What happened to the “Homes of the Future” they promised us?
Many of us remember the future. We remember the cars “with sweeping fins and wings, chromed push buttons, rocket thrusters tail lights, and satellite emblems - the jets on wheels designed to blast off.”
Back in the 50s and 60s these Edsels, Caddys, Chryslers and Desotos were the rocket ships of a generation, thrusting us to new horizons of NASA inspired technology and innovation. These space vessels were given form by hot shot designers at the likes of General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan. Cars with microwaves you could cook in were just that close. A few of us remember those ads on black & white TV tempting us with progress and the allure of the "home of the future," These newsreels portrayed chromed "Jetson" gizmos and gadgets designed for the "modern homemaker," as “she” worked in a kitchen fitted with "finger tip" activated push buttons that saved time. Robots did the dirty work. "Instant" was the buzzword. Did we miss it?
I remember my only encounter with a World’s Fair. I visited Vancouver's in ’86,’ the last World’s Fair in North America. Full of geodesics, space-frames and media, its themes were transportation and communication. The world's fascination for technology had seemingly waned as Post Modernism was taking us all back to the future. It was a time of strong conservative central government - the Reagan Years .....but, in any case, here was a freshly optimistic Canadian pocket of unabashed celebration of technology and modernism.
General Motors featured a "Holavision®" special effects performance entitled “Spirit Lodge” at their pavilion theater, which speculated that speed of transportation is evolving exponentially towards the moment when travel will be instantaneous. The ultimate conclusion is that travel will be instantaneous - you will think it and you will be there - a heady concept that blurs physics and metaphysics. A primitive Native American came onstage and danced around a smoky fire as thought-dreams speaking of the future appeared (presumably holographically) over his head. At the end of the show, remarkably, and jaw-droppingly the thought-dreams faded and the performer (the real hologram) disappeared. I didn’t want to know how they did it. I preferred to believe it was techno-magic and leave it at that. The Fair left me with a suspicion that there weren’t enough caves for us all to move back into and it was perhaps too soon to abandon the modernists dreams of a technologically transformed and improved future. (To be continued)
There are some new clues that might be pointing the way. The Prada store in Manhattan's SoHo district gives us a taste of possibility, It was described by Architectural Record as (not) “ a store, it's a 23,000- square-foot epicenter, the place where the tectonic plates of merchandising and architecture collide and the earth moves. The concept for Prada grew out of a two-month research project in which Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), investigated ways to reinvent the retail experience for the famous Italian fashion house.”
At Prada technology and design don’t necessarily make life easier but they do make it possibly more interesting. The experience is not an easy one. The shopper (perhaps visitor is a better word) is challenged to observe; to become aware of a new environment; to engage the architecture in a new way. As the visitor navigates the vertigo of bleacher seating/ stairs leading from the street level store to the under-store one moves by other visitors who are making up their minds whether they should sit and try on a shoe or edge closer to the wall for support. No signs cue the experience. Once at the under-store, if that’s where you choose to go, you meander past boxes in the wall. It is unclear what’s in them. Its a seductive experience. I fussed with a few. They didn’t seem to be for me. Ahead is a glass booth of some kind. You watch a couple enter....a glass door slides closed. The clear glass frosts up as they become invisible. Minutes later, they become visible again as the door slides open and out they come, chattering. I moved towards the door and stepped in. The door closed. I saw myself behind a glass wall in a monitor that acted like a mirror. There were Xs and Os inscribed in the glass waiting for a touch. A section of rubber sphere stuck out of the floor.....I put my foot on it and stepped down. The electronically activated liquid crystal privacy screen frosts and I was alone to conduct my experiments.....exploring the new environment. This experience seemed much like that sought by the performance artists of the '60s, who tried to redefine art and space while forcing the audience to move beyond being spectators to become active participants in their own environment.
The experience enlists our attention. It awakens us to our built environment and encourages participation.
I remember my only encounter with a World’s Fair. I visited Vancouver's in ’86,’ the last World’s Fair in North America. Full of geodesics, space-frames and media, its themes were transportation and communication.
The ultimate conclusion is that travel will be instantaneous - you will think it and you will be there.
Desoto’s Fins
Frigidaire's "Kitchen of the Future."
THESIS MEMO: Techno-Colored Dreams
The controversy around MODERNISM still smolders. This is one of a series of articles or “memos” that may be helpful in understanding the issues at stake. Through them I articulate the ideas which help frame my work & world view.
Vancouver World’s Fair “86”
Schemes for giant environ-bubbles covering entire smog threatened cities were envisioned by futurists like ARCHIGRAM in the 60s. Pods, skins and agitprop-billboards were dropped in by helicopter to create new environments overnight.
Technology is not limited to simple function....It carries meaning about who we are and who we want to be. It is colored by tradition and is linked to style and image.
Living-Pod: David Greene
ARCHIGRAM
