Our mission is to promote Rowena’s 3-D foundation methodology to increase useful and beautiful designs for a better world. We do this through awards, publishings, workshops, and collaboration with design institutions.
Publishings: Documenting the Legacy
Rowena Reed Kostellow received an NEA Grant to publish a book documenting her teaching methodology. She died before its completion, and the work was left undone.
Based on her notes, Louis Nelson initiated a fundraising campaign to support the publishing of Rowena’s book. He enlisted Gail Greet Hannah to research and write the book and Tucker Viemeister to provide design concepts and art direction. Many others shared notes, recollections, and audio and videotapes. Pratt faculty selected graduate ID student Seth Kornfeld to design the layouts under a work-study program. Miss Reed’s disciples, Bruce Hannah, Bill Fogler, Gerry Gulotta, and Tucker Viemeister, conducted photo curation, selecting only the most beautiful examples for the book.
In June 2002, Princeton Architectural Press published Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships. It was enthusiastically received and has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide. Design educators often use the book as a teaching tool in the U.S. and abroad. The book has been translated and published in six languages: Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, and Chinese.
3-D Workshops
3-D Workshops are conducted using the methodology developed by Alexander Kostellow in 1937 and refined by Rowena Reed Kostellow—the teaching of what she called the structure of visual relationships underlying all art and design. These concentrated studio workshops are for designers looking to turbocharge their form-giving talents, teachers looking for techniques and teaching tips, and students wanting to feel the third dimension. The exercises developed at Pratt have become the foundation of many industrial design programs and apply to architecture, graphic design, and fine art.
The series usually takes three to four years, from manipulating simple forms to creating complex three-dimensional designs. Pratt’s experienced form teachers use this “tasting menu” to teach each of the eleven exercises in rigorous three-hour sessions, focusing on creating and critiquing beautiful forms. These workshops are sponsored by The Rowena Reed Group and endorsed by IDSA.
Rowena Group members have conducted workshops at design institutions worldwide, including Brazil, China, Germany, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, South Korea, and Sweden.
Up-level your 3-D design skills
The Rowena Group can help organize a 3-D workshop at your school.
Rowena’s Methodology Today
Rowena Reed taught five generations of designers at Pratt from 1938 until she died in 1988. The first Supervisor of the industrial design department, three-dimensional design, was Donald Dohner, who taught the first industrial design class in 1929 at Carnegie Tech. Alexander Kostellow taught painting and sculpture. Rowena Reed Kostellow moved from Kansas City to Carnegie Tech to apply their ideas about abstraction. Dohner moved to Brooklyn in 1935, leaving his position as head of Westinghouse’s “visual engineering” studio. Dohner convinced the Kostellows that the future of design education was not through classical fine arts but industry training.
The Kostellows joined him at Pratt in 1938, teaching “composition” and “modeling.” They developed the industrial design program, whose essential elements are the abstract “Design and Structure” foundation, 3-D form, plane, line exercises, space problems, and working with industry.
Rowena said, “Our goal is the training of designers so familiar with the principles of abstraction that they automatically think of a visual problem in terms of organized relationships and then feel free to study other aspects of the problem.” She said: “Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization.”
Up-level your school’s design foundation program
Learn how to incorporate Rowena’s 3D methodology into your design curriculum.
Rowena became ID department chair in 1962 until she retired in 1966. The design pedagogy developed at Pratt in the 1930s spread as the alums taught their students, establishing industrial design programs worldwide. The first generation of educators from Pratt who started programs include:
.svg)