Herbert H. Stevens, Jr., was an established engineer. Born in Gardner, Maine, in 1913, he attended Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where he received a bachelor of science degree in engineering in 1936; and later attended the New School for Social Research, where he received a master’s degree in liberal studies. As a young engineer at […]

Real activists live their responsibilities. They don’t talk. They do. I met many important persons at MIT, but none was as significant as Ivan Massar, a Black Star photographer who collaborated on many of the MIT projects, not just with me, but also with Jackie Casey and Ralph Coburn. From 1945 on, I grew up […]

It is my belief that Kenn Hiebert was the true founder of the American design school for Swiss Design in the United States, even if he would fight me tooth and nail against this description. But it is my contention that he was a messenger of a distinct way of evolving visual languages and solutions […]

In my mind, Sharon Poggenpohl is one of the very few design scholars and educators, that have earned my respect and admiration justly and through a yeoman’s commitment and hard work to aid students, graduate students, faculty colleagues, and practicing professionals to either apply sound available knowledge and tools for success or to develop them.  […]

•Community and Privacy, with Serge Chermayeff (1963)•Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964)•A City is Not a Tree (1965)•The Atoms of Environmental Structure (1967)•A Pattern Language which Generates Multi-Service Centers, with Ishikawa and Silverstein (1968)•Houses Generated by Patterns (1969)•The Grass Roots Housing Process (1973)[46]•The Center for Environmental Structure Series, made up of The Oregon Experiment (1975)A […]

One of my early discoveries was the musical work of Charles Ives (1874–1954), an American modernist composer of classical music. Oliver (Howie) Kline was a young designer who was hired by our office. He came from a family of opera and music performers, took me to some of the premiere performances of Ives’s work at […]

Over the years at MIT, I found that especially the more seasoned faculty members were always more open for discussion. One did not have to be enrolled in their classes. While Professor Edgerton was always available for a lively chat or openly show his photographic work or share descriptions of his South American research trips […]

Larry Klein and his wife Nancy were our next door neighbors in Evanston, IL, in 1976, when I was appointed to the ID Institute of Design in Chicago, IL. My wife and I moved into a carriage house that originally was originally connected to the Klein house. The long hall or covered walkway had been […]

I have always been interested in trying to understand my loves, but even more importantly, to understand from where and whom my biases come. What prompted me to prefer something over something else? Who lifted or lowered the curtain over my choice of realities, either tried to shield me or tried to lift me up? […]

James F. Pfeufer, 88, died at home on February 6, 2001. He was the husband of Rika Henderson and the late Reed Champion Pfeufer. Mr. Pfeufer was born in Comfort, TX, in 1912. His grandparents were members of the German Freethinker movement who settled the area around 1848. He was raised in Harlem, NY, where […]