Last chance to see Libraries exhibit on the College of Design at 75

Good designers pursue both the new and the universal. While the basic designs of common concepts like the house and the book have remained consistent over centuries, generations of designers have constantly expanded those concepts within those established traditions through their innovative, individual visions. 

NC State’s College of Design has exemplified this restless spirit from its founding in the postwar years to the present day. "College of Design: 75 Years of Designing Tomorrow,” an exhibit in the Hill Library’s Exhibit Gallery through February 10 looks back at the development of the college through photographs, models, publications, and other materials in the Libraries’ Special Collection Research Center (SCRC) as well as records and publications created by the College of Design and other campus units.

Curated by Alana Gomez (Public History MA, ‘24) and researched by Kelly Arnold (Public History MA, ‘23) and Shima Hosseininasab (Public History Ph.D., ‘24), the exhibit tells the school’s history and includes faculty and student stories.

“Everyone in Special Collections is so proud to feature this exhibit, as it showcases the curation of these three outstanding graduate students from Public History,” says Gwynn Thayer, SCRC Associate Head and Chief Curator. “University Archivist Todd Kosmerick and I supervise these students directly as they learn the process of curation and museum exhibit work. The exhibit space is a wonderful laboratory space for public history students to benefit from experiential learning in the same way that STEM students enjoy hands-on work in science labs or fieldwork.”

Dr. Henry L. Kamphoefner created the School of Design in 1948, merging the Landscape Architecture and Architectural Engineering programs and replacing old faculty with new, Modernist thinkers and designers. One case documents the international influence over the school in those years—the result of the closing of the Bauhaus in Germany in 1933 and the immigration of European professionals to the U.S. before and throughout World War II. Photographs show then-School of Design visiting faculty in action, including Ukrainian artist and graphic designer Alexander Archipenko lecturing in a campus classroom and German architect Mies van der Rohe on the Dorton Arena construction site.

Two large cases feature “Explorations in Modern Design.” One concentrates on modern buildings, canvases, and murals highlighting faculty members Matthew Nowicki’s Dorton Arena at the State Fairgrounds and Eduardo Catalano‘s 1954 Raleigh house—known popularly as the “potato chip house” for its hyperbolic paraboloid roof—which was named the house of the 1950s by House & Home Magazine. The second case contains sculptures, models, and product designs and features a model of Catalano’s Floralis Genérica, a 75-foot steel and aluminium structure of a flower in Buenos Aires that opens and closes each day to represent the hope that a new day brings—one of Thayer’s favorite moments in the exhibit. She was able to visit the sculpture in person and has written a blogpost about it, readable through a QR code.

“We have some preliminary drawings of Floralis Genérica in Special Collections, and Shima also worked hard in the Makerspace to 3D-print a small-scale replica of the sculpture, which is included in the exhibit,” Thayer says. “That required a lot of technical expertise and patience that really impressed me.”

Two standalone cases spotlight a couple of the college’s most accomplished names. Acclaimed designer Alexander Isley, a Durham native who graduated in 1983, worked for the renowned M and Co. design firm and Spy magazine before opening his own successful firm in 1988. The exhibit contains several examples of his annual gifts to clients, including a cheese grater and a hammer and nail, to highlight tools with enduring, unchanging designs. Also featured is faculty member and sculptor Roy Gussow, whose stainless steel works are in major museum collections as well as on NC State’s campus—his “Ellipsoid Construction,” better known as "The Egg," sits behind Brooks Hall. A cluster of miniature models of curved and geometric forms displays some of Gussow’s distinctive design vocabulary.

Curating through an archives’ silences
While Arnold and Hosseininasab did the initial dive into the archives, determined the themes for the different exhibit cases, and selected many of the objects, Gomez acted as the final decision-maker over each case. For some cases, she returned to the archives for additional research to deepen the story.

“There are a few places in which we addressed some of what we call ‘silences’ in the archives, or people and stories who are not included in the main or traditional narrative,” Gomez says. “Including those stories of women and students of color, and the overall struggle of the College of Design to diversify, was important to me, and I hope we did a good job showing that.”

In one case that concentrates on the students, the sheer variety of their work is shown, including images of fashion shows and student publications as well as their formation of the Design Council. Gomez regrets that student voices aren’t louder in the exhibit’s overall story. 

“For many reasons, student work is not always as present, but I wish it was because they are the life force of the College of Design, in my opinion. Regardless, we tried to include the student perspective where we could,” she says.

Another case deals directly with the school’s struggle for diversity. While Kamphoefner actively discouraged women from becoming students at the school through his retirement in 1972, women and students of color successfully challenged that bias. Architect Phil Freelon, who co-led the design team for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. among designing many notable buildings, was one of those students. His invitation from the Obamas to the museum’s groundbreaking is included in the exhibit.

Who should design a College of Design exhibit?
A graduate of the college, of course! Chuck Samuels, the Libraries’ Creative Director, created the visual design of the exhibit—and received a BA of Environmental Design in Graphic Design in 1993. He is an example of the student “life force” that Gomez hopes the exhibit will express.

While some of his cohort went off to jobs at big design firms in New York and Los Angeles, Samuels loved his college experience enough to stay in the Triangle to start a career. He worked in a photo lab processing film and printing large-format color prints, freelanced for local graphic designers, and did book design and layout for a small publisher of outdoor adventure guides before spending 13 years working at Design Dimension, a Raleigh-based exhibit design company that worked with museums, visitor centers, and parks all over the state.

“One of the things that I appreciated so much was that they were focused on giving students a broad design education,” Samuels says, reflecting on that varied career path. “Bringing up a cohort of creative, critical thinkers and practical problem solvers. And, in many ways, very collaborative workers, as well.”

Samuels returned to campus in 2012, joining the Libraries just before the Hunt Library’s opening the following year. He relished the chance to design an exhibit reflecting upon the college that had shaped his life so significantly. Josue Avalos Jimenez, a current undergraduate at the college studying graphic and experience design, assisted Samuels. While a recent Libraries exhibit on women's history had a colorful and dynamic visual design, they didn’t want the design of this exhibit’s typography and any colors and illustrations that they were creating to upstage the photographs and the artifacts and the materials.

“We went with a slightly off-white background and some really basic black text,” Samuels says, evoking the work materials themselves on display. “Josue came up with some nice, simple icons that were based on some architectural details of the buildings at the College of Design. Rosette windows from Leazar Hall and other brick patterns and things like that became nice elements and part of the wordmark that we used for the exhibit.”

And if the font used throughout the exhibit seems familiar, that’s intentional.

“I've always loved this Clarendon TF font,” Samuels notes. “And it was, for a long time, used at NC State as part of the wayfinding signage on campus. You still see it around from time to time. It has a feel of that sort of 50s and 60s era in the College of Design’s early days.”

Samuels felt both humbled and excited to lead the exhibit’s visual design, but it wasn’t without some anxiety too.

“One of my first impulses was to become nervous: ‘Oh no. there's Dean Hoversten looking at my exhibit, I hope he likes it,’” laughs Samuels. “There was a slight apprehension about being that voice, of having that burden. But at the same time I do have some pride in having had the opportunity to use my sensibilities and voice because it becomes just another small part of the history of this school that I'm really grateful to have been a part of.”