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Design History Society Annual Conference 2025, Ankara, Turkey, 4 - 06 September 2025, pp.1, (Summary Text)
Cold War Design Diplomacy: Converging Paths of Raymond Loewy and the Middle East
Fatma Korkut
korkut@metu.edu.tr
Middle East
Technical University
Turkey's
foreign policy after World War II was strongly influenced by the Soviet threat,
prompting the country to strengthen its military, political, and economic
alliances with the West. This alignment was highlighted by Turkey's role as a
founding member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1947 and its
accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952. In keeping
with this alignment, Turkey transitioned from a one-party regime to holding its
first multi-party elections in 1946. During the 1950s, the country experienced
rapid urbanization and housing challenges.
U.S. Cold War foreign
policy aimed at containing communism and included support for economic development
in peripheral countries, with American designers playing major roles in various
overseas projects. Designers from Peter Müller-Munk Associates visited Turkey
in 1955, worked on local crafts, and established the Turkish Handicrafts
Development Office in Ankara in 1957. In 1954, Charles Abrams, a New York labor
lawyer and UN housing policy expert, visited Turkey to connect local housing
with the construction industry and global finance structures. However, Vecdi
Diker, the founding director of the Turkish National Highway Department,
suggested establishing a UN-supported technical university in Ankara, focusing
on training and education in housing and planning. G. Holmes Perkins from the
University of Pennsylvania served as the chief advisor for the establishment of
Middle East Technical University (METU), which was founded in 1956 as a
regional technical university with education in English. Perkins’ METU development
plan included a department of industrial design under the Faculty of
Architecture. Various efforts were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s to
establish the program. Between 1969 and 1972, David K. Munro, an American
industrial designer with extensive experience in overseas U.S. government
projects, worked at METU Faculty of Architecture. Munro opened elective courses,
curated an exhibition introducing the profession to the local audiences, and developed
a detailed curriculum for a graduate program in industrial design. The
department was officially established as a four-year undergraduate program in
1979.
In 2001,
Professor Serim Denel of the California Institute of Technology visited her
alma mater, Middle East Technical University, in Ankara. Upon the invitation of
her colleague and master’s student, Güner Mutaf, she agreed to give a talk
about the early efforts to establish an industrial design program at METU.
During this informal gathering, Professor Denel recalled a surprising detail
from her student years: The world-famous designer Raymond Loewy had visited
METU in the winter of 1964, engaging with students in their studios and
conversing with them. The audience was left astonished—how could they not have
known about Loewy’s visit to Ankara? Why did he come? Additionally, why did he
send an issue of Industrial Design magazine to the Dean of METU Faculty of
Architecture, Aptullah Kuran, with a handwritten note in the margin
recommending Jay Doblin, the director of the IIT Institute of Design in
Chicago?
The details of
Loewy’s trip to Turkey remained largely unknown until an improvised exploration
of the Raymond Loewy archives at the Hagley Museum and Library’s electronic
database revealed the entry “Box 6 United Nations, 1964-1968, ‘Report about the
Request of UN Assistance for the Establishment of a Department of Industrial
Design at the University of the Middle East in Ankara.’” Thanks to the
assistance of Hagley archivist Lucas R. Clawson, the author acquired scanned
copies of the documents under this entry. The paper reflects on the challenges
and the strategies developed in interpreting this “found” material including a
welcome letter from a UN TECABOARD representative in Ankara, receipts from the
Balin Hotel, a handwritten note on how to cook rice alla Turka, a private
telegram to Paris, handwritten notes on a “good speech’s secret,” and a brief
report about METU’s request of UN assistance. This unusual assemblage calls for
storytelling that connects these various pieces and reconstructs Loewy’s daily
adventures alongside his quasi-diplomatic business mission in Ankara. Content-wise,
two reports—one written by Dean Kuran of METU and the other by the UN design
diplomat Loewy—encourage a closer examination of the ideologies shaping the
narrative. Furthermore, Loewy’s handwritten speech notes, prepared for
introducing the story of the “newest of professions,” industrial design and its
role in “the economy and industrial life of America” to the audience at the
Ankara Chamber of Commerce, offer insights into the professional discourse of a
71-year-old Loewy. The paper discusses Loewy’s observations and insights about
industrial development in Turkey, the industrial stakeholders at the Ankara
Chamber of Commerce, and the ambitions of METU, and juxtaposes them with the
voices of local actors. The paper concludes with the methodological and
scholarly challenges involved in interpreting the archive material and proposes
alternative approaches to address them.
Keywords:
Cold War, Design Diplomacy, Raymond Loewy, Industrial Design, Middle East
Technical University