[Sci-tech-public] LIFE SCIENCES/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES WORKING GROUP

[Jane Zhu]

Department of the History of Science
LIFE SCIENCES/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES WORKING GROUP

Peder Anker, University of Oslo
Graphic Language: Herbert Bayer Environmental Design


The designer agency possesses great force in terms of how people see and 
interact with the environment, yet their moods of communication is rarely a 
topic for historians of science or the environment. This paper will serve 
as a remedy by discussing the work of Herbert Bayer. As a former faculty 
member of the Bauhaus school, he introduced modernist imagery in relation 
to globalization, conservation values, and maps dealing with environmental 
concerns in the United States. His graphic work represented a neo-Romantic 
attempt to reconcile managerial capitalism with humanistic values and 
protection of the environment as a whole. The three dominating themes in 
Bayer environmental design were images of globalization, designs with 
nature, and cartography. This paper will proceed in the same sequence, 
arguing that Bayer visual representation of the global environment rested 
on a Bauhaus vision of a new kind of industrial humanism, that his designs 
with nature came to inspire a whole generation of earthworks artists, 
architects, and landscape designers, and finally that his World Geo-Graphic 
Atlas of 1953 established a Bauhaus iconography in atlases addressing 
environmental issues.

Wednesday May 3, 2006, 12:30-2:00, Science Center 469
Sandwich Lunch Provided

Please RSVP to Jane Zhu: <mailto:jzhu at fas.harvard.edu>jzhu at fas.harvard.edu





Thank you
Jane Zhu
Faculty Assistant
History of Science Department
Science Center 371
1 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA  02138

Phone: (617) 384-5800
Fax:     (617) 495-3344

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