Medium Racecar

MEDIUM RACECAR: Interpreting architectural motives under the ‘Tetrad of Media Effects’ for the aspirations of transport

A dissertation submitted by Jonathan Harker in partial fulfilment of MArch 2013

ABSTRACT

The aspirations of transport are a reaction to a set of archetypal human desires. These have been followed by an intense progression of research and development to fulfil this freedom of movement.

Architecture and design have documented this evolution, from a requirement to communicate at a distance, to travelling faster on land, to flight. The aim of this study does not concern the scientificled engineering of such systems, for these basic impulses precede the technological development and possibility. The question posed however is how architectural and design motives have, and the extent to which they will continue to, inform, sell and ultimately shape these means of fulfilment. This question is interpreted through an existing media theory, ‘The Tetrad of Media Effects’ by Marshall McLuhan.

2

1

This study is largely focused around the design movements of and contributors to the Western States of America.

The field research in the United States was carried out between the 10th August and 16th September 2012, along a 5000-mile path of automotive possibility.

3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With thanks to Adam and Jessica for their guidance.

Thanks to Matt, Rory, and Simon for being part of the field research trip.

Thanks to Seth for his hospitality in Los Angeles.

Â

43

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1, 4, 5, 6, B1, B8, B11, O11, K1, K7, K8, K9, K11, K12, E2, E6, E8 are by Author.

Figures 2, 3

McLuhan, Marshall and McLuhan, Eric, Laws of Media : The New Science (Toronto ; London: University of Toronto Press, 1988), pp. 148, 202

Figures B2, B3

Neuhart, John and others, Eames Design : The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989), pp.238-239, 241

Fig. B4

Becker and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011), p. 6

Figures B5, B6

Webber, Gwen. ‘Blueprint’, 300 (London: Wordsearch Ltd, March 2011), pp. 36 -41

Fig. B7

< http://www.etsy.com/listing/101968539/vintage-unused-los-angeles-jet-age > [accessed 18th January 2013]

Fig. B9

Steele, James and others, William Periera (New York: Princeton Architectural Press ; Hi Marketing, 2003), p.189

Fig. B10

< http://socialarchhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2010_09_01_archive > [accessed 18th January 2013]

Fig. B12

Rosa, Joseph and McCoy, Esther, A Constructed View : The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman (New York: Rizzoli, 1994), p.136

Fig. O1

Hess, Alan, Googie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004), p. 194

Fig. O2

<http://conranshop.co.uk/269254/ball-clock-george-nelson-multi-colour> and < http://eamesdesigns.com/catalog/seating > [accessed 19th January 2013]

Fig. O3

< http://metropolisoftomorrow.tumblr.com/post/609777496/city-of-the-future-by-harveywiley-corbett-1913 > [accessed 14th November 2012]

Fig. O4

‘Architecture (AIA)’ 82 (November 1993) p.43

Fig. O5

Marks, Robert W., The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (New York: Reinhold,

Figures O6, O7

Eames, Charles and Ray. An Expanding Airport (Film for Washington Dulles International

Fig. O8

De Long, David Gilson and others, Eero Saarinen : Buildings from the Balthazar Korab

1960), p. 97 Airport, 1958) 02:14 ; Frames from video recording Archive (New York, W. W. Norton ; In association with the Library of Congress, 2008), pp.455, 459 Fig. O9

Román, Antonio, Eero Saarinen : An Architecture of Multiplicity. 1st edn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), p.115

Fig. O10

Merkel, Jayne, Eero Saarinen (London: Phaidon, 2005), p.228 Saarinen, Eero and others, Eero Saarinen : Shaping the Future (New Haven ,Yale University Press, 2006), p.305

5

Fig. K2

Marshall, Richard and Ruscha, Edward, Ed Ruscha (London ; New York: Phaidon, 2003), pp. 74-75

Fig. K3

Marks, Robert W., The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (New York: Reinhold, 1960), p. 108 and <

http://mondo-blogo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/more-geeking-out-with-bucky

>

[accessed 14th November 2012] Fig. K4

Baldwin, J., Buckyworks : Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today (New York: John Wiley, 1996), pp. 104-105

Fig. K5

Fig. K6

Powell, Ken and Powell & Moya, Powell & Moya (Swindon: English Heritage, 2009), p.37 Wright, Herbert. ‘Blueprint’, 300 (London: Wordsearch Ltd, March 2011), p.29

Figures K9, K10 Becker and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011), pp. 45, 79

Fig. E1

Steele, James and others, William Periera (New York, London: Princeton Architectural Press; Hi Marketing, 2003), p. 210

Fig. E3

Zukowsky, John, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001),

Fig. E4

Hess, Alan and others, The Architecture of John Lautner (London: Thames & Hudson,

p. 172 1999), p. 13 Fig. E5

Grigor, Murray and others, Infinite Space the Architecture of John Lautner, [United States]: Googie Co.,, 2009. Frame taken from videorecording :

Fig. E7

Frame taken from videorecording : ‘Design for Dreaming’ (General Motors Commercial Film, 1956) < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ccAf82RQ8 > [accessed 14th December 2012]

Fig. E7

Marshall, Richard and Ruscha, Edward, Ed Ruscha (London ; New York: Phaidon, 2003), p.77

Fig. E10

[pdf] 1962-Monorail_Goodell Monorail [Proposal] pp.1-2 <http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/monorail/1962_goodell_monorail_proposal.pdf > [accessed on 17th January 2013]

Fig. E11

Zukowsky, John, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), p.136

Figures 7, 8 Figures 9, 10

Incerti, Guido and others, Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro) : The Ciliary Function (Milan: Skira, 2007), pp.151-154 Diller, Elizabeth and Scofidio, Ricardo, Blur : The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002), pp.96 -99

Fig. 11

‘The Bell system presents America the Beautiful in Circarama’ < http://www.yesterland.com/circarama > [accessed on December 23rd 2012]

6

1.0 INTRODUCTION The study is an interpretation on an established media theory model by theorist Marshall McLuhan. ‘The Tetrad of Media Effects’ is not associated with an application to architectural motives, however its evolving principle is present in the unfurling of the most exciting design era for the aspirations of transport.

