Płakowice Castle, is located in Plagwitz (Płakowice), Lower Silesia, which was German before 1945, and is now Polish. Plagwitz (Płakowice) is one of the oldest settlements, having been mentioned in the Register of Municipalities of Lower Silesia from 1217 onwards. In the history between competing and feudal families, the village changed ownership several times and […]
Biography
Kenneth Hiebert
It is my belief that Kenn Hiebert was the true founder of the American design school for Swiss Design in the US, 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 not […]
Ivan Massar
Real activists live their responsibilities. They don’t talk. They do. I met many important persons at MIT, but none were 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 […]
Fred Brink
Fred studied art history at Middlebury College and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was a professional photographer. A founding principal of Envision Corporation, Fred directed corporate communications media projects for Polaroid, The Boston Globe, Digital Equipment, Sheraton, and many others. Fred helped create Boston’s multimedia presentation bid to host the 1976 […]
MIT: Some Notes on the Unwritten History
It is somewhat dumbfounding to realize how some persons rewrite reality, especially in Design History, which in many ways does not really matter. Design would always like to play a bigger role than all the other professions which aid us in making each day. Still, it is quite amusing to see documents full of little […]
James F. Pfeufer, My Sponsor
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 […]
Simmons Valz Project
It had never occurred to me that teaching is in my DNA, until recently, now that I am retired, and have the time to think. I understand there were other distant relatives of mine involved in education, but my grandfather (1865-1963) was a headmaster; his brother a music professor at a Berlin conservatory. My father […]
Nicholas Negroponte
. . . avanti, avanti, avanti, you avant garde architect . . . have gall, guts, audacity, cheek, . . . jaunt gallantly onward . . . just don’t gallivant from gala to gala . . . don’t lose, but guard your integrity . . . because in your exuberance wanting to be the center […]
My WGBH Experience
In the early seventies (1970), Hartford Gunn resigned as general manager of WGBH to assume the presidency of the newly formed Public Broadcasting Service in Washington. Stan Calderwood, former chairman of the board, Polaroid Corporation, having just been appointed President of the WGBH Educational Foundation, invited me to make an elaborate design presentation of concepts […]
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT’s publishing operations were first formally instituted by the creation of an imprint called “Technology Press” in 1932. This imprint was founded by James R. Killian, Jr., at the time editor of MIT’s Technology Review alumni magazine. He […]