The chair is so ubiquitous a symbol of modernity that it often passes unnoticed. Beginning with Marcel Breuer's startling presentation of his own chair designs as a "film," and moving to a discussion of a series of chairs designed by modernist architects throughout the 20th century, this talk will address the technical and theoretical bases of chair design. Reaching out to embrace new synthetic disciplines such as art history, cinema, economics, medicine and ergonomics, these architects engendered an uncanny disappearance--the chair as a figure or form is effaced, leaving behind instead an after-image of what we now refer to as "the man-machine system."

John Harwood is a professor of Art History at Oberlin college, where he specializes in modern and contemporary architectural history. Harwood's research centers on the relationships between science, technology, corporate organization and their architectural articulation. His articles have appeared in Grey Room, do.co.mo.mo, and The Ganzfeld. He is co-author, with Janet Parks, of The Troubled Search: The Work of Max Abramovitz (2004). His essays also appear in exhibition catalogues for the Venice Biennale Architecture 2008 and the Victoria and Albert Museum's exhibition Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 (2008). He is currently completing a book - The Redesign of Design: Computer, Architect, Corporation - on the spatial and temporal aspects of computing technology, ergonomics, and corporate architecture.

Prof. Harwood's visit is hosted by the Design, Architecture, and Culture Group of Quadrant, a joint initiative of the University of Minnesota Press and the Institute for Advanced Study. Quadrant is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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