This article deals with the interiors of the Bacard & iacute; building (1958-1961) in Mexico City. In this history, Knoll Internacional de M & eacute;xico emerges as a major protagonist in the creation of Bacard & iacute;'s interiors, acting as a hinge between Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Chicago office and Florence Knoll's New York-based company. A significant number of unstudied letters in the Mies van der Rohe Archives reveal that rather than Mies van der Rohe and Florence Knoll, Mies's project architect, the American Gene Summers, and Arnold Wasson-Tucker, the Canadian Mexican architect who directed Knoll's Mexican subsidiary, along with the director of the spirits company, the Cuban businessman Jos & eacute; Mar & iacute;a Bosch, took primary roles in the design and completion of the Bacard & iacute; interiors. The transnational reality in which Knoll International existed and which it contributed to create is more clearly expressed in these letters. In them we read that Knoll Mexico acted as interpreter and translator of the intentions of actors from different nationalities involved in the creation of the building. From a transnational perspective we aim to illuminate a transnational design produced by transnational subjects and companies, focusing on the hidden actors and their negotiations expressed in an overlooked interior design.
This article dismantles the presumed neutrality of sexual objects by revealing how access, intimacy, and vibratory technologies have long structured expectations of bodies and pleasure. Instead of treating access as simple inclusion, it argues that vibrators-across medical, domestic, and contemporary design settings-reveal changing norms around gender, disability, and sexuality. Drawing on feminist technoscience, crip theory, and design history, this article examines how sensor-based sex tech, such as the Lioness vibrator, encodes normative, data-driven assumptions about sexual function. It contrasts these devices with disability-led innovations-from Gosnell Duncan's early use of medical-grade silicone in the 1970s to projects such as Lovewear and the Bump'n Joystick-which rethink erotic design through misfit, interdependence, and expanded sensory modalities. Revisiting earlier vibratory objects-from mechanotherapeutic machines to early consumer massagers-this study sketches a fragmented history in which vibration becomes a tool for shaping and disciplining sensation. A contrasting Japanese genealogy, in tactile shunga prints and carved implements, further disrupts Western narratives of technological progress. Across these histories, vibratory technologies appear as active mediators of bodily possibility. Framing access as a relational rather than corrective practice, the author proposes a broader approach to erotic design that values slowness, variation, and crip creativity.
A pictorial process for the simplified display of information, the principles of Isotype originated in socialist Vienna in the 1920s, but the system migrated alongside its directors to Britain and West Africa in subsequent decades. This article explores the evolving usage of Isotype in connection with women's movements in these regions. Originally known as the Vienna Method, the system was used in Austria as a tool for social reform, employed by campaigners and the Social Democratic Workers' Party. Forced to emigrate, Isotype's directors shifted to deliver propagandist material for the British state, with illustrations encouraging women's contributions to the Second World War. Arriving in the Western Region of Nigeria in the 1950s, Isotype director Marie Neurath was commissioned to support a patriarchal political agenda, while plans for a local Isotype branch saw the prominent role played by women as designers threatened. Archival records document uneasy alliances forged by Isotype in different cultural contexts, reflected in the system's inconsistent usage for issues of universal suffrage, maternal services, equal employment, and equal pay. Adapted to represent women's causes in different political contexts, the usage of Isotype in Austria, Britain, and Nigeria demonstrates the susceptibility of design to the agendas of external actors.
Founded in 1959 by three Viennese emigres-Martin Eisler (1913-1977), Arnold Hakel (1914-1988), and Susi Aczel (b. 1931)-Interieur Forma remains, more than sixty years later, one of Argentina's leading firms in modern furniture and interior design. Despite its long-standing presence, the company has received little scholarly attention. This relative neglect may be related to its position, since 1961, as a licensee of Knoll, the US furniture manufacturer, which led it to concentrate on producing Knoll designs through a network of small local factories. The firm also prioritized large-scale corporate projects-often for multinational clients-over smaller private commissions. This article reconstructs the history of Interieur Forma within the broader framework of transnational design networks in Argentina. It traces the firm's lineage to local movements of modern design such as Grupo Austral and Nueva Visi & oacute;n, as well as its connections with modern Brazilian design. The analysis examines how economic policies under developmentalism opened the furniture market to international trade and transnational partnerships. Drawing on interviews with Susi Aczel and members of subsequent generations of the firm, the article situates Interieur Forma within broader discussions on modern design in Argentina and its transnational entanglements.
Abstract In April 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes opened in Paris and continued until October that year. In the century since, designed artefacts and spaces that resemble the work shown at the exhibition have come to be known as “Art Deco” in tribute to the importance of the exhibition. The Editors of The Journal of Design History wanted to mark this important centenary. For the Art Deco Centenary, we have encouraged authors to reach beyond the standard format of the academic journal article in ways that suit the reflective purpose of the series. The resulting series comprises a reception study, a speculative provocation, a practitioner interview and an alternative history. In “Art Deco Centenary: An Introduction,” Lees-Maffei discusses the contributions of this group of innovative and reflective texts.
This article considers the development of graphic design in early twentieth-century China as a response to the possibilities and challenges posed by China's conversion to industrial printing. Focusing on the use of huabian (the Chinese term for page-border decoration) in a series of literary periodicals, I show how Chinese publishers mobilized Japanese-made moveable-type ornaments to signal the newness of the reformist "new fiction" enterprise. This article further traces the subsequent rise of customized page-border design in Chinese literary magazines; deviating from the standardized aesthetics of mass-produced type ornaments, local graphic artists drew inspiration from the visual resources of antiquity. Although scholars in design history and design studies have abundantly explored the meaning-bearing and meaning-making capacities of graphic arts, the literary potentialities of graphic design have yet to be fully recognized in Chinese studies. Attending to the mutual constitution and mutual illumination between literature and graphic design, this article shows how the evolving graphic landscape of Chinese periodicals marked a series of regime shifts in the making of modern Chinese literature.
This article considers how the US-based furniture company Knoll Associates (est. 1946) through its Europe-based global arm, Knoll International (KI; est. 1954), wielded two transnational expansion business strategies-subsidiaries and licensing-in the UK between 1957 and 1970. In 1961, after a trademark dispute barred it from conducting business under its name, KI and its local partner Meredew adopted an entirely new tradename: Interiors International. In addition to manufacturing, marketing, and distributing Knoll furniture, Meredew set up a design service modeled on the Knoll Planning Unit that advanced the early careers of several furniture, interior, and graphic designers, among them Elizabeth Goldfinger and Mervyn Kurlansky. But despite the partnership's success, just six years later Knoll canceled the license in favor of opening a subsidiary. Led by Monty Berman, Form International, as the new company was named, initiated a series of design projects, employing the emerging designer Jane Young (Dillon) and commissioning the avant-garde architect-designer Max Clendinning for new lines, as well as exporting UK-made Knoll products into East Africa. If these two tradenames have served to obscure Knoll's presence in the UK, this article argues that these autonomous identities made important and unrecognized contributions to local design culture. Along the way, it draws out many "unseen" Knoll collaborators.
