Esoteric Survey

Back to my IBM score.  This all came from the estate of an IBM employee. His name is on one of the signs but I couldn't find much about him. I was told he was an engineer at IBM. I've covered the importance of Eliot Noyes in past posts  but here's a summary.  He studied architecture at Harvard under Bauhaus  founder Walter Gropius. He  worked for Marcel Breuer and Gropius' architecture firm shortly after graduating.  Noyes was also the first Director of Industrial Design at MoMA and was a central figure with the Organic Home Furnishings and Good Design exhibitions. This was all interrupted by WWII.   While working at the Pentagon during WWII, Noyes became friends with Thomas J. Watson Jr., future president, CEO, and chairman of IBM. After the war, Noyes worked in the Norman Bel Geddes office, which won a commission to redesign IBM’s office machines. Eventually the Geddes office closed and Noyes won the typewriter contract for himself. He then famo...

IBM Mainframe models, THINK signs and a Selectric type ball display. I'll get more into this in a separate post.  Letters from Maurice Martiné's shop in Laguna. I'll have to get the I made for it.  Michael & Frances Higgins Clock

Fire Station No. 4 (1966) by Robert Venturi The design fees for the building were paid for by the Cummins Foundation Architectural Program . The program became a formal part of the Cummins Foundation in 1960. It began with schools, but later grew to encompass all public projects. All the buildings in this post, with the exception of the I.M. Pei library, were funded by the program. The Cummins Foundation did give the library $800,000 grant, but it wasn't part of the Architecture Program. A list of the program's projects can be found here . Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cummins, Irwin  Miller, summarized the program with this statement: American architecture has never had more creative, imaginative practitioners than it has today. Each of the best of today’s architects can contribute something of lasting value to Columbus. L. Frances Smith Elementary School (1969) by John M. Johansen The "gerbil  tube" school caused some controversy when...

Swift and Monell , Doyle Lane and Olga Lee Doyle Lane Eliot Noyes / IBM I hit a good ephemera pile too.

IBM Aerospace building (1963) in Los Angeles, designed by Eliot Noyes. A Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons were associate  architects on the project.  It's now home to  Otis College of Art & Design Punch card pattern Source:  Eliot Noyes: A Pioneer of Design and Architecture in the Age of American Modernsim Prefabricated panels Source:  Eliot Noyes: A Pioneer of Design and Architecture in the Age of American Modernsim  IBM punch card IBM 360 Source: Cray Cyber 1967 - The base was once raw concrete. Source: Getty The view from across Lincoln Blvd. More on Elliot Noyes and IBM can be found here .