Founded in 1951, the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) emulated the Bauhaus philosophy by promoting a close collaboration between modern art, design, and commerce. For more than 50 years the conference served as a forum for designers to discuss and disseminate current developments in the related fields of graphic arts, industrial design, and architecture. The records of the IDCA include office files and correspondence, printed conference materials, photographs, posters, and audio and video recordings.

The International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) was the brainchild of a Chicago businessman, Walter Paepcke, president of the Container Corporation of America. Having discovered through his work that modern design could make business more profitable, Paepcke set up the conference to promote interaction between artists, manufacturers, and businessmen. The concept behind IDCA was a direct continuation of the basic philosophy of the Bauhaus, which also strove to improve relations between the worlds of art and commerce by designing otherwise banal household objects, such as lamps, tea pots or weavings, which could be industrially mass-produced.

139 Linear Feet (276 boxes, 6 flat file folders. Computer media: 0.33 GB [1,619 files])

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Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted audio-visual and computer materials.