Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Harwood Whiteroom
Harwood Whiteroom
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Room
In a 1965 essay entitled "'On Line' in 'Real Time,"' the editors of Fortune magazi
described the advent of a new technological order that had already dramati
altered military planning and organization and would now impose itself
business-the arrival of computer processing and management in "real tim
Members of Westinghouse Electric Corporation's executive committee
recently filed into a small room in the company's new Tele-Computer
Center near Pittsburgh and prepared to look at their business as no grou
of executives had ever looked at business before. In front of them was a
large video screen, and to one side of the screen was a "remote inquiry"
device that seemed a cross between a typewriter and a calculator. As the
lights dimmed, the screen lit up with current reports from many of the
company's important divisions-news of gross sales, orders, profitability,
inventory levels, manufacturing costs, and various measures of perfor-
mance based on such data. When the officers asked the remote-inquiry
device for additional information or calculations, distant computers shot
back the answers in seconds.1
Grey Room 12. Summer 2003, pp. 5-31. ? 2003 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7
Noyes's first contact with the corporation coincides exactly with his first efforts
at negotiating the interface between human and machine. In 1940, probably due
to the widespread influence of his mentor Walter Gropius, he became the first
curator of the new Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York. That year Noyes organized and presided over the famous com-
petitive exhibition Organic Design in Home Furnishings and published a polem-
ical catalogue of the same title documenting the results. On the inside cover
of the catalogue Noyes set the terms of the competition with his definition of
"Organic Design":
This last statement is telling, because the competition was as much a business
deal as a museum exhibit; each of the winning designers was awarded a
production and distribution contract with a major American department store.
The overwhelming winner of the competition was the team of Eero Saarinen
and Charles Eames, taking the two most important categories-living room
and chair design-with their innovative method of "anthropomorphically"
bending plywood.
Noyes defined design, albeit implicitly, as a matter of teamwork.3 The exhi-
bition was itself a collaboration between museum, designers, and corporations,
and all of the winners of the competition, with the exception of textile design-
ers, were teams of two or more designers.4 More important, Noyes stressed in
Organic Design not only the role of the machine in design and production but
its formative impact on society as well. Also on the inside cover, alongside his
own definition of "organic design," Noyes included two quotations from Lewis
Mumford's Technics and Civilization:
I
8
The economic: the objective: and finally the integration of these principles
in a new conception of the organic-these are the marks, already discernible,
of our assimilation of the machine not merely as an instrument of action
but as a valuable mode of life.5
Here was the central problem of design, as Noyes saw it in 1940. The chair, and
the living room, were points of interface between the human and the machine.
The success of that interaction hinged on the development of a newly
"organic"-that is, newly organized-environment, and demanded the study of
the boundary between human and machine (to be defined later as ergonomics).6
Thus the appeal of Saarinen and Eames's designs, which expressively mapped
the form of the human body onto machine-made furniture and integrated these
new forms into the bright white rooms of the modern home. It was these pre-
liminary efforts at achieving a synthetic and social approach to the mechanical
and the natural-that is, of navigating the liminal territory of the ergonomic-
that Noyes brought to bear in his work at IBM.
Noyes's career at MoMA was soon interrupted-though one might also say
accelerated-by World War II. Because of his experience flying gliders, he was
recruited as a test pilot in the army-air force glider research program.7 At the
Pentagon, Noyes's neighbor down the hall was Thomas Watson Jr., a reconnais-
sance pilot and future heir of the International Business Machines (IBM)
Corporation. The two became friends after Noyes gave Watson lessons on how to
fly gliders. After the war Noyes returned to New York and MoMA and also took
a partnership in the offices of the aging Norman Bel Geddes; Watson returned
to IBM as executive vice president. Through their friendship Noyes won a series
of commissions from IBM for the Geddes office, most notably redesigning the
IBM 562 typewriter, transforming it into the sleek "Executive" model. The
smooth curves of its plastic casing, as well as the buttons of the keyboard,
redesigned to better fit the hand and fingers, became standard features in
American typewriter
IBM design. This initial suc-
cess led to further com-
missions from IBM, and
on the closure of the
Geddes office in 1947
In the early 1950s Thomas Watson Jr., about to take over the presidency and
chairmanship from his father Thomas Watson Sr., made a series of momentous
decisions regarding the future of IBM.9 Following an emerging trend in man-
agement-reflected most famously in the reorganization strategies of General
Electric and the U.S. government under Eisenhower-Watson determined to
abandon IBM's pyramidal managerial hierarchy in favor of a more efficient,
"horizontal" structure. Thus, when he came to power in 1952, he began the
process of reshuffling IBM's various activities into a series of more or less
autonomous divisions, coordinated by a corporate managerial staff.
In the same years Watson made a commitment to move the bulk of IBM's mas-
sive resources into the research, development, and marketing of computers.
