MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

My aim is to illustrate the connection between stage design and industrial design, theatre and the American lifestyle. The best example of this is Norman Bel Geddes, an innovative stage designer, director, producer, architect, industrial designer, futurist, and urban planner. Working in the 1930s and 1940s he shaped the whole industrial culture of America today. A socialist a modernist, Bel Geddes’s credo was to simplify, to unify, to use form to communicate (and, at times, shape) function, and to question the status quo. In the theater, he reengineered scene design, and applied his skills at immersive experience to effect social change. In society at large, he played a seminal role in shaping the expectations and behavior of a burgeoning consumer society, in creating the industrial design profession, and in helping the general populace imagine a better material life for itself. Bel Geddes believed that communication was the key factor shaping the modern world. This, in turn, influenced his own innovative re-thinking of transportation systems, architectural constructs, social environments, and domestic space. A number of products and practices can be traced directly back to Bel Geddes. These include a complete change in car design from the 1920s to 1950s, the design of suburbs, contemporary fridges and stoves – totally due to his input and the application of streamlining principles. Suburban layout, contemporary fridges and stoves came directly from his designs. His Futurama installation for General Motors exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City gave Americans who had endured a decade of economic depression genuine hope for a better future within their lifetimes, as well as illustrating the effect of industrial modernization. As this paper will show, Bel Geddes’s design projects powerfully influenced society and accomplished lasting changes to American culture and the American lifestyle.