On October 19, join us for a book talk with Harriet Harriss and Naomi House on Greta Magnusson Grossman: Modern Design from Sweden to California, out now from Lund Humphries! They’ll discuss their definitive book on Swedish designer and her significant contributions to design and architecture.
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 emphasizes 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 recognized, whilst considering her enduring legacy upon the world of design today.
This talk will take place at Scandinavia House. Registration is recommended; sign up at the link above.
About the Authors
Dr. Harriet Harriss (ARB, RIBA, (Assoc.)AIA, PFHEA, FRSA, Ph.D) is a Professor in the Ms. Historic Preservation Program within the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at Pratt Institute, following her tenure as the Dean of the School of Architecture. An award-winning educator, writer and UK-qualified architect, Dr. Harriss has established an international reputation for social justice and climate crisis pedagogy and curriculum design and for pioneering interdisciplinary pedagogies informed by avant-garde thinking that draw upon queer, feminist and decolonization theories to advance diversity, equity and inclusion pedagogies, policies and professional practices. (www.harriet-harriss.com)
Naomi House is a designer, educator and writer. A Research and Knowledge Exchange Lead for the School of Design and Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture and Design at Middlesex University, London, she is an experienced academic who taught for many years in Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art, and previously at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London Metropolitan University and University of the Arts, London. Naomi’s particular expertise is in the field of interiors using forensic methods as a strategy for exploring and questioning how objects, environments and their interactions can be analyzed, interpreted and animated. She has written on various subjects related to the interior as well as collaborating projects around themes of social justice and climate emergency, urban regeneration and practices of empathy and care, including Endangered Domesticity (2023) and Kilburn Lab (2022-23).