Greta Magnusson Grossman: Modern Design from Sweden to California - Hardcover

by Harriet Harriss (Author), Naomi House (Author)

Greta Magnusson Grossman (1906-1999) was a prolific designer working within the male-dominated world of mid-century modern design, whose status and influence has been largely ignored. Grossman was the ultimate polymath - an industrial designer, interior designer and architect working within two fascinating contexts: Scandinavia and North America.

This book gives an overview of Grossman's background and education and the formative years of her career in Sweden, before describing her move to Los Angeles in 1940. While she is remembered for her work as a product and lighting designer, her work as an interior designer has been almost entirely overlooked.

This book catalogues and emphasises the significance of her contribution to interior design: making the connections between ideas she tested at the scale of the product within the interior environment. It positions her contribution to interior design in relation to the canon of the genres to which she contributed, her discipline and the emerging canon of women designers -- who are only now being recognised, whilst considering her enduring legacy upon the world of design today.

Author Biography

Dr. Harriet Harriss (RIBA, PFHEA, Ph.D.) is a qualified architect and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. Her teaching, research and writing focus upon pioneering new pedagogic models for design education, as captured in Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education & the British Tradition, and for widening participation in architecture to ensure it remains as diverse as the society it seeks to serve, a subject she interrogates in her book, AGendered Profession. Dean Harriss is also recognized as an advocate for diversity and inclusion within design education and was nominated by Dezeen as a champion for women in architecture and design in 2019. Her latest book Architects After Architecture (2020), considers the multi-sector impact of an architectural qualification.

Naomi House is a Designer, Educator and Writer with a specific expertise is in the field of interiors and its psycho-spatial dimension. She has taught at the Royal College of Art and the Bartlett School of Architecture, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture and Design at Middlesex University. Her previous publications include The Fundamentals of Interior Architecture (2007), 'Interiority Complex' in A Gendered Profession (2017), 'Towards Seamful Living', and '(In)Dangered Domesticity' in Interior Futures (2019).