This era begins in February 1930, on the American landscape, and on the pages of periodical journal ‘The American City’. Edward M. Bassett, writing as the President of the National Conference on City Planning, would define a new type of infrastructure that would go on to shape his nation and elevate the scope for future transport infrastructure exponentially.

‘We are more and more feeling the need for a new kind of thoroughfare - one which will be like a highway for both pleasure and business vehicles, but which will be like a parkway in preventing the cluttering-up of its edges. We have no name for such a thoroughfare. No law in this country provides for such a novel traffic way. If a name could be given to this new sort of thoroughfare, it would immediately enter into the practice as well as the terminology of city planning. I suggest the name of freeway.’

The following contents page is designed to navigate the merging intersections of four case study narratives, documenting the progressions since. These narratives are outlined in the rationale of this study; informed by field research along the great American freeways and through the settlements they shaped. These form the basis by which McLuhan’s ‘Tetrad’ will be appraised and applied to the aspirations of transport.

The structure of this study is designed to reference and reflect the spirit of the existing theory and use the common etymological understanding of a ‘Tetrad’ as groups or sets of four.

76

CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION

7

2.0 RATIONALE

10

2.1 Angeleno

2.2 Googie

2.3 - Rama

2.4 Spaceport

3.0 NARRATIVE GLOSSARY

12

4.0 MEDIUM? 4.1

Parameters

14

4.2

Laws of Media

15

4.3

The Publicity and Privacy of McLuhan’s Transport Tetrads

17

4.4

‘There is no right way to read a tetrad, as the parts are simultaneous’

19

✴.0 BOOSTER

✴.0 KICKSTART

✴.1

Man in the Space Age

✴

✴.1 Pano-rama

✴

✴.2

Spaceport A-new-era

+7

✴.2 The Travelling Cartridge

+5

✴.3

The Theme Building

+11

✴.3 An Iconic Tonic

+8

✴.4

Dingbats

+14

✴.4 The Look of Century 21

✴.0 OVERTAKE

+11

✴.0 EXHAUST

✴.1

Depicting the Cult of Speed

✴

✴.1 Reassessing for Space Travel

✴

✴.2

The Car profits from the Past

+4

✴.2 Lost Lautner

+6

✴.3

Mobile Lounges

+7

✴.3 Motion drove LA

+9

✴.4

Terminal Terminals

+11

✴.4 The Boosterish Walt Disney

+13

9.0 TETRADRAMA: CONCLUSIONS FOR ‘TOMORROWLAND’

85

9.1

Depicting Dynamism is Exhausting

86

9.2

The Atomic World’s Fair has been Overtaken

88

9.3

Kickstart with what works for LA

94

9.4

Boosterism turns to Space

96

87

9

2.0 RATIONALE The subjects of this interpretive study are four case study narratives that are intrinsically linked by their contribution to the aspirations of modern transport, and the design movements associated with this. These movements and motives are prevalent in the aesthetic of the Western States of mid-century modern America.

This area has been selected to be of importance because it widely demonstrates the sharp rise in 20th century consumerism in its built environment and demographic. More importantly, on a global scale, it was one of the first wider areas to receive the fruits of what became a technological research obsession, ‘going further and getting there quicker’. These fruits were anything from readily available new consumer goods to the look and feel of architectural styles.

2.1 This first narrative case study is the relationship between transportation and the city of Los Angeles. LA is a sprawling conurbation that over time has been redrafted according to the modes of transport systems used to span it. The latest model of a car culture on and around freeways has lead to a stylistic interpretation of what ‘roadside’ architecture can mean.

2.2 A specific movement of this mid-century modern roadside architecture was termed `Googie’ in reference to a roadside coffee shop by John Lautner. The style was defined by the bold use of iconography depicting speed and energy in sweeping dynamic forms. Although largely focused in leisure architecture, the Googie movement saw large contributions to aviation infrastructure terminals in the US as well as the figurehead pieces and pavilions of the Atomic Era of International Expositions.

10

2.3 The Atomic Era of expositions or Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fairs was a period of national showcasing within the mid-century modern design period and ethos. These large-scale events were fuelled by the imageboosting motives of a nation, of their technological developments and commercial exports. A case study of particular relevance is the battle between the American and Soviet expositions composed to the political undertones of the Cold War and the Space Race. The fairs in Moscow in 1959 and Seattle in 1962 demonstrate the intensity with which these events had  to document and sell the technical research advances both parties made into unchartered fields.

2.4 Lastly this study will use how this field of space exploration has become thoroughly understood and documented to the point where space travel is becoming offered as a commercial tourism product.

Commercial ventures offering this tangible experience have been established and purpose built architecture has developed to reflect its requirements. How has the architecture of infrastructure terminals changed to be representative of these new technologies? The study will interpret the trade-off and progression from an aesthetic aim to depict the excitement of speed and energy, to a more contemporary understanding of this in terms of technical building performance and using materials to create sensory environments. Â

11

3.0 NARRATIVE GLOSSARY The exuberance in innovation often came with new stylistic interpretations in language to define it. This was often a portmanteau word used to bring together the existing design influences.

