Knud Lonberg-Holm (January 15, 1895 – January 2, 1972) was a Danish-American

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

architect, photographer, and designer. He was called "the father of information design" and "one of

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

's greatest influences".

Biography

Knud Lonberg-Holm was born in 1895 in Denmark. From 1912 to 1915 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied architecture and engineering. One of his early designs was of a shipyard in Copenhagen. His early works were associated with

De Stijl De Stijl (, ; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, Jacobus Oud, J.J.P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren, North Holland, Laren (Piet Mo ...

and Berlin's Constructivist movements. Lonberg-Holm emigrated to the US in 1923. In 1924-25 he taught a course on design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, based on

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

ideas. He was one of the founders of the International Congress for Modern Architecture. In the 1920s he travelled through a number of American cities with a camera and "took worm's-eye views and extreme close-ups of skyscrapers, the back sides of buildings, fire escapes, billboards, and dazzling 'lightscapes', ignoring—for the most part—the facades of the buildings." Some of his photos were published in

Erich Mendelsohn Erich Mendelsohn (); 21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a German-British architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinem ...

's 1926 book ''Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten''; he did not receive credits for his works in the first edition. Lonberg-Holm worked at F.W. Dodge Corporation for more than 30 years. He, together with C. Theodore Larson, was commissioned to develop "a systematic approach to organizing the information needed by the building industry." This became known as an

information design Information design is the practice of presenting information in a way that fosters an efficient and effective understanding of the information. The term has come to be used for a specific area of graphic design related to displaying information ...

called Lonberg-Holm a "really great architect of the ''Nysky'' (New York skyscraper) age". In his book ''Scope of Total Architecture'',

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...

, identified Lonberg-Holn and

Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( ; 8 April 1892 – 16 April 1970) was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for most of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. His most ...

, as "men of outstanding initiative" who were "carrying on" the Modern Movement in the United States of America. File:A 1922 CT 1024.jpg, Chicago Tribune Tower project, 1922 File:Production Cycle diagram by Knud Lönberg-Holm, 1934.jpg, Production Cycle diagram by Lönberg-Holm, 1934 File:Analytic map of Detroit 1932 by Knud Lönberg-Holm.jpg, Analytic map of Detroit, 1932

References

External links

Knud Lonberg-Holm: ‘The Invisible Architect’

Rediscovering Knud Lönberg-Holm

Knud Lönberg-Holm Papers, 1908-1977
University of Michigan Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lonberg-Holm, Knud 20th-century Danish architects 20th-century American photographers 1895 births 1972 deaths Danish emigrants to the United States Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts alumni 20th-century American architects