Deconstructing Product Design

Soda King Siphon

Norman Bel Geddes, 1935

1. Although he tends not to receive the contemporary recognition of peers such as Loewy, Teague, and Dreyfuss, one cannot deny that Norman Bel Geddes was a visionary designer. Admirers compare his mostly unrealized conceptual work to no less than that of Leonardo da Vinci, while detractors prefer a P.T. Barnum comparison, the latter due to his flamboyant manner and penchant for self-promotion. Either way, it is clear that Geddes was able to look beyond many of the accepted design and engineering constraints of the day — perhaps due to his background in art and stagecraft — and explore visionary solutions to difficult problems. Like da Vinci, his conceptual work was ambitious, exploring designs for utopian ...