Future Imperfect...

[Aperitif]

...makes the Present tense?

I was sitting at Birmingham 'International' yesterday evening, pondering - as you do - about this and that, particularly the advance booking ticket pick-up kiosks. Select online, pay by card and collect when you turn up. Lovely. Then I was thinking that the travelator was a tidy idea for tired legs that have traipsed around the NEC exhibition centre. These 'flat escalators' provide a welcome relief. (I had been on my feet for 13 hours and needed a rest!). Ain't invention wonderful? Do you find that it is a nice thing to reflect on 'how lucky we are?'. If you don't do anything else, take a look at this snippet from youtube, detailing the future. From 1958 - and it is believable!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Aaahh back when Disney used to make some great animation.

The great Tex Avery did some for MGM. 'House of Tomorrow' - 'Car of Tomorrow' and 'TV of Tomorrow'


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vPJkQsP20A



View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBpDNRP5qQ&feature=related



View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUArCmcpwuA&feature=related


Thanks Aperitif - Great stuff!!

 

[rich p]

Didn't see any bike lanes on the super-highways; indeed father had to actually walk from his car parking space to the office.

 

[Dayvo]

What were you doing in Birmingham, Ap?

Coming home from Wales!

 

[mangaman]

Didn't see any bike lanes on the super-highways; indeed father had to actually walk from his car parking space to the office.

Lovely - I enjoyed watching it but it had no pedestrians I could see and certainly no cyclists.

I'd be interested in Dellzegg's view as an architect of the city as a concept and how planners saw it in the 1950s, and continue to see it. (I appreciate you were not presumabably an active architect in 1953 when this film was made) but similar urban visions seem to have made since.

It seems to my amateur eyes to be similar to Le Corbusier’s vision which I find depressing.

I've just got back from from Rome which is incredibly beautiful - but I was counting and I saw 3 people on bikes in 1 week

Earlier this year I was in Bruges and approaching 100% of people were on bikes

 

[fossyant]

Looks a bit like the script for Wall.E..............

 

[Speicher]

There is the remains of the Maglef near Birmingham International. With your magnetic personality, Aperitif, you should have been able to fix that.

 

[rh100]

There is the remains of the Maglef near Birmingham International. With your magnetic personality, Aperitif, you should have been able to fix that.

I actually thought it had been running again - but I can't find any reference to it online Did you know it was the first commercial one in the world, opened in 1984.

What is the one that runs between the terminal and rail station I wonder?

 

[Aperitif]

What were you doing in Birmingham, Ap?

Coming home from Wales!

No!
Just trying to get from Tottenham Court Road to Leicester Square of course!
I am now going to google the Maglef.SP 'Maglev'
I met someone who had flown from Hanover and then used the monorail to NEC. He liked it, but for most folk departing on holiday it is nicknamed the 'Magaluf'

The future in 1958 did not include cyclists on bikes.(except in future gyms probably!)

With your magnetic personality

I have had to be on my 'mettle' this week - not even much time for comfort...'a loo minimum'

 

[Aperitif]

Aaahh back when Disney used to make some great animation.

The great Tex Avery did some for MGM. 'House of Tomorrow' - 'Car of Tomorrow' and 'TV of Tomorrow'


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vPJkQsP20A



View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBpDNRP5qQ&feature=related



View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUArCmcpwuA&feature=related


Thanks Aperitif - Great stuff!!

With "Good old Fred" Quimby, producer of all the best Tom and Jerry episodes! I want one of those houses in a parcel!

 

[rh100]

The Maglev went some years ago. Replaced more recently with a cable car on the same track bed, which plays the most irritating BMI Baby tune constantly when you're inside one of the cars.

Thanks for that MrP - I did wonder

 

[dellzeqq]

Frank Lloyd Wright petrol station, Cloquet Minnesota - Wright designed this by post, and it was finished after he died.

I don't think he lived to see this, either. Grady Gammage auditorium, Phoenix - the audience walk up and down gently curved corridors that run around the outside of the building - a bit like this..

what you might not know is that Frank Lloyd Wright had been drawing the really big stuff since the 20s

makes Le Corbusier look sort of dull....

and this must have been on Quimby's desk (FLW was always a bit of a William Morris fan)

Wright wasn't the only American architect drawing the future..John Lautner

and Richard Neutra

but when it came to private houses Wright was the daddy...

and the US got the best out of Scandinavian architects - forget Sydney Opera House - this is Saarinen's TWA terminal at Idlewild

BUT - arguably the inspiration for much of this came from south of the border - Felix Candela used ply shuttering and agricultural labour to make..

ridiculously thin concrete structures reliant on geometry...

which brings us to this

All of these pictures are really of objects. Sadly human life decays when it relies on objects..... which brings us to this man - my inspiration

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2sas8-N48


"Brasilia is a utopian horror. It should be a symbol of power, but instead it's a museum of architectural ideas" Robert Hughes, art critic. He also described it as "A ceremonial slum infested with Volkswagens".

I couldn't find the passage from the 'Shock of the New' on Brasilia, although I remember watching the programme, where I watched it, and how my childhood dreams evaporated in 45 minutes. Here's an equally trenchant commentary on modernism


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7VOz_Wstg


and then this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_prairie

which is what happens when the cities of the future become the cities of the past.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Great stuff Dell - did you ever get to the barren wasteland of Florida?

When I went to there, whilst my fellow tourists were worshipping at the alter of Walter (which I did a bit of too) I went to the Lakeland campus which has nine FLW structures - quite a collection and well worth a visit if you're out that way.

 

[dellzeqq]

nope my experience of Florida is confined to being thrown in jail and then, after my release, being sexually assaulted twice in an evening. It may be a while before I return

 

[Bollo]

nope my experience of Florida is confined to being thrown in jail and then, after my release, being sexually assaulted twice in an evening. It may be a while before I return

You too?