld and Schröder House 71 Alvar Aalto and the Finnish Pavilion 110
Herbert Bayer 72 Walter Dorwin Teague and
J. J. P. Oud and Café de Unie 74 the National Cash Register Pavilion 111
Dessau Bauhaus 75 Works Progress Administration (WPA) 112
Izvestia 77
Piet Zwart and
First Church of Christ Scientist 78
Theo van Doesburg and Café l’Aubette 79
Paul Renner and Futura 80
De Volharding Cooperative 81
III
THE POSTWAR WORLD
1950–2000
117 Rudolph de Harak and 127 John Street 161
CHAPTER 5
Lance Wyman and the Mexico Olympics 162
POPULUXE: THE AMERICAN INFLUENCE
1946–1961 Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes and
A Sign System Manual 164
Corita Kent and Boston Gas Company 165
Tail o’ the Pup 119
The “New” Construction Barricade 166
Las Vegas and the Neon Desert 120
Otl Aicher and the Munich Olympics 168
Morris Lapidus and the Populist Hotel 123
TKTS Times Square 170
Alvin Lustig and
Northland Shopping Center 125 Number 9 170
Holiday Inn 126 Harper & George 171
133
CHAPTER 6
Howard Johnson’s 127 Adrian Frutiger and Paris-Roissy Airport 172
MODERNISM AND
Los Angeles’s Watts Towers 128 AIGA Symbol Signs 174
THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE 1950–1979
McDonald’s 129 Page, Arbitrio & Resen and I. M. Pei 176
Walt Disney and Armin Hoffman and Disentis 178
Gyorgy Kepes and the Influence of Light 135
the Happiest Place on Earth 130
John Follis and
Luis Barragán and Towers of Satellite City 136
Hollywood Walk of Fame 131 Architectural Signing and Graphics 179
Josef Müller-Brockmann 137
Jock Kinneir, Margaret Calvert, and 181
the British Traveler 139 CHAPTER 7
POSTMODERNISM AND BEYOND
The First American Modernist—
Lester Beall 141 1966–1995
Paul Rand and Westinghouse 142
Venturi Scott Brown and Associates 183
Chermayeff & Geismar and
Chase Manhattan Bank 144 James Wines and Best Products 186
Alexander Girard and La Fonda del Sol 146 Studio of Richard Haas 188
Mobil Oil and the Suburban Landscape 147 Jean Widmer and
Centre Georges Pompidou 190
New York World’s Fair 148
Milton Glaser and the Big Kitchen 191
CBS and Black Rock 151
Dan Reisinger and Yad Vashem 192
Lou Dorfsman, Herb Lubalin, and
Gastrotypographicalassemblage 153 Turin’s Lingotto 193
John Massey and the Art of the Banner 155 Maya Lin and
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 194
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon and
Sea Ranch 156 Takenobu Igarashi and
the Architectural Alphabet 196
Unimark and
the New York City Subway System 157 Los Angeles Summer Olympics 198
The Boston T 159 Cincinnati Zoo 200
IV
THE BEGINNING
OF THE 21ST CENTURY
The New American Marketplace 202 249
GLOSSARY
Communication Arts and Bayside 204
712 Fifth Avenue 206
Solana 207 255
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hold Everything Prototype Store 208
Studio Dumbar and PTT 209
Musée du Louvre 210 259
IMAGE RESOURCES
Sussman/Prejza and Walt Disney World 212
Shea Stadium 214
Chicago O’Hare’s United Terminal Walkway 215 229 263
CONTRIBUTORS
Erik Spiekermann, and
the Berlin Transportation System 216
LAX Airport 230
Alan Fletcher’s House Gates 218
Universal City Walk 230 265
INDEX
Corning Glass 219
NJPAC Lucent Center 231
North Hollywood Pump Station 220
National Museum
The Influence of Universal Design 221 of Emerging Science and Innovation 232
272
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS/
Disney’s All-Star Resorts 222 Bibliotheca Alexandrina 233
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fremont Street Experience 224 Towers of Light 233
Morgan Stanley in Times Square 225 The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts 234
MoMA QNS 235
Melbourne Exhibition Centre 236
Seattle Central Library 237
Bloomberg Headquarters 238
S. I. Newhouse School
of Public Communications 239
The New York Times Building 240
Newseum 241
GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall 242
Brooklyn Botanic Garden 243
The Cooper Union 244
Gough Street Banners 245
X Exhibition 245
Photograffeur JR 246

INTRODUCTION
For centuries, graphic design and architecture have coexisted in the
Cave Painting, c. 13,000 BCE
Cougnac, France built environment. Although each discipline speaks in its own unique
language, each has historically attempted a dialogue with the other.
Architecture speaks of form, space, and purpose, celebrating hu-
man continuity and offering experiences that both function and
inspire. Graphic design—typography, image, and symbol—communi-
cates the subtleties of time and place and tells cultural and visual
stories, clarifying a building’s purpose and echoing its architectural
message.
Mankind has been telling its collective stories and histories by
marking cave walls and inscribing buildings for millennia. Animal
drawings at Lascaux, cuneiform writings in Mesopotamia, Chinese
calligraphy, and Egyptian hieroglyphs all demonstrate how early
mankind expressed themselves by drawing and writing on the
places of significance in their lives. These early forms of visual com-
munications or graphic design conveyed beauty, integrity, and above
all—permanence.
Our need to dedicate and consecrate places is clearly the be-
ginning of the integration of graphic design in the built environment.
Classical inscriptions, figurative murals, and ornamental surfaces
have long been a part of architecture and have influenced our un-
derstanding of typographic form and graphic style and their visual
representation in the built environment. Buildings and public spaces
coexist with billboards and signs, patterned and textured facades,
and informational and wayfinding signs to effect an overall experi-
ence with the public. Graphic design has become integrated with
the built environment in shaping not only cities but also the lives of
their inhabitants.
At the intersection of the history of art and architecture, long
before the design discipline was defined by its current name, envi-
INTRODUCTION, CONTINUED
ronmental graphic design, seminal examples of twentieth-century
graphic design arose in our built environment from the cultural,
social, and economic climate of their time. Environmental graphic
design is a vital part of our visual heritage, appreciated for its
practical uses and enjoyed for its decorative appearances. Urban
streetscapes, office buildings, museums, convention centers, air-
ports, public parks, shopping malls, and entertainment centers all
have been transformed by the use of environmental graphic design.
This design discipline has evolved not only by its technical improve-
ments but also by its integral relationship over time to art, architec-
ture, and cultural movements.
For example, the meetinghouse signs and identification mark-
ers of American Shaker communities; Russian constructivist wall
murals lining the streets of Moscow during the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion; the great white ways of Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, and
the Las Vegas Strip; the festive and celebratory graphics of the
1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics; the provocative typographic
walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; and
corporate identity and branding of the American marketplace after
World War II all responded directly to the social constructs, political
upheavals, and economic needs of the times. Additionally, prevailing
artistic movements directly influenced and inspired other ground-
breaking design benchmarks such as Hector Guimard’s art nouveau
entrances to the Paris metro, Otto Wagner’s decorative building fa-
cades in Vienna, Edward Johnston's typography for the London Un-
derground, Peter Behrens' integration of graphic and architectural
form for Allegemein Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), supergraph-
ics by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon for Sea Ranch, and Robert
Venturi's transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary by
applying decorative imagery to conventional buildings. Innovators
10 11