These playful interpretations were accepted as part of the spirit of the movements and have become important reference points in documenting their history. From the ‘ultramodern’ roadside architecture of the Googie era to becoming more concerned with ‘superfast’ communicative technologies than the speed of architecture, the character of this vocabulary is a useful tool for the aspirations of transport.

This glossary of terminology is important to the understanding of the narrative case studies.

ANGELENO – A native or resident of Los Angeles, California.

PALIMPSEST - A manuscript or piece of writing material upon which markings can be imposed upon an earlier drawing or inscription, which has been effaced. Frequently used in an architectural and urban design context for the super-position of new interventions over a predeceasing solution.

AUTOPIA – The prominence of the car within society, the utopia of mobility. A term heavily linked to Los Angeles. Its origin comes from Walt Disney, who gave this name to one of the most popular attractions of Disneyland, Anaheim on its inauguration in July 1955. This portmanteau of ‘automobile’ and ‘utopia’ was popularised in academic circles by Reyner Banham to describe LA in his 1971 book ‘Los Angeles: The Architecture of the Four Ecologies’.

GOOGIE – A mid-century modern architectural movement influenced by car culture, the space age and the atomic era. Following on from Streamline Moderne, a subdivision of futurist architecture originating in Southern California. The term comes from a now defunct coffee shop by John Lautner in West Hollywood, LA. The height of the style’s popularity ran from the late 1940’s to the mid 1960’s.

STREAMLINE MODERNE – A late type of the Art Deco design style that emerged during the 1930s. Its architectural style emphasised curving forms and long horizontal lines.

12

11

RAYGUN GOTHIC – Term for a visual style that incorporates Googie, Streamline Moderne and Art Deco architectural ideas as an application to retro-futuristic science fiction environments. Characterised as ‘the tomorrow that never was’.

POPULUXE– A futuristic design style often related to Googie, often using pastel colours, synthetic materials, and stainless steel to evoke a sense of luxury. A portmanteau of ‘popular’ and ‘deluxe’.

TOMORROWLAND – One of the original constituent realms of Disneyland in Anaheim, LA which still maintains several key ideals and styles of the Googie and Populuxe era from its opening in 1955.

-RAMA – A suffix meaning a ‘spectacular display or instance of’. Dated to 1824 to have been abstracted from panorama, which was ultimately derived from the Greek ‘horama’ which means sight.1

THE SPACE RACE – The drama of Cold War competition between the Soviet Union and the USA regarding the domination of achievements in the field of space exploration. It was a race run in earnest between 1957 and 1975.2 ATOMIC EXPO ERA – A period of world’s fair and expositions fuelled a showcasing of scientific advancements and new technological discoveries. Documented as 1940 – 1967.3 DYMAXION - A term coined and copyrighted by advertising guru Waldo Warren in 1929 as a portmanteau of Buckminster Fuller’s frequent descriptions; Dynamism, Maximum and Tension.

SKYLON

[i]

- A slender futuristic structure showcasing the engineering concept of ‘tensegrity’ built for

the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s Southbank.

SPACEPORT AMERICA - The world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport, located in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in New Mexico, United States.

SKYLON [ii] - A design for a re-usable spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited. It uses a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket engine to reach orbit in a single stage and aspires to provide commercial space travel for a lifecycle of more than 200 launches.4

1 < http://www.etymonline.com.

> Online Etymology Dictionary [accessed 11th January 2013] Clohosy Cole, Tom. Space Race (Nobrow Press, London, 2012) 3 Erik Mattie, World's Fairs (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998).

4 < http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/space_skylon > [accessed 7th January 2012] 2

13

12

4.0 MEDIUM? 4.1 Parameters

The word medium is not particularly useful. It generally panders towards a definition of communicating on mass through a certain mode or means. However in its breadth of use, encounters anything from how content is blazed through the dimensions of any screen, to the notion of clairvoyance. For this reason the study shall set some parameters.

The focus of this study is to use a single established media theory in which these modes of communicating are attributed to having an effect on each other, forming a progression. This collection of apparent causalities was proposed by media theorist Marshall McLuhan and was documented under four roles coined the ‘Tetrad of Media Effects’.

McLuhan was a seminal thinker and theorist of the twentieth century who is widely accredited with the premonition of a digitally connected community focused around the Internet. His ‘Tetrad of Media Effects’ is a sturdy theoretical platform, which this study aims to re-interpret in order to assess the extent to which architecture and architects have been the ‘medium’ for technical, functional and commercial transport frontier. The progressive nature of the theory will enable a speculation on the extent, and means by which designers and architects will contribute towards future aspirations.

14

13

4.2 Laws of Media

The underlying effects of a medium can be explained by McLuhan and summarised in four constituent roles

i.

Which aspect of society or human life does it enhance or amplify?

ii.

Which previous prominence in society is obsolesced in order to accommodate the new medium?

iii.

Which element has the new medium retrieved which may have been previously eclipsed or lost in the progression of the effects?

iv.

