After Taste by Kent Kleinman

Author:Kent Kleinman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2012-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

INTERIOR DESIGN

AS ENVIRONMENTAL

DESIGN: THE

PARSONS PROGRAM

IN THE 1960s

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

In April 1965 the graduating students of the interior design department at Parsons School of Design put on an exhibition of their work in their studio space, a converted loft on East Fifty-Fourth Street. The thematic show, called A Place to Live, focused on the reform of slum housing and included a reconstruction of a Spanish Harlem tenement. In their institutional version of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, this reconstruction came complete with “a naked tenement toilet. A nearby cubbyhole just large enough for a worn gas stove...strewn with grimy pots and pans, cans and cereal boxes.”1 Fig. 1 A reviewer for Interiors magazine noted the incongruity of the subject matter for Parsons, “that stronghold of elegance...which stands for luxurious, raffiné decor.” This show, unlike anything ever before presented by the school, was the public face of a reformed program, reflecting profound changes to the curriculum put in place by faculty members James Howell and Allen Tate in the 1964–65 academic year.

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