History
"Toronto-based KAN Industrial Design, as it was last known, was one of the longest-running design studios in Canada. It shaped Canada's products and environments, creating furniture, world’s fair exhibits, stoves, lighting and playground equipment. Its diversity, scope and volume of commercially viable work are remarkable. While the soul of the firm was the designer-philosopher Jan Kuypers, many of Canada’s brightest young designers (including Karim Rashid and Jonathan Crinion) apprenticed at what became an institution. In 1960 the original partners, Kuypers, Julian Rowan and Frank Dudas, were the Product Design Unit within Stewart & Morrison, the Toronto-based design firm. After three years, they broke away and founded the "seed” company that by 1967 was known as Dudas Kuypers Rowan (DKR), had a staff of sixteen and boasted additional offices in Ottawa and Montreal. The firm worked on the Expo 67 pavilion Man the Producer and developed such diverse products as a cement mixer for Monarch Machinery, teakettles for Proctor-Silex and an X-ray machine for Picker International. Julian Rowan was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1925 and studied science at the University of Alberta and plastics engineering at the Plastics Industries Technical Institute in Los Angeles. On his return to Canada, he created toys and housewares as well as fertilizers and explosives. As DKR's plastics specialist, he designed hockey helmets for CCM (Canada Cycle and Motor Company) and the first two-colour plastic vacuum bottle for Canadian Thermos Products. Jerry Adamson was born in Cambridge, Ontario, in 1937, obtained a degree in industrial design from the Ontario College of Art and worked with the well-known designer Robin Bush. He joined DKR in 1963 and became a partner five years later. He designed many notable products, including the widely acclaimed Habitat chair, and was influential within the firm. In addition to Dudas, other partners in the firm were Ian Norton, who specialized in small appliance design, and Gerald Beekenkamp, whose designs helped King Products, Toronto (phone booths) and Paris Playground Equipment (Duraglide slide) dominate their respective markets."