Viewing page 23 of 60

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

January CONTRACT/designer profile/4 of 8

purchases..a departure from our current way of doing business where [[strikethrough]] the manufacturer's sales [[/strikethrough]] staffs court design houses sent sales staff out to A & D firms.

"In addition, in the early days of the industry, New York and San Francisco led in the design field. Now, the country is nationalized, with new growth from second-tier markets. 

"By the late '50s, we had (dome so far, so fast, we felt the Modern Movement had captured the corporate establishment. Designers who had gone through hard times, from very little work to huge projects...suddenly had their heads [[strikethrough]] were [[/strikethrough]] turned."

Larsen notes that the avant garde was absorbed into the corporate structure in the second half of the '50s when America dominated world economics and architecture. The heady evolution in building construction caused a neglect of domestic product design, with the result that international styles of the pre-war period found their niche in the market for the first time.

"Later, the youth revolution of the '60s lent a freedom and playfulness to design. A whole awareness of people and attitude, of what was lively, became more interesting than what was 'correct', "Larsen says. A new corporate esthetic developed, evidenced by the Chase Manhattan headquarters project of the mid='60s which gave attention to corporate art, quality, and "people spaces."

Larsen's firm came to produce fabrics -- hand-woven upholsteries and silks -- in a modern idiom which had

-more-