George Nelson Book

"Compact Design Portfolio: George Nelson explores the long and productive career of an architect who became a towering figure of twentieth-century design as a writer, advocate, impresario, and the head of a unique collaborative design office. Most of the products we associate with Nelson - the platform bench, Marshmallow love seat, Coconut chair, Sling sofa, and bubble lamps - were designed by his talented associates, but it was Nelson who provided the spark. He was among the first to send good design into the general marketplace - notably as design director of and then consultant to Herman Miller." The Nelson office worked on the cutting edge of design and put to practical use their work in the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow - a triumph of technology and enlightened public relations at the height of the Cold War. Nelson himself pioneered the pedestrian shopping mall, developed a revolutionary concept of storage, and pushed the envelope on residential design. He collaborated with some of the foremost designers of his era, including Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, Isamu Noguchi, and Buckminster Fuller. With an abundance of images and an insightful essay by design critic Michael Webb, Compact Design Portfolio: George Nelson celebrates this inclusive genius of classic mid-twentieth century design.