Winfield, Armand G.

Born Dec. 28, 1919 in Chicago, Ill. Armand Winfield did the precursory work which led to the field of electronic encapsulations as well as art, medical, and biological embedding. He has done extensive research and development in the areas of plastics in architecture and building, art, museum work, industry (applications engineering), low cost housing for developing countries, and in the entertainment field (stage sets, amusement parks, etc.). A long-time resident of Santa Fe, N.M., he became active in the Santa Fe Crime Stoppers program and received an award for his service in 1991. In 1993 Winfield relocated to Albuquerque, N.M. to become Director of the Training and Research Institute for Plastics at the University of New Mexico.

Armand G. Winfield, pioneering plastics researcher and consultant. Throughout the past fifty-six years Winfield has done extensive research and development in the areas of plastics in architecture and building, art, museum work, industry (applications engineering), and low cost housing for developing countries. In addition, he has worked in the entertainment field on the application of plastics for stage sets and amusement parks. His career is documented in over 300 published articles, chapters and books on plastics and other subjects, almost 90 of which are concerned with plastics in building and architecture.

Armand G. Winfield has been involved professionally in the plastics and business fields since 1939. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1941 and did graduate work at the University of New Mexico, the State University of Iowa and at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. He began his career in museum work using synthetic lattices and acrylics for the preservation of specimens. His interest shifted to the plastics materials in the mid-1940s, and he invented the first mass-producible process for embedding specimens in acrylics. As a principal in Winfield Fine Art in Jewelry in New York City, he conducted precursory work for the electronics encapsulation field and pioneered biological, medical and art embedments in the United States.

Professor Winfield has been on the teaching faculties of Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa. (Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship: 1939-1941); Harris Teachers' College (1950) and Washington University School of Engineering (1956) in St. Louis, Mo.; Yale University Art School (1960-1961) in New Haven, Conn.; Pratt Institute Industrial Design Department (1964-1970) in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Visiting Critic in Architecture (Plastics), The College of the City of New York (1968-1969), New York, N.Y.; Adjunct Professor of Plastics Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell (1978-1981), Lowell, Mass.; and Research Professor Mechanical Engineering (Plastics), the University of New Mexico (Appointed 1993), Albuquerque, N.M. He has also been an invited lecture at over 40 other colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.

Armand G. Winfield. Part of the Armand G. Winfield Pictorial Collection PICT 000-538.

Armand G. Winfield, pioneering plastics researcher and consultant, was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 28, 1919. He was raised in the Eastern United States (Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania). He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1941 and did graduate work at the University of New Mexico, State University of Iowa and Washington University (St. Louis).

In the early 1940s he became interested in working with plastics as a means to preserve geologic and anthropological specimens.Working with plastics soon became the focus of his career. In 1945, Winfield invented the first mass-producible process for embedding acrylics and did the precursory work which eventually led to the field of electronic encapsulations as well as art, medical, and biological embedding. From 1945-1947, he owned and operated Winfield Fine Art in Jewelry in New York City where many well known artists of the period created miniature works of art which Winfield embedded as jewelry and which were sold worldwide.

During the 1950s Winfield did graduate work at Washington University and continued his research and experimentations with plastics.He also worked for several private plastics firms from 1950-1963.In January 1964, he formed his own plastics consulting firm which carried his name. The company was launched in Somers, Connecticut, then moved to New York City in 1967, to West Babylon, New York in 1969 and finally to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1979. It was closed at the end of 1994 - after 30 successful years - when Winfield was hired by the University of New Mexico.

He has done extensive research and development in the areas of plastics in architecture and building, art, museum work, industry (applications engineering), low cost housing for developing countries, and in the entertainment field (stage sets, amusement parks, etc).

Winfield's expertise in the use of plastics for exhibits led to a four month lecture tour of the Soviet Union in 1961 in conjunction with an international exhibit, "Plastics - U.S.A." In 1962 - 1963 he designed or directed the construction of 13 exhibits for the New York Worlds Fair, including the American Express Outdoor Map of the World.

Winfield became an international consultant on the use of plastics in building when in 1968 he received a United Nations Industrial Development Organization Grant to survey the use of plastics as a low cost building material for developing countries.Other UNIDO assignments followed including consulting missions to India in 1977 and Columbia in 1979. Among his many other projects relating to plastics in building was the design and production of a low cost prototype house for Bangladesh, funded by CARE, Inc., in 1972.

