Porset, Clara, 1895-1981, author

Living design : the writings of Clara Porset / edited by Zoë Ryan and Valentina Sarmiento Cruz ; translations by Natalie Espinosa.

First English edition.

Montreal : Concordia University Press, 2024.

xx, 362 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

"Cuban-born and Mexico-based Clara Porset is renowned for her mid-century modern furniture and interior design and for her collaborations with architects such as Luis Barragán and Mario Pani. She was also an accomplished critic and writer. Living Design collects Porset's essays, reviews, and lectures to highlight her role as an influential thinker, educator, and practitioner. This volume insightfully contextualizes the politics that shaped Porset's design principles, charts the influence of the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College on her work, and reveals the period's fusion of local adaptations and modernist principles that made Mexico a major centre of modernist design. At a time when many practitioners believed that design could only be modernized by replacing hand craftsmanship with mechanization, Porset valued both approaches for their distinctive qualities and urged others to do the same. Through her writings, she encouraged efforts to catalyze local design communities during a period of rapid technological and social change. With essays by historian Randal Sheppard and design curator and scholar Ana Elena Mallet, an introduction by volume editors Zoë Ryan and Valentina Sarmiento Cruz, and explanatory notes on the people and publishing forums in Porset's circle, Living Design makes available works never before published in English, and with only limited circulation in the Spanish language, in order to recover an important and neglected voice in global modernism. Zoë Ryan is a curator and Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Valentina Sarmiento Cruz is an independent writer, researcher, interpreter, and translator based in Mexico City."-- Provided by publisher.

9781988111551 paperback
1988111552 paperback

Porset, Clara, 1895-1981 Written works.
Porset, Clara, 1895-1981 Écrits.
Furniture design Mexico History 20th century.
Interior decoration Mexico History 20th century.
Meubles Design Mexique Histoire 20e siècle.
Décoration intérieure Mexique Histoire 20e siècle.

Ryan, Zoë, editor, writer of introduction
Sarmiento Cruz, Valentina, editor, writer of introduction.
Espinosa, Natalie, translator

Location: Library main 320755
Call No.: 320755
Copy: 1
Status: Available