90 Design and Culture Exhibition Reviews in the short documentary commissioned for the exhibit, “we have to broaden the alphabet of modern architecture” in order to move “beyond the measly ABCs.” Or should we say “Mies-ly” ABCs? For Saarinen’s experimentation with varied and sometimes showy styles – often utilizing bright colors, rounded forms, and newly developed industrial materials – departed from the meticulous efforts of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the preeminent dogmatist of postwar High Modernism, to refine a universal, minimalist, rectilinear vocabulary for architecture. Just as Saarinen kept his attention on the needs of his clients, his soft and curvaceous Womb Chair prioritized the demands of human comfort over the sparing elegance of the cold, tubular-steel furniture produced by Mies. If Saarinen’s pragmatic outlook, contextual approach, and collaborative process put him somewhat at odds with the dominant ideologues of his day, his practices accord well with contemporary attitudes, suggesting that his influence might be stronger in this century than in his own. Catalog Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa and Albrecht, Donald (eds). 2006. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future. New Haven: Yale University Press. Design in the Age of Darwin: From William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, May 9-August 24, 2008. Reviewed by Jesse Adams Stein DOI: 10.2752/175470710X12593419555405 Is it possible to ascertain the influence of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) on European and American architects and designers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? In posing this question, Stephen F. Eisenman, a professor of art history at Northwestern University, explored uncharted terrain in the history of modern design. In Eisenman’s exhibition “Design in the Age of Darwin,” these questions were reconfigured into a hypothesis – fittingly for the scientific theme – about the existence of a connection between evolutionary thought and the development of architecture and design in the decades following the theory’s dissemination. According to Eisenman’s introductory wall placard, the discourse surrounding Darwin’s theories helped to produce a “new modernist language of form and design,” regardless of whether designers were pro- or anti-Darwinian. The primary form of evidence Eisenman cites for this influence is the shared terminology of scientific and design disciplines: “adaptation,” “functionalism,” and “fitness” were debated Jesse Adams Stein is a writer and arts programming consultant based in Canberra, Australia. She recently obtained a Master of Arts (emphasis Design History) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently works at the National Library of Australia, and teaches design theory at the University of Canberra. jesseadamsstein@gmail. com