Alfons Bach

Alfons Bach was born in Magdeburg, Germany. He grew up in Munich. He attended school in Berlin.[1] He moved to New York, New York in 1926. Before his move, he had studied film and design.[2]

Bach designed the remodeling of Sach's and the Seneca Textile Building, both in New York City.[2] His work was exhibited in early contemporary industrial art shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1] In 1938 he designed his own home in Stamford, Connecticut. He led the project to build the Ridgeway Center, one of the first shopping malls in the United States.[2] Bach designed tubular steel furniture in the 1930s for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company. They continued to produce his pieces until 1947. These tubular pieces are considered a link between Bauhaus and modern design style.[1] He moved to Florida in 1959. He designed the Palm Trail Plaza and Palm Trail Yacht Club in Delray Beach.[3] He curated the United States exhibition at the International Industrial Design Exhibition in 1969.[2] He designed work for General Electric, Keystone Silver, Pacific Mills and Bigelow-Samford. He served as president of the American Designers Institute.[1]

In 1992, he moved to Pensacola, Florida where he died in a nursing home, in August 1999.[1]

His work is held in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery.[1][2] A set of 17th-century sliding-door panels from a Zen temple in Kyoto, Japan, owned by Bach and his wife, Anita, reside in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]