A long-time resident of Santa Fe, he became active in the Santa Fe Crime Stoppers program and received an award for his service in 1991. In June 1993 Winfield relocated to Albuquerque to become the Director of the Training and Research Institute for Plastics at the University of New Mexico.

After leaving the University, Winfield dedicated himself to writing and editing his memoirs. He died in Albuquerque on August 18, 2009.

Armand G. Winfield (1919-2009) was an American inventor, researcher, and educator in the field of plastics.

Armand G. Winfield was born December 28, 1919. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1941. During his junior and senior years, Winfield was named an assistant in the Geology Department and Assistant Curator of the school's museum. He attended field sessions in anthropology at the University of New Mexico in the summers of 1939 and 1940. While in the army, he created fake wounds for training soldiers. After he was discharged, he returned to museum work.

In 1945, Winfield founded Winfield Fine Art in Jewelry in New York City, with his brother. He invented the first mass-production method of embedding objects in clear acrylics creating one-of-kind original wearable works of art. Winfield would embed the art, shape it and then convert it into the actual piece of jewelry. Some of this jewelry has ended up in galleries and collections, including the archives of The Smithsonian Institute's Museum of American History in Washington, DC (1988), and the National Design Museum; the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City (1994); the Royal Science Museum, and the National Historic Plastics Museum, both in London; and in the Center for Southwest Research in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the National Plastics Center in Leominster, Massachusetts.

Winfield attended graduate school at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri,1948-1950, and went on to hold a succession jobs in the plastics industry. From 1957 until 1963, he worked as Plastics Consulting Engineer at DeBell & Richardson Inc., in Hazardville, Connecticut. During his years at DeBell, he taught as a plastics engineer in Yale's School of Art in New Haven in 1960-1961.

In 1964, Winfield started his own company, consulting in plastics research and development until 1994. During this time he became involved in designing and directing the construction of 13 separate installations for the New York World's Fair. These projects included the American Express Outdoor Map of the World, the General Electric VIP pavilion, a portion of the Singer Sewing Machine Exhibit and a number of sets for Leon Leonidoff's WonderWorld Productions.

He began teaching at the Pratt Institute in New York in1964 and became a consultant and instructor at the Institute's School of Industrial Design in Brooklyn, New York. That led to his appointment as a Visiting Critic in Architecture for plastics at the College of the City of New York (CCNY) a few years later.

Winfield took an interest in the use of plastics in building and construction and in 1968 he was awarded a grant by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and assigned to survey the use of plastic materials for housing in developing countries. Following his survey, in 1971 Winfield was invited to present an updated study for UNIDO on the “Uses of Plastics in the Building Industry” in Vienna, Austria.

In May of 1971, Winfield and his wife Barbara, who was also his business partner, were invited to Sydney, Australia where he gave a lecture on “Plastics in Building” and on “The Use of Plastics as Low Cost Housing Potentials” at the Second Australian Symposium on Reinforced Plastics and Composites.

His work on the use of plastics in housing led him to work on creating soft surfaces for the elderly and infirm in housing. In 1971, he was issued a patent on his work. He authored “The World's First Soft Bathroom” and “Impact Absorbing Laminate and Articles Fabricated There From.” C.A.R.E. Inc. retained Armand's firm in 1972 to design, develop and produce a low-cost prototype house for Bangladesh, India, primarily using jute as the building material along with polyester binders.

Winfields obtained a U.S. Patent No. 3,819,466, “Reinforced and Insulating Building Panel” and assigned it to the C.A.R.E. organization. The house became known internationally as the C.A.R.E./Bangladesh/Winfield house and stood on Long Island weathering for 18 years.

Relative to his work in housing, Winfield made his way to Santa Fe in 1979 and to the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. In 1984, Winfield and his wife hosted five students form the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West, Montezuma, New Mexico. Then, in 1993, Winfield was appointed Director, and became the founder of the University of New Mexico's New Training and Research Institute for Plastics (TRIP). He served as Director of the Institute until April, 2004, when health problems forced his retirement.

He is the author of nearly 350 published articles, chapters and books on plastics and related subjects. He has lectured all over the world and worked tirelessly to educate young people. In 1983, he was elected to the Plastics Pioneers Association in recognition of the service.