The 1950s: Celebrating 90 Years of Design

Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., publishes What Is Modern Design? and launches the “Good Design” series at both Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1950. As exhibitions designers for the debut year, he chooses Charles and Ray Eames; Finn Juhl will follow in 1951. Also in ’51, Ludwig View van der Rohe completes the Farnsworth house outside Chicago. In 1952, Jack Lenor Larsen opens a textiles studio-his first commission being New York’s Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-and Arne Jacobsen designs his Ant chair for Fritz Hansen. The ever prolific Kaufmann returns with What is Modern Interior Design? in 1953. Two years later, Billy Baldwin decorates Cole Porter’s suite at the Waldorf Towers in New York, and Le Corbusier finishes his Store-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Roncamp, France. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York opens in 1959.

Editor’s note: Explore more coverage of design through the decades here. 

Design Highlights

1950 – Charles and Ray Eames design storage units for Herman Miller.

1952 – Marcel Breuer completes this cottage in Lakeville, Connecticut; for Fritz Hansen, Arne Jacobsen designs the Ant chair.

1955 – The January issue of Interior Design features sculptural ceramics by Luke and Rolland Lietzke; Le Corbuiser’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel is finished in Ronchamp, France.

1956 – George Nelson’s Marshmallow sofa for Herman Miller comes out.

1958 – Philip Johnson and William Pahlmann’s New York restaurant, the Four Seasons, gets ready for its close-up.

1959 – Paul Rudolf smiles for the camera, while Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens in New York.