Designer of Dreams

In the dense jungles of Guaruja Island, Brazil, an amazing transformation was taking place last week. Bulldozers, steam shovels, and scores of work crews were clearing stones and brush from some 650 dense acres. Before the job is finished, the section known as Praia Pernambuco, a few minutes by ferry from Santos, will have an airfield, a country club, a polo field, a beach club, a fishing club, hotels, shops, and some 500 houses, all furnished with the latest gadgets. Sao Paulo industrial interests, which are putting up millions to construct this sportsman's dream, expect it to be one of the top resort centers in the hemisphere.

The man who is mainly responsible for Guaruja's face-lifting is dapper, soft-spoken Raymond Fernand Loewy, 54, a French-born engineer who parlayed a stake of 20-c- into a $3,000,000-a-year business in industrial designing. As one of the top U.S. industrial designers, Loewy's list of clients has grown to impressive lengths, including the Pennsylvania Railroad, Armour. Frigidaire, International Harvester, Lockheed, Greyhound, and 87 other big corporations. With a staff numbering less than 250, he has boldly taken on all comers. He designed the Studebaker car, the Lucky Strike package, refrigerators, stoves, radios, lipstick tubes, locomotives, ships, department stores, pens, and thousands of other items. (Almost the only item he refuses to work on is coffins, because "you can't improve on death.") All told, the gross sales of products he designed, or packaged, currently add up to more than $1,000,000,000.

Guaruja is his first venture in South America, but it will not be his last. Raymond Loewy Associates recently opened an office in Sao Paulo (the others, aside from headquarters in a Manhattan skyscraper, are in South Bend, Chicago, Los Angeles). Loewy is now working on a deal to build an entire industrial town, for the same Sao Paulo interests. Next step is to reopen its office in London, from which the firm plans to expand abroad. Most of his ideas, says Loewy, are intended "not for Park Avenue but for the miner's wife," are thus marketable anywhere.

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