Once the medium has fulfilled its purpose to the point of saturation, what can it be ‘reversed’ or ‘flipped’ into, to take on a new media with another role in the Tetrad?5

what it improves

what happens when pushed to its limits ENHANCES

REVERSES

RETRIEVES

OBSOLESCES

what original idea is brought back

what it made obsolete

Fig. 1 Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad of Media Effects

Paul Levinson, Digital Mcluhan : A Guide to the Information Millennium (London ; New York: Routledge, 1999).p.189

5

15

14

A frequent example used to gain an understanding of the Tetrad is in the medium of radio. The introduction of radio as a common medium to society enhanced the mass reproduction of sound, amplifying audio to large audiences. Through this, the audible medium eclipsed print medias to a large extent. It does however retrieve the more traditional notion of oration or a town crier, an element that print culture had obsolesced as a means of informing. Lastly when radio was pushed to its limits it made the progression to audio-visual television.6 In order to speculate on the extent to which architectural motives can be valued as having these media effects, the four case study narratives will be explored in order to explain and extrapolate the theory. This process will then aim to give an account for the contemporary and future position the architect has in documenting and advertising commercial space travel. As this product looks to aid economic stability for developed nations over future decades, will an identity be designed once again to advertise this?

6 Ibid., p.189

16

15

4.3 The Publicity and Privacy of McLuhan’s Transport Tetrads

McLuhan himself did not see his comprised ‘Tetrad’ as four clear-cut insular components. He documented examples rather in an appositional form, with a tentative space for interpretation or ‘glosses’ surrounding them of one or another media law. 7 The application of the Tetrad theory to transport is not unchartered territory as McLuhan himself arrives at an application for the introduction of the automobile and aeroplane in his ‘Laws of Media’8

(gloss) ENHANCES RETRIEVES

(gloss) REVERSES OBSOLESCES

(gloss)

Going outside to be alone

The ego trip

Alone at a drive-in movie

Mobile home

PRIVACY

(gloss)

City (urb) into suburb

TRAFFIC JAM CORPORATE PRIVACY

KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR

HORSE AND CART

The countryside

River as the mode of traffic flow Traffic lights as locks?

Helicopter as canal control tower?

Fig. 2 McLuhan’s Tetrad for the Car9

7 Marshall

McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media : The New Science (Toronto ; London: University of Toronto Press, 1988). p.129 8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p.148

17

16

Figure 2 shows how in McLuhan’s terms, the car enhanced privacy in transport. This spatial creation led to the development of mobile homes as well as a stressing of individual activities made possible for vehicles. It quite simply obsolesced the horse and cart as a means of private transportation one could have ownership of. It altered city planning, as Edward M. Bassett predicted through the new infrastructure it brought, reversing the high-density industrial living city model into opportunities for a more dispersed suburbia. McLuhan viewed this as a commentary on how high-density traffic jams in business districts actually transformed into a more detached model for private working.

Lastly, the car retrieved the excitement and showmanship of an egotistical armour you could possess, and in addition through commercial opportunity, sold a means to a better lifestyle. This assessment in McLuhan’s tetrad is especially evident in the boosterish architectural style and national exhibits that came with ‘car culture’. The same principle was applied to the introduction of the aeroplane.

(gloss) ENHANCES

(gloss) REVERSES

RETRIEVES

OBSOLESCES

(gloss)

(gloss)

As computers create committees Jets create conferences A new kind of circulating population is introduced

Cities become the suburbs of other cities

VERTICAL (AND HORIZONTAL) LOCOMOTION

PROJECTILE

AERIAL PERSPECTIVE

THE WHEEL AND THE ROAD The suburb made by the car

Fig. 3 McLuhan’s Tetrad for the Aeroplane10

10 Ibid.,

p.202

18

17

4.4 ‘There is no right way to read a tetrad, as the parts are simultaneous’

In order to fully apply McLuhan’s wider Tetrad theory to the design motives of the intersecting case study narratives, an important consideration outlined by Paul Levinson in his preface to McLuhan’s ‘Laws of Media’ has been accounted for.

The process is not only cyclical but also progressive, and so it may be better termed as a spiral. Figures 4 and 5 aim to show how this new relationship works both as a progressive spiral of media effects, but also each as a self-contained process. Whereby the effect these elements have on each other changes, and does not necessarily have a causal order. This interpretation is shown in the frequent interplay of the retrieval, obsolescence and reversal of traditional media under McLuhan’s examples. These could be termed more of a vertical skip forward or recollection from another Tetrad process rather than a continued cyclical progression.

BOOSTER ENHANCES RETRIEVES

EXHAUST

REVERSES KICKSTART

OBSOLESCES

OVERTAKE

Fig. 4 Reinterpreting the progressive nature of the Tetrad of Media Effects

In order to give a better fit to the mediums and motives of events architecture, transit system design and commercial ventures, the constituent parts of the Tetrad have been redefined.

Boosterism is a term often associated with the public perception of place or agenda.

There is a traditional association with the actions of lesser American towns in order to gain a boosted self-image. It delivers the advertising, commercial and political undertones of appropriation to this study, from the events architecture of World’s Fair expositions to the identity created to sell commercial space tourism.

19

18

The intrigue of McLuhan’s role of reversal or ‘flipping’ lies in what happens when a The intrigue of McLuhan’s role of reversal or ‘flipping’ lies in what happens when a creative idea or method is exhausted of its potential in that existing form. What level of creative idea or method is exhausted of its potential in that existing form. What level of adjustment is required to get it boosting again? This is the scale that shall be assessed here. adjustment is required to get it boosting again? This is the scale that shall be assessed here.

This can range from a logical progression aided by newer available technologies to the This can range from a logical progression aided by newer available technologies to the scrapping of a complete agenda or approach (and whether or not it’s worth salvaging for scrapping of a complete agenda or approach (and whether or not it’s worth salvaging for parts). The art of future proofing. parts). The art of future proofing.