Watson Sr. had always considered IBM's work in computers before and during
WWII largely a matter of prestige rather than of business. The production of
computers had been a means to preserve working relationships with both uni-
versities and the U.S. government, bringing in increasingly large amounts of
money in the way of research grants but relatively little sales revenue. Watson
Jr. saw things differently. In order to win and maintain the numerous newly
emerging and lucrative contracts from the U.S. military, with an eye to a
prospective market for computers in the world of corporate business, and in
competitive response to recent successes of the Remington Rand UNIVAC com-
puter in the business market, Watson determined that IBM should, by the end
of the 1950s, corner the entire computer market.
These two fundamental shifts in the structure and orientation of IBM were
accompanied by a third change: Watson determined that IBM should adopt a
"new look." Following a chance encounter with the sleek modern design of
10 Grey Roorr
Noyes completely redecorated. The new floor was white, the walls painted red,
the marble pillars covered over with smooth panels, and small silver signs read-
ing "IBM 702" in a sans serif font on the walls. Perhaps the most significant
change was the way in which the computers were displayed. As Watson relates:
Thus, Noyes's redecoration was not only an interior design, but an exhibition
staged in a shop window as well. Noyes and IBM were concerned at the outset
with projecting an image of IBM as a provider of an essentially modern ser-
vice the handling of information. Interestingly, this was achieved by a staged
transparency that allowed a glimpse into an interior space-from outside to
inside.13 This interior was specially designed to highlight the ergonomically
sound relationship between the computer and its operators, processes that
occurred in a space entirely
, ~' Iv independent of the exter-
nal environment: "bri
.-- : ? ; ' ! P_ _ lit," "in the middle of the
night," "around the clock."
Following the popular
if _ success of this design (and
11
12 G
is not to send down a weighty memo from above, but to kindle sponta-
neous enthusiasm with a succession of good works.... And this will happen
only when good design-the awareness of it and the desire for it-begins
to come out through their own skins. That is why this is not an outside
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In 1956, following the successes of new typewriters, calculators, and the 702,
705, and RAMAC computers, IBM began a process of rapid expansion on an
international scale.22 This expansion, of course, and the move into the techno-
logically demanding and rapidly changing market of computers, required new
facilities. Noyes and his fellow consultants therefore fanned out, commissioning
literally hundreds of buildings from their colleagues in the years 1956 to 1980:
Eero Saarinen, John Bolles, Paul Rudolph, Victor Lundy, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, Harrison and Abramovitz, and many more large commer-
cial firms and local architects were called upon to deliver "simply the best in
modern design" at an architectural scale.23 Though these buildings were rea-
sonably diverse in appearance, they were all united by a common design logic
motivated by the desire for IBM's space to communicate in parallel with the dic-
tates of its management and its products. IBM's engineers provided the modules
for laboratory, factory, and office buildings, demanded clear interior spans for
flexibility, and set requirements for maximum and minimum lighting; however,
their common logic was also the direct result of the demands the computers
placed upon architecture.
In order to "extend ... control over [the] environment" by the manipulation
of information, IBM's computers and all their accoutrements-including their
operators-required their own environment, within which they could function
optimally. To this end, Noyes himself set the tone for the building campaign by
developing a mode of environmental enclosure based on two different but inter-
related organizational and communication logics. On one hand, the dramatically
patterned, opaque surfaces of IBM's buildings were understood as metaphorical
residues or imprints left upon architecture (considered as a "parallel commu-
nication path") by the passage of IBM's primary activity-data processing or
"pattern recognition"24-through the medium of architecture. On the other
hand, Noyes was concerned to enclose and define a tightly controlled, trans-
parent interior based on the typology-and topology-of the monastic or domes-
tic courtyard. Taken together, these two logics indicate an understanding of
architecture as a closed counterenvironment.25 That is, the environment of
IBM was to become a space organized in opposition to, and set apart from, its
Room 15
16
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18 Gre,
By 1963 IBM was right on target, achieving Watson's goals of the 1950s and
pushing way beyond even the most optimistic expectations. It controlled over
70 percent of the computer market in the United States; however, several com-
petitors-including Sperry Rand, RCA, Honeywell, and several newcomers-
were attempting to unseat it, and it was plagued by constant government
antitrust suits. IBM had itself become a target-not only of its competitors but
also of the federal judiciary (though the legislative and executive branches had
a more lenient attitude toward IBM because of its constant willingness and
ability to collaborate on high-priority Cold War military projects). IBM was also
embarking on the extremely high-risk venture of marketing a modular, inter-
machine-compatible computer array: the System/360. Under immense financial
pressure,32 the corporation installed a new, centralized Real Estate and
Construction Division to oversee its still massive expansion program, which
would cut costs by providing more pragmatic and "humble" facilities.
