The Knud Lönberg-Holm papers primarily document the professional life and career of Knud Lönberg-Holm, a Danish-American Modernist architect, designer, author, educator, and photographer known for his information design work and unique photography of vernacular architecture and various American cities. The collection also includes a small amount of material related to Lönberg-Holm's personal life, family, and death.
Material is dated from approximately 1908-1977 and includes publications, drawings, correspondence and correspondence files, a wide range photographic material, and topical files.
Knud Lönberg-Holm was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on January 15, 1895 to Ulla Lønberg and Carl Johan Sophus Holm. After graduating from the University of Copenhagen in 1912, from which he received the approximate equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts degree, he studied architecture at the Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Royal Danish Academy - Architecture) from 1912-1915. Lönberg-Holm then served in the Danish Army Corps from 1915-1917. After his discharge, Lönberg-Holm worked with Danish architect Kai Turin from 1918-1920 to build several shipyard structures in the town of Køge, Denmark, including Køge Værft (a ship and engine compound). Lönberg-Holm's brother, Aage–a ship designer and civil engineer who facilitated Lönberg-Holm's involvement in the project–assumed the directorship of the shipyard in 1922 and later commissioned Danish industrial designer Knud V. Engelhardt (KVE) to create its logo. Lönberg-Holm's work in Køge represents his only built project. Lönberg-Holm left Denmark in 1921 and–after traveling through France, Italy, and Germany–set up a studio in Altona, a burrough in Hamburg. Here he met municipal architect Werner Jakstein and worked on several projects, including a co-authored design ("Proportion") submitted to a competition for the city of Königsberg as well as an unsubmitted design proposal for the 1922 Chicago Tribune tower architectural competition. Lönberg-Holm later presented his Chicago Tribune tower design at the 1923 International Architecture Exhibition in Weimar, Germany, under the advice of Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud and at the invitation of Bauhaus director Walter Gropius. It won praise from peers such as Cornelis van Eesteren and Emil Lorch, dean of the University of Michigan Departments of Engineering and Architecture.
Due to difficulties in finding work in Europe, Lönberg-Holm sailed to the United States in 1923. An avid photographer, he documented his arrival in New York City (NYC) as well as various urban sights as he traveled throughout NYC; Chicago, Illinois; and Detroit, Michigan. The subjects of Lönberg-Holm's photography–which was characterized by extreme viewpoints, such as a worm's-eye view of buildings–included not only prominent sights, such as Times Square, but also more mundane structures like billboards, signs, tramways, antennae, mills, power lines and transmission towers, and smoke stacks. His photographs appeared in numerous works, including as uncredited images in Erich Mendelsohn's 1925 book on the American city, "Amerika." Lönberg-Holm also began publishing in the early 1920s and his articles–which reflected his modernist, constructivist, and functionalist approaches to architecture and design–appeared in magazines such as "Architectural Record," "Bygmesteren," "Record and Guide," and "Shelter," to name a few.
In 1924, Lönberg-Holm initially settled in Detroit, Michigan and briefly worked as an architectural designer for electric company Detroit Edison. At the invitation of Lorch, he later moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and lectured at the University of Michigan from 1924-1925. He also created architectural designs as part of his private practice, including a "steel lumber" house, radio broadcasting station, gasoline filling station, and a residence for Lavinia G. MacBride, his Ann Arbor landlady. Unfortunately Lönberg-Holm's course, "Elements of Design," proved controversial as it uniquely prioritized modeling–instead of drawing–as the students' primary method of design. He left the university in 1925 and later moved to Detroit to work for the architectural firm Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls. During this time, Lönberg-Holm also became involved in the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, a pro-Modern Architecture organization founded in 1928. In addition to serving as its East Coast delegate until the organization's closure in 1959, he participated in other CIAM efforts, including a survey of Detroit in 1933.
By 1930, Lönberg-Holm had relocated to Bronxville, New York, and started working as a technical news and design editor for the "Architectural Record," a monthly architecture and interior design magazine owned by the F.W. Dodge Corporation. According to Suzanne Strum, author of "The Ideal of Total Environmental Control: Knud Lönberg-Holm, Buckminster Fuller, and the SSA," this move towards the publishing sector and away from working as an architect reflected both personal changes in Lönberg-Holm's life–including his marriage to Detroiter Ethel Caroline Read in 1930 and the birth of their son, Karl, in 1932–as well as the ongoing effects of the Great Depression, which left many architects unemployed. It was also around this time that Lönberg-Holm met and befriended R. Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, futurist, designer, and philosopher known for creating the Dymaxion car and house and popularizing the geodesic dome.
By 1932, Lönberg-Holm was affiliated with F.W. Dodge's "Sweet's Catalog," a continuously updated construction trade catalog. He held various roles at Sweets–including as director of research design, special assistant to F.W. Dodge Divisional Vice President Chauncey Williams, and consultant–until his retirement. Often in collaboration with American architect Carl Theodore Larson and Czech designer Ladislav Sutnar, Lönberg-Holm authored publications on topics such as the necessity of embracing obsolescence and temporary structures to resolve urban blight ("Time-Zoning as a Preventive of Blighted Areas," published in 1933) and the centralization of industrial production, material and building performance cycles, and the role of the consumer as a producer in the construction industry ("Planning for Productivity," published in 1940). His later works focused on information design and include "Catalog Design" (1944), "Catalog Design Progress" (1950), and "Development Index: A Proposed Pattern for Organizing and Facilitating the Flow of Information Needed by Man in Furthering his Own Development with Particular Reference to the Development of Buildings and Communities and Other Forms of Environmental Control" (1953). In addition to working with Sutnar to overhaul and standardize "Sweets Catalog"–which had grown into an increasingly complex and cumbersome product as the construction industry expanded–Lönberg-Holm also briefly returned to the University of Michigan as a visiting lecturer from 1948-1951.
Although Lönberg-Holm retired from Sweets in 1960, he continued to research and write about environmental control and information. He contributed to the "School Environment Analysis" (SER), a University of Michigan project that examined the connections between, as well as impacts of, the environment on human behavior, especially within educational settings. Lönberg-Holm also collaborated with Larsen on "Role of Mass Media of Information and Communication," which articulated the benefits of mass media on the flow of information.
Knud Lönberg-Holm passed away in New York City on January 2, 1972.