The following four parts of this study are to be read in any order to reference the The following four parts of this study are to be read in any order to reference the interchangeable causalities of the Tetrad. interchangeable causalities of the Tetrad.

Fig. 5 ‘There is no right way to read a tetrad, as the parts are simultaneous’11 Fig. 5 ‘There is no right way to read a tetrad, as the parts are simultaneous’11

- Marshall McLuhan - Marshall McLuhan

11 M cLuhan and McLuhan, Laws of Media

: The New Science. p.129 11 McLuhan

and McLuhan, Laws of Media : The New Science. p.129

20

19 19

✴.0 BOOSTER i.

The first stage of a rocket or spacecraft used to give initial acceleration and is then jettisoned

ii.

A keen promoter of a place, organisation or cause with the goal of improving public perception of it.

iii.

An interpretation of McLuhan’s ‘Enhance’ law in the Tetrad of Media effects, in order to show how architecture was used to inform, brand and sell a nationalistic model of transport frontier by the United States of America.

✴.1 Man in the Space Age

The Expo ‘58 Brussels World’s Fair saw the US pavilion present a fashion show as a centrepiece, under the ideology of showcasing advanced democratic values of culture and freedom. It was a move that retrospectively fell flat against the Soviet presentation of the recently successful Sputnik space mission. 1 As the 1960’s dawned and the space race accelerated, the American government felt compelled to stamp technical prowess globally as a US export. For the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow they pushed to justify America’s position, jostling at the front of the Soviet led space race.

1

Mattie, Eric. World’s Fairs (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998), p.212

This was largely achieved with a showing of their hand in all the successful and This was largely achieved with a showing of their hand in all the successful and available commercial exports their research had informed, inside examples of the appliance available commercial exports their research had informed, inside examples of the appliance filled household model that the ‘American dream’ could offer. It was in one of these model filled household model that the ‘American dream’ could offer. It was in one of these model households, and more specifically the show kitchen that a famed debate turned into a households, and more specifically the show kitchen that a famed debate turned into a confrontation between vice president Richard Nixon and Russian First Secretary of the confrontation between vice president Richard Nixon and Russian First Secretary of the communist party Nikita Khrushchev, regarding where their respective nation’s strengths lay.2 communist party Nikita Khrushchev, regarding where their respective nation’s strengths lay.2

Within the United States science pavilion of the exhibit, Charles and Ray Eames Within the United States science pavilion of the exhibit, Charles and Ray Eames produced a film piece in which they stressed the relationship of this scientific progress to produced a film piece in which they stressed the relationship of this scientific progress to American everyday life. Aviation giants Boeing went a step further by taking visitors on a American everyday life. Aviation giants Boeing went a step further by taking visitors on a simulated trip through outer space at the speed of light in the ‘Spacearium’. These sort of simulated trip through outer space at the speed of light in the ‘Spacearium’. These sort of spatial experiences were amongst the first to give a tangible connection in transportation spatial experiences were amongst the first to give a tangible connection in transportation from what was a far removed and entirely new fantasy, to suggesting that it could one day be from what was a far removed and entirely new fantasy, to suggesting that it could one day be regarded as accessible domesticity. These possibilities had come around as a product of regarded as accessible domesticity. These possibilities had come around as a product of scientific and military research and only became comprehendible in the light of the Sputnik scientific and military research and only became comprehendible in the light of the Sputnik launch in 1957. Realms only previously encountered in science fiction were made tangible launch in 1957. Realms only previously encountered in science fiction were made tangible fact. The atomic era exposition brought a new form of media communication to a mass fact. The atomic era exposition brought a new form of media communication to a mass audience. These progressions uncovered a causality of opportunities for these media; a audience. These progressions uncovered a causality of opportunities for these media; a relationship which the case study narratives can be seen to relate to. relationship which the case study narratives can be seen to relate to.

FANTASY

SCIENCE FICTION

INTENSIVE RESEARCH

new use of design and architecture as a medium COMMERCE

COMMON UNSTANDING

TANGIBLE FACT

Fig. B1 Path showing public interpretation of atomic and astronautic technologies.

Fig. B1 Path showing public interpretation of atomic and astronautic technologies.

2 Colomina, Beatriz.

Enclosed by Images:

The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture, p.8

Beatriz. Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture, p.8 http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/0910_etsas/0910_composicion/ca_textos/2008_colomina_im <Colomina, <http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/0910_etsas/0910_composicion/ca_textos/2008_colomina_im agenes.pdf > [accessed on 18th January 2013] agenes.pdf > [accessed on 18th January 2013] 2

T +2 2

2

Unlike propaganda on show elsewhere from the US in Moscow, the Eames’ film piece Unlike propaganda on show elsewhere from the US in Moscow, the Eames’ film piece ‘Glimpses of the USA’, did not aim to displace or downplay the space race. Despite a desire ‘Glimpses of the USA’, did not aim to displace or downplay the space race. Despite a desire to compete with the Soviet Union space programme, other elements of the exhibition to compete with the Soviet Union space programme, other elements of the exhibition displaced the technological informing of the US efforts in the space race, and almost gave displaced the technological informing of the US efforts in the space race, and almost gave the impression of conceding at this time. The Eames film used satellite surveillance in the the impression of conceding at this time. The Eames film used satellite surveillance in the opening shots and from the outset gave the impression that the US intensive research effort opening shots and from the outset gave the impression that the US intensive research effort had been the synthesis for material gains.3 It was then as the film developed into ‘a day in the had been the synthesis for material gains.3 It was then as the film developed into ‘a day in the life of the USA’ that the viewer began to be sold an impression of the ‘good life’, with life of the USA’ that the viewer began to be sold an impression of the ‘good life’, with accessibility of means to make life easier. These images, from an abundance of appliances to accessibility of means to make life easier. These images, from an abundance of appliances to automotive systems and infrastructure were shown across seven individual screens and automotive systems and infrastructure were shown across seven individual screens and appeared to be saying ‘in research position, we are the same, but on a material level, we have appeared to be saying ‘in research position, we are the same, but on a material level, we have more.’4 more.’4