This state of affairs also demanded a change in image. As John Morris Dixon
put it, writing for the Architectural Forum in 1966,
"IBM apparently decided that an image of wealth
was a liability.... Stories abound of carpet removed
or fine wood painted over."33 In other words, Noyes's
reinforced concrete window-walls were not just
cheap; they were strategic. Beyond the creation of
the new real estate division, IBM's design strategy
had actually changed very little. Or, more precisely,
the IBM design logic had been radicalized-moved
toward its limit case.
The patterns of Saarinen's and Noyes's curtain
walls were not gone; rather, they had embedded
themselves in the thick reinforced concrete walls of
the new buildings. This is attested to by the fact that
two photographs of IBM France, a tree column and
Ha oom 19
[D]etails must play their part in relation to the overall concept and character
of the building, and are the means by which the architect may underline
his main idea, reinforce it, echo it, intensify or dramatize it.... I like
details ... to be simple, practical, efficient, articulate, appropriate, neat,
handsome, and contributory to the clarity of all relationships.
The converse of this is that the spectator may observe and enjoy details,
and find in them an extension of his experience and understanding of the
architecture. In them he should be able to read, or at least see reflected,
the character and spirit of the entire building-as to see the universe in a
grain of sand.35
20
21
FIRST
FLOOR
EQUIPMENT COOLING
MAINTENANCE AREA
PLENUM
EQUIPMENT
COOLING FILTER PLENUM
MAINTENANCE AREA MEZZANINE
POWER
HOUSE
MAINTENANCE
TEST AREA HEATER
BOILER \
GENERATORS
22
24
25
26 Grey Room 12
1. Gilbert Burck and the editors of Fortune, The ComputerAge and Its Potential for Management
(New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1965), 26-43.
2. Eliot F. Noyes, Organic Design in Home Furnishings (New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1941). The emphases of Noyes's architectural education at Harvard under Gropius and Breuer are
evident throughout the book, particularly in the history of modern furniture design offered at the
beginning, in which the importance of Breuer's innovations in tubular steel furniture and in
modular furniture (Typenmobel) is heavily stressed (4-9). Also, more than half the bibliography
(45-46) is given over to German works on aesthetics and architectural theory and history; most
of the remainder are works by British authors, again echoing Gropius's and Breuer's trajectory on
their way to the United States.
3. Noyes's emphasis on teamwork as a central, though not explicitly worked out, theme in the
exhibition closely parallels Gropius's growing interest in the matter and was probably taken up
directly from Gropius's teachings at the Bauhaus and at Harvard. See in particular Gropius's later
publications on the subject; e.g., Walter Gropius, The Scope of Total Architecture (1943; reprint,
New York: Harper, 1955).
4. Besides Saarinen and Eames, the winning teams were Oscar Stonorov and Willo von Moltke;
Martin Craig and Ann Hatfield; and Harry Weese and Benjamin Baldwin. Other teams were given
honorable mentions. For the entire list of categories and awards, see the inside cover, facing page,
of Noyes, Organic Design.
5. Noyes, Organic Design, n.p. The quotations are taken from Lewis Mumford, "The Assimilation
of the Machine," in Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934), ch. 7. The
final three subheadings of the chapter from which the quotations are taken are "The Growth of
Functionalism," "The Simplification of the Environment," and "The Objective Personality," three
themes that seem to have motivated much of Noyes's subsequent work. This is also the part of
Mumford's book in which he most clearly enunciates his theory of a newly emerging, and inher-
ently complex, mechanical and informational environment: "we need to guard ourselves against
the fatigue of dealing with too many objects or being stimulated unnecessarily by their presence,
as we perform the numerous offices they impose. Hence a simplification of the externals of the
mechanical world is almost a prerequisite for dealing with its internal complications. To reduce
the constant succession of stimuli, the environment itself must be made as neutral as possible"
(357). It is thus the role of the designer to effect this "simplification," in effect to generate a
counter-environment at the level of the outside ("the externals") of the machine.
6. The label "ergonomics" was applied only in the mid-1960s as an umbrella term for a wide range
of scientific practices concerning the relationship between machines and the human body, includ-
ing anthropometrics and "human engineering." For the first authoritative contemporary overview
of the subject, see K.F.H. Murrell, Ergonomics (London: Chapman and Hall, 1965).
7. From his first experience flying gliders on an archaeological dig in Iran in 1934-1935, Noyes
maintained a lifelong fascination with flight. This and the following information about Noyes's
early career and initial encounter with Watson were obtained in interviews with Noyes's daughter
Mary Brust (25 February 2002), his son Frederick Noyes (28 February 2002), and his former
secretary Sandy Garsson (27 February 2002).
8. Letters in the Archives of American Art (Breuer 5711/0256), dating from 22 July to 16 October
23. For broad overviews of the various IBM commissions in these years, see "IBM's New
Corporate Face," Architectural Forum 106 (February 1957): 106-114; Paul R. Damaz, "Les Constructions
I.B.M.," Architecture d'aujourd'hui 34 (December 1963-January 1964): 40-50; and John Morris
28 Grey Room 12
30 Grey Room 12