Knud Lonberg-Holm (January 15, 1895 – January 2, 1972) was a Danish-American

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

architect, photographer, and designer. He was called "the father of information design" and "one of

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...

's greatest influences".

Biography

Knud Lonberg-Holm was born in 1895 in Denmark. From 1912 to 1915 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied architecture and engineering. One of his early designs was of a shipyard in Copenhagen. His early works were associated with

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

and Berlin Constructivist movements. Lonberg-Holm emigrated to the US in 1923. In 1924-25 he taugh a course on design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, based on

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

ideas. He was one of the founders of International Congress for Modern Architecture. In 1920s he travelled through a number of American cities with a camera and "took worm's-eye views and extreme close-ups of skyscrapers, the back sides of buildings, fire escapes, billboards, and dazzling 'lightscapes', ignoring—for the most part—the facades of the buildings." Some of his photos were published in Erich Mendelsohn's 1926 book ''Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten''; he did not receive credits for his works in the first edition. Lonberg-Holm worked at F.W. Dodge Corporation for more than 30 years. He, together with C. Theodore Larson, was commissioned to develop "a systematic approach to organizing the information needed by the building industry." This became known as an information design.

called Lonberg-Holm a "really great architect of the ''Nysky'' (New York skyscraper) age". File:A 1922 CT 1024.jpg, Chicago Tribune Tower project, 1922 File:Production Cycle diagram by Knud Lönberg-Holm, 1934.jpg, Production Cycle diagram by Lönberg-Holm, 1934 File:Analytic map of Detroit 1932 by Knud Lönberg-Holm.jpg, Analytic map of Detroit, 1932

References

External links

Knud Lonberg-Holm: ‘The Invisible Architect’

Rediscovering Knud Lönberg-Holm
{{Authority control 20th-century Danish architects 20th-century American photographers 1895 births 1972 deaths Danish emigrants to the United States Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts alumni 20th-century American architects