Industrial aesthetics and design — interior decorating<\/p>\n
I picked this book up at the local used book store the other day:<\/p>\n
Joan Kron and Suzanne Slesin, High-Tech: The Industrial Style and
\nSource Book for the Home, (New York, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978), 286 pp.
\n foreword by Emilio Ambasz
\n designed by Walter Bernard<\/p>\n
Yes, here it is: how to furnish your home, industrial style.
\nHere’s the info from the jacket, including author bios. Let’s just say
\nit’s a combination of RE\/Search and Better Homes & Gardens. Enjoy:<\/p>\n
_______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n
HIGH-TECH
\nThe Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home<\/p>\n
How to outfit your home with paraphernalia originally developed for
\nfactories, battleships, dry cleaners, laboratories, Chinese restaurants, and
\nhundreds of other commercial and industrial users. <\/p>\n
_CONTENTS_
\n THE INDUSTRIAL AESTHETIC
\n STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
\n SYSTEMS
\n STORAGE
\n FURNITURE
\n MATERIALS
\n LIGHTING
\n THE WORKS
\n FINISHING TOUCHES
\n plus the High-Tech Directory, a 42-page illustrated buying guide,
\nlisting hundreds of hard-to-find industrial sources.<\/p>\n
Gym lockers in the bedroom, factory lamps over the dining table,
\ndetection mirrors over the dressing table, movers’ pads for upholstery,
\nCon Ed guardrails for towel racks, I beams for end tables, steno chairs
\nfor dining chairs, supermarket doors swinging into the kitchen, warehouse
\nshelving in the living room, scaffolding beds, test tubes for bud vases —
\nsomething exciting is happening in home furnishings and it’s called
\nhigh-tech. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will soon. And its
\nmeaning will soon become as familiar as art deco or art nouveau.<\/p>\n
A play on the words “high-style” and “technology”, “high-tech” is a
\nterm being used in archtectural circles to describe an increasing number of
\nresidences and public buildings with a nuts-and-bolts-exposed-pipes
\ntechnological look or to describe residences made of prefabricated components
\nmore commonly used to build warehouses or factories. Authors Joan Kron and
\nSuzanne Slesin, two infuential home-furnishings reporters, have expanded this
\ndefinition to include a parallel trend in interior design — the use of
\ncommonplace commercial and industrial equipment in the home.<\/p>\n
HIGH-TECH is a breakthrough book about a revolution in design that is
\nsweeping the country — in fact, the world. It is the first in-depth look
\nat the industrial aesthetic as applied to architecture and home furnishings.<\/p>\n
Whether you live in a split-level, a loft, a penthouse, a carriage
\nhouse, or an efficiency apartment, this book will change the way you look
\nat the world and inspire you to explore the commercial and industrial
\nlandscape. Why limit yourself to what is offered in traditional
\nfurniture outlets when there is a wealth of underutilized equipment that can
\nmoonlight residentially?<\/p>\n
In his foreword to HIGH-TECH, Emilio Ambasz, prizewinning architect
\nand designer and former curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art,
\nexplains how many of these alternative artifacts are noble pieces of
\nanonymous design unencumbered by the artificial need to reflect status.
\nIn HIGH-TECH you will see, beautifully illustrated, how top designers and
\narchitects have used ordinary, basic assembly-line products —
\nprefabricated mezzanines, dry cleaners’ racks, pallets (right off forklift
\ntrucks), beakers and fleakers, Sonotubes, and Colorlith laboratory
\ncounter tops — with style and panache, and how you can follow suit.<\/p>\n
Neither funky nor pie in the sky, HIGH-TECH is meant to do more than
\nsit there on the coffee table looking pretty. It is organized logically
\naccording to your design problems, from structural elements for renovations
\nto systems, storage, furniture, materials, lighting, hardware, kitchen and
\nbathroom appliances, and finishing touches. <\/p>\n
In the 32-page Storage chapter, for instance, you’ll learn how to use
\nlockers and wardrobes, file cabinets and art supply drawers, pick racks,
\ndoughnut baskets, small parts bins, revolving warehouse racks, and electric
\nconveyor systems to organize and simplify your home environment — and that’s
\njust the beginning.<\/p>\n
More than the first comprehensive book about the industrial revolution
\nin design, more than a history of the genre, more than an interior design
\nbook with hundreds of color pictures showing innovative uses for many
\nfamiliar industrial and commercial products and materials — HIGH-TECH
\nis a source book. Unlike any previous design book, it includes estimated
\nprices (ranging from $1 to $10,000) for many of the products illustrated as
\nwell as the names and addresses of their manufacturers and distributors
\nthroughout the world. <\/p>\n
HIGH-TECH is _the_ guide to the new industrial revolution in design.<\/p>\n
Joan Kron is a former reporter for the Home section of the New
\nYork Times, former senior editor and home furnishings writer for New York
\nmagazine, and associate editor at Philadelphia magazine. She has also
\nwritten for the Ladies’ Home Journal and Town & Country.<\/p>\n
Suzanne Slesin, a senior editor at Esquire, writes about design and
\nhome furnishings. She is a former contributing editor of New York
\nmagazine, where she covered home furnishings. She has also contributed
\nto American Home, Industrial Design, Architecture Plus, Abitare, and Domus.<\/p>\n
Walter Bernard is the art director of Time magazine, which he
\nredesigned last year, and the former art director of New York magazine.
\nHe has won numerous art direction awards and is a visiting professor at
\nCooper Union. <\/p>\n
_Jacket photo_: In an East Hampton living room by Bray-Schaible
\nDesign, a high-tech hearth\/coffee table combination is surfaced in “deck
\nplate,” a common industrial material often used on the floors of battleship
\nboiler rooms. The fruit bowl is a concrete birdbath. <\/p>\n
______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n
