Frederick John Kiesler was an architect, theater and art-exhibition designer from Vienna, who early in his career worked in Vienna and Berlin. He was a member of the De Stijl group and part of the European avant-garde. He and his wife emigrated to New York in 1926. His writings include two manifestos, an article "Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture" and the book "Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and It's Display" written in 1930.
Beginning in 1930 he was the director of the Laboratory for Design Correlation in the Department of Architecture at Columbia University until 1943. His work was heavily theoretical and influenced by the Surrealists and he collaborated on various projects with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray among others. In his later career he created models and sculptures and developed the large scale building "The Shrine of The Book" in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.