Fig. B2 Screening of the Eames’ ‘Glimpses of the USA’ in Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome at the Fig. B2 Screening of the Eames’ ‘Glimpses of the USA’ in Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome at the American Exhibition in Moscow, 1959.

American Exhibition in Moscow, 1959.

3 I bid., p.13

3 4 4

Ibid.

Ibid., p.13 Ibid.

T3 +3

3

Fig. B3 Images from ‘Glimpses of the USA’, 1959.

T+4

The United States Information Agency was further propelled to answer any concerns The United States Information Agency was further propelled to answer any concerns of technical proficiency of their nation in the next international World’s Fair on home soil in of technical proficiency of their nation in the next international World’s Fair on home soil in 1962. This marked a new nationalistic boosting of scientific-led opportunity, and contributed 1962. This marked a new nationalistic boosting of scientific-led opportunity, and contributed to the obsolescence of the understood and tested model of celebrating the traditions and to the obsolescence of the understood and tested model of celebrating the traditions and achievements of the past. The ‘Century 21’ Seattle World’s Fair was initiated as a concept in achievements of the past. The ‘Century 21’ Seattle World’s Fair was initiated as a concept in response to the autumn 1957 Sputnik launch and eclipsed the previous modest plans to put response to the autumn 1957 Sputnik launch and eclipsed the previous modest plans to put on a ‘Festival of the West’, an anniversary celebration of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo. 5 on a ‘Festival of the West’, an anniversary celebration of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo. 5 The 1962 Worlds Fair went on to take a previously unassuming Washington town and The 1962 Worlds Fair went on to take a previously unassuming Washington town and built a brief to enforce the United States position of ‘man in the space age’. The Century 21 built a brief to enforce the United States position of ‘man in the space age’. The Century 21 exposition saw nearly 10 million visitors targeted, to believe that ‘man’ was an American exposition saw nearly 10 million visitors targeted, to believe that ‘man’ was an American citizen placed there by the scientific innovation of the intense collective research effort. Much citizen placed there by the scientific innovation of the intense collective research effort. Much like the attempts in Moscow, the footfall and wider watching population were also convinced like the attempts in Moscow, the footfall and wider watching population were also convinced and sold how the fruits of this research could be used and taken home in the form of new and sold how the fruits of this research could be used and taken home in the form of new household technologies. The boosterish iconography of the architecture amplified the profile household technologies. The boosterish iconography of the architecture amplified the profile and knowledge of the focused event as well as strengthening the US political position. and knowledge of the focused event as well as strengthening the US political position.

Fig. B4 Promotion poster for the Century 21 Exposition Fig. B4 Promotion poster for the Century 21 Exposition

5 Becker and Stein, The Future Remembered:

The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle

BeckerFoundation, and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center HistoryLink, 2011) p.7 Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011) p.7

5

5

T 5+ 5

Much like the efforts of the world’s fair commercial exhibiters and filmmakers, the commercial nature of the architecture had an association to a better life through materiality.

When pushed to its limits this architectural motive as a medium can perhaps only document and advertise. The nature of demonstrations offered by Boeing or the Eames sparks a desire for the next experience that will be made available. Spatial experiences, which people had only previously been able to learn about could provide commercial opportunities to fulfil their archetypal desires.

These can obviously only follow the progress of technological advancement, however this tendency will evolve into an aspiration to experience them ourselves. This can be seen at a basic level by the desire not only to experience transport for necessity but in the audacity of supersonic aviation, a culture of high-performance ‘Autopia’ or to the contemporary impending reality of commercial space travel.

World’s fairs and expositions have perhaps reached exhaustion as a communicative model and economic tool for transport aspirations. The centralised governing body for sanctioning expositions, the BIE (Bureau International des Expositions) is developing a disparity in its member states, a key to this being the US having left the other 91 member countries in 2002.6. When coupled with the governing cuts in the national space program, this shows how the government is also looking at the commercial space tourism ventures of companies such as Virgin Galactic to boost the US Gross Domestic Product towards a greater economic stability.

Bernstein, Fred A. Architecture (New York, August 2004), p.96 ‘World’s fairs are no longer on the American agenda. It’s time to rejoin the global community’

6

T+6

6

✴.2 Spaceport A-new-era ✴.2 Spaceport A-new-era Even from the atomic expo era of the space race it could be deemed inevitable there would be an emergence of commercial space tourism. The documented progression of Even from the atomictechnologies, expo era of the race it could be deemed inevitable there potentially available serving longspace before they have been realised as accessible, wouldweight be antoemergence of commercial space tourism. The documented progression of gave this speculation. potentially available serving technologies, long before they have been realised as accessible, In 1998, a report published by NASA and the Washington state Space Transportation gave weight to this speculation.

Association drew attention to radical changes in the space industry by predicting that tourism 7 In 1998,the a report publishednew

by NASA the Washington Space Transportation It has become the fastest would provide only promising marketand in space exploration.state

Association drew attention to radical changes in the space industry by predicting growing industry in the world economy and its developments indirectly employthat 10%tourism of the 7 8 It has become theagency fastest would provide only promising new market spaceAuthority exploration.

