Book reference: Design Observer

June 11, 2014

In his article “The Body as Factory: Anatomy of an Image”, British columnist Rick Poynor identifies relationships between the famous Fritz Kahn chart “Der Mensch als Industriepalast” (Man as Industrial Palace) with several works created by Nichola Bruce, Michael Coulson, and Eduardo Paolozzi. Poynor presents various images that depict the inner human body as both machine and factory. “We have been looking at this kind of imagery a lot recently”, he states, “… with two monographs on Fritz Kahn, a long-neglected doctor, science writer and pioneer of information graphics, who used visual metaphors to elucidate the body’s hidden processes.” The Industriepalast poster also appeared in exhibitions at the Mayor Gallery and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, as Rick Poynor proves with two photographs from 1939 and 1951.

Design Observer (full article)