In February 1956 the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr., hired the industrial
designer and architect Eliot F. Noyes, charging him with reinventing IBM's corporate image, from stationery and curtains to products such as typewriters and computers and to laboratory and administration buildings. What followed—a story told in full for the first time in John Harwood's The Interface—remade IBM in a way that would also transform the relationships between design, computer science, and corporate culture.
Table of Contents:
"Contents
Introduction: The Interface
1. Eliot Noyes, Paul Rand, and the Beginnings of the IBM Design Program
2. The Architecture of the Computer
3. IBM Architecture: The Multinational Counterenvironment
4. Naturalizing the Computer: IBM Spectacles
Conclusion: Virtual Paradoxes
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
"
About the Author :
John Harwood is associate professor of architecture in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
Review :
"In this fascinating book, John Harwood shows clearly and convincingly how architects and industrial design consultants calculatedly worked with IBM to shape the public image of the corporation and its products. The Interface is eye-opening.
—Henry Petroski, Duke University, author of The Pencil and The Essential Engineer
"
"This is not only a brilliant but a necessary book: design is the future of computing; the IBM design team run by Eliot Noyes was the most important in commercial history, and helped shape not only the industry but the modern world. The book almost couldn’t help being brilliant, given the extraordinary richness and depth of the design team Noyes assembled—a richness never equaled in design history—with Saarinen and Roche, Paul Rand and the Eames Studio plus Noyes himself contributing everything from architecture and graphics to industrial and machine design, films and museum exhibits. Anyone who cares about modern computing, modern design or the future of technology needs this book.
—David Gelernter, Yale University
"