The New Mexicoin Space became the first state world’s workingthe population.

growing industry in to thedevelop world economy andspace its developments employ of and the created specifically commercial travel and in indirectly September 2007, 10% Foster 8 The New Space Authority the first state agency world’s population.

Partnersworking produced conceptual plans forMexico a purpose built terminalbecame for space tourism.

created specifically to develop commercial space travel and in September 2007, Foster and Foster and Partners acquired the project largely based on their interests in following Partners produced conceptual plans for a purpose built terminal for space tourism. and contributing towards aviation. Their realised design gave a form ‘seeking to capture the Foster and Partners the project based their interestsasinmediation following drama and mystery of spaceacquired flight’. The sunken largely form was noton only intended and contributing towards aviation.

Theirbut realised design gave a form ‘seeking capture the against the extremes of desert climate to evoke the unexpected.

Is there atoresponsibility drama mystery of flight’. The and sunken form to wasbenot onlyovert intended as mediation for the and architecture of space new technology industry more in both structural against the and extremes of desert climate but to evoke the unexpected. Is there a responsibility expression programme? for the architecture of new technology and industry to be more overt in both structural expression and programme?

7 O’Neil,

D. Compiler of ‘General Public Space Travel and Tourism’ NASA Report no. NP-1998-03-11MSFC, 1998.

8 John Zukowsky, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001). p.175

7 O’Neil,

D. Compiler of ‘General Public Space Travel and Tourism’ NASA Report no. NP-1998-03-11MSFC, 1998.

8 John Zukowsky, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001). p.175

T+7

7

The ‘Googie’ movement typical of the atomic expo era saw architects neglect scientific and technological reality in favour of physically depicting dynamism. On this level, Foster’s Spaceport America does not offer a 50-year architectural progression in line with the clear technological realms overcome in the same period. An ‘attempt to capture the drama and mystery of space flight’9 sounds very much like the same commercial design motives of the mid-century modern era. The information culture of these ventures today would suggest a more honest application of the design principles.

Fig. B5 Spaceport America visualisation and under construction by Foster and Partners

9 Webber,

Gwen. ‘Blueprint’, 300 (London: Wordsearch Ltd, March 2011) pp.36 -41

T+8

8

Fig. B6 Plan and Sections of Spaceport America

Â

9 T+9

Instead the photogenic form, which has widely graced the pages of glossy publications, brought the ‘unidentifiable’ to an object close to the mysterious Roswell air force base. A location masked with the uncertainty or purely media furore (depending on your standpoint) of the U.F.O crash in 1947.10 The spaceport is actually much more than just a pin up to capture the aspirations of the deep pocketed. The building harnesses these technological progressions in a pragmatic way, demonstrating that these plans for sub-orbital flight are very much grounded in a relatively modest sized commercial forum. It is because of this handling of the programme and rationale for a transport terminal with such a lean approach, that it makes it all the more incongruent when paired with the smoke and mirrors of a mysterious building envelope.

The driver of this is quite evident however. Virgin Galactic, the sole commercial tenant for the first venture into space tourism has free reign as the client to use architecture to sell its product. This extent of market skimming was last seen in the first airport terminals to commercially operate the first jet engine aircrafts at the start of the 1960’s.

Eero Saarinen’s TWA flight centre at JFK airport in New York is an example that could be viewed as comparable, with Trans World Airlines branding the entire terminal building journey under the same excitement values of jet-age aviation that Virgin Galactic space tourism offers today. Regardless of corporate invention, this boosterish principle can be seen widespread in a more traditional sense, in the creating of destination stations, airport terminals and gateway infrastructures. This promotion of a place on arrival, with the goal of improving public perception is the definition of the boosterish role design plays for the transport service sector and wider city identity.

This model is rarely more prevalent than at the gateway to Los Angeles in the Googie architectural statement of the LAX Airport Theme Building.

10

Architects Journal. April 2007. Fosters enters Space Race p.11

T + 10

10

Fig. B7 Postcard of the ‘Jet-age’ Theme Building, Los Angeles, 1961.

✴.3 The Theme Building

By 1961 more than a million jet engine flights were logged at Los Angeles LAX airport. This infrastructure hub, which also went through wider master planning by the Theme Building architects William Pereira and Charles Luckman over this time period, required a central evocative statement of this new jet age. The Theme building at LAX soon captured the public’s imagination on its completion in 1961. The building fittingly houses an observation deck, framing the jet showcasing tarmac catwalk the other side of the terminal buildings. It instantly became the most recognisable tourist attraction in Los Angeles and an iconic symbol for the wider aspirations of Southern California in the jet age.

T + 11

11

Fig. B8 The LAX airport Theme Building, Los Angeles, as it stands today.

Although the building’s role and scale were gradually reduced in audacity as the ambitious project progressed, it maintains its central position and unmistakable aesthetic.

The Theme Building has no inhibitions and conveys the futuristic promise widely associated with Los Angeles, from Disneyland’s ‘Tomorrowland’ to the Googie leisure architecture that grew out of the 1950’s car culture.

It was significant that the Theme Building was surrounded by a parking lot for so long, as if it was treated like just another scaled up Los Angeles fast food restaurant operating on the same principles of the roadside typology. The inevitable growth of the terminal has now encircled this playful space age symbol and to an extent, swallowed its visual impact.

