Monday, August 23, 2010

Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes

Design Research in Cambridge, MA

A friend of mine sent me this Boston Globe article and I though I'd share. It's about a new book that tells how Design Research spread modern design across America. What is Design Research? It was a store that started in 1953 that sold modern wares in Cambridge, MA.

"Ben Thompson, who later chaired the architecture department at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, began the store because his clients couldn’t find appropriate furnishings for the modern houses he and other architects were creating. D/R, he hoped, would supply that need. It was never particularly expensive. The concept was that good design could be found anywhere, from Peruvian mountain sweaters to modernist chairs by such name architects as Aalto, Breuer, Saarinen, Josef Hoffmann, Arne Jacobsen, Charles and Ray Eames, and many others." read more here

1 comment:

zoetropa said...

Wow, that building is so familiar to me, I've walked by it a million times but this is such a beautiful picture of it I almost didn't recognize it. Of course I only know this building as ever being Crate and Barrel, so sad that neither store is there now.