German-born Margarethe (Grete) Fröhlich was a young artist when she moved to Frankfurt, Germany in 1929.  In the early 1920s Frankfurt had experienced a housing crisis.  In an effort to address the shortage of affordable housing, the city embarked on a major building project, constructing nearly 15,000 residences in a period of five years.  The...

The Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer is perhaps best known for his tubular steel B3 (‘Wassily’) and B32 (‘Cesca’) chairs, which he designed while leading the carpentry workshop at the Bauhaus, after it moved from Weimar to Dessau, Germany, in 1925.  Legend has it his experiments with tubular steel were inspired by his bicycle. Breuer, who was...

In 1931 when he designed this poster, the Swiss artist, designer, and architect Max Bill had already completed several years of study at the Bauhaus under the guidance of artistic luminaries Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky.  Bill had returned to Switzerland in 1929, and it was while living in Zürich that he received...

In 1951, Danish architect and designer Finn Juhl brought Danish Modernism to forefront of American consciousness. He did so with his interior for the “Good Design” Exhibition in Chicago, as well his design for the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the UN headquarters in New York, which he completed the following year. However, Juhl’s sculptural forms,...

  The evening of May 19th capped off a three-day residency at the Cooper-Hewitt for Natalie Chanin, founder and designer of the design studio Alabama Chanin. Chanin, one of the founders of the burgeoning “slow fashion” movement, followed up her two-day Design Directions workshop for teenagers with an hour-long public lecture and book signing. “Lecture”...