An in-depth study of the work of German-born industrial designer Richard Sapper, most famous for designs such as the Tizio lamp and the Brionvega radio. Richard Sapper (1932-2015) a German-born designer who was based in Milan most of his working career, is considered one of the most important designers of his generation. Within his lifetime, he received numerous international design accolades, including ten prestigious Compasso d'Oro awards. Sapper developed and designed a wide variety of products, ranging from ships and cars, to computers and electronics as well as furniture and kitchen appliances. His clients included Alessi, Artemide, B&B Italia, Brionvega, FIAT, Heuer, Kartell, Knoll, IBM, Lenovo, Lorenz Milano, Magis, Molteni, Pirelli and many others. This investigation of Sapper's work, based on over forty hours of interviews with the designer Jonathan Olivares, studies his objects, the circumstances that shaped them and the resulting ideals that emerge. The inter-generational conversation explores themes that reoccur throughout Sapper's oeuvre, and which have a particular importance for a younger generation of designers and those with a desire to understand Sapper's work from a fresh perspective. An illustrated timeline, packed with images from Sapper's personal archives, reveals the incredible variety and technical brilliance of his work. Richard Sapper died in Milan on 31 December 2015. Designed by SM Associati, the agency of Marco Velardi from Apartamento magazine, the book opens with an image essay featuring candid commissioned photography by Ramak Fazel.

An exhaustively researched visual history of the office chair.

The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him. It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House. It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks. It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations. It is The Book of Daniel.

The first publication about Eliot Noyes, an important figure in 20th-century design in America.

The first monograph on the work of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, two of the most innovative industrial designers from Britain. The firm headed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby has won numerous awards since its founding in 1996. Distinguished by clean, modern lines, BarberOsgerby engages in furniture and product design, as well as consumer electronics, architecture, and interiors, making their mark with technical craftsmanship, formal vigor, and inspired use of color. BarberOsgerby’s work includes iconic designs like the best-selling Tab Lamp (2008), and is part of permanent museum collections worldwide. Their portfolio ranges widely from accessible work to custom one-off pieces, including pews for a cathedral, hangers for Levi’s, and the brilliantly hued Iris Tables. Their work has been produced by manufacturers and clients such as Cappellini, Swarovski, Stella McCartney, and Coca-Cola. Featuring sketches, concept renderings, and compelling photographs, the book is organized thematically with an emphasis on materials and process, tracing the inspirations and working method of this unique design duo.

Made in close collaboration with Dieter Rams himself, this catalogue raisonné is the ultimate reference on one of the most influential product designers of all time