Fig. B9 The jet-age Theme Building, was also a showcase for ‘Autopia’.

T + 12

12

Fig. B10 Sections and Construction of the LAX Theme Building

The inherent ambiguity that can be achieved through the reinforced concrete structure displays a similar aesthetic mystery to that of Spaceport America’s 40-year subsequent commentary. Many passengers and Angelenos mistakenly fanaticised that the Theme Building was a rotating air traffic control station at first. 11 The dawning of these two new aviation ages appears to carry an architectural free-reign to skim the aesthetic market almost as much the field of new technologies they serve. The Theme Building demonstrates a bold, visionary approach to transport infrastructure and its lifespan so far should be used a model for the future thinking decision-making and preservation of Los Angeles.12

As it stands today, the structure and rendering has recently been restored and is now enhanced by an integrated retrofit lighting scheme that accentuates its nostalgic appeal. The Theme Building is the figurehead of the Googie architecture movement in Los Angeles and can be attributed with restoring integrity to the style that became largely obsolesced or left only for its pastiche references in post-modern cinema.

11

12

Schoneberger, William. A. Images of Aviation: Los Angeles International Airport p.81-82 Steele, James. William Pereira. (USC Guild Press, Singapore, 2002) pp.190-191

T + 13

13

✴.4 Dingbats

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard gives an analogy in his 1986 travelogue ‘America’, that by stepping out of the renaissance galleries of Rome or Florence, the architecture is heightened as you are stepping into the subject of the paintings. Likewise, he goes on to say, many of the environments across the Western States of America and specifically Los Angeles feel like you are stepping out into the harsh lighting and screaming visual imagery that is the subject of post-modern cinema.13

Los Angeles very much plays up to its mismatch of aesthetics and lack of subscription to an established rule. These traits align with what cinema should stand for, a plethora of set-design with no common referendum on an imposed uniform architecture.

One instance of this is the foundation of a residential model directly informed by the transport culture of the city.

‘The freeway enhances its bordering properties which are made very desirable for residential use. Close proximity to a freeway will be a decided advantage.’14

13 Jean

Baudrillard and Chris Turner, America (London: Verso, 1988). p.110 Bassett, Howard M., and Squire, Latham C., "A New Type of Thoroughfare: The 'Freeway'," The American City, November 1932, p. 66 14

T + 14

‘Dingbats’15 as a vernacular housing typology, combine what were initially relatively primitive construction techniques in residential architecture, around modernist rules in programme, pasted with ‘no rules’ in façade design. The Dingbat housing model is of relevance because it is a direct result in the built environment of the freeway. Where these elevated freeway structures cross the residential blocks, Angelenos saw a steep rise in land values. This created a landscape of individual statement architecture.

The living requirements were largely the same and so employed the same modular standardised unit to fulfil these needs, overhanging parking spaces at the back. It is programmatically simple. However that is where the replication ends, as this base then has any and every style pasted on the front like a superficial film set made from stucco and sheet materials. It employs the same motives that Los Angeles functions on, a billboard for a culture of choice and individualism.

Fig. B11 Axonometric showing the nature of the ‘Basic Los Angeles Dingbat’

15 A

term coined by Francis Ventre during his time teaching at UCLA. Banham, Reyner. The Architecture of the Four Ecologies (London, The Penguin Press, 1971), p.175

T + 15

15

‘Dingbats’ are the result of the implementation of freeways and a new audience through ‘Dingbats’ car culture. addition, architecture in Los Angeles is seen and to have theaudience reverse areIn the result of the implementation of freeways a new causality.car Theculture.

Westchester Shopping Centre ‘Milliron’s’ was builtisinseen 1949,toa design which was through In addition, architecture in Los Angeles have the reverse characterised by the crossing of compacted futurist ramps in elevation roof was top causality.

The Westchester Shopping Centre ‘Milliron’s’ was built in 1949, leading a designtowhich parking. 16 Thisby appeared at theoftime as an almost anomalous statement leaning characterised the crossing compacted futurist ramps inarchitectural elevation leading to roof top towards 16 anThis environment didn’t yet.anomalous It would have been morestatement suited to leaning a highparking. appearedthat at the timereally as anexist almost architectural density where the over-compact organisational economy reallymore would benefit, towardssituation an environment that didn’t really exist yet. It would have been suited to arather highthan amongst thewhere sprawling map of roads.

Neverthelesseconomy these kinds of would designs pre-empted density situation the over-compact organisational really benefit, rather and thethe sheer volumemap and of density vehicular use.these It often appeared thatpre-empted the volume thanshaped amongst sprawling roads.ofNevertheless kinds of designs of suggested and sold that people rather merely andparking shaped allocations the sheer volume and density of vehicular use. should It often drive, appeared thatthan the volume accommodate the existing volume. and This was architecture for traffic. of parking allocations suggested soldanthat people should drive, rather than merely accommodate the existing volume. This was an architecture for traffic.

If the mid-century modern residential model in Los Angeles as well as the leisure architecture Los Angeles had developed serving as transport for If theofmid-century modern residential under model another in Los Angeles well as system, the leisure example subterranean transit had or airdeveloped shuttle systems, is safe to say the result would be for far architecture of Los Angeles under itanother serving transport system, removed from these Dingbats. example subterranean transit or air shuttle systems, it is safe to say the result would be far removed from these Dingbats.

Fig. B12 Milliron’s department store, Westchester, Los Angeles, 1949.

Fig. B12 Milliron’s department store, Westchester, Los Angeles, 1949.

16 Ibid.,

p.153

16 Ibid.,

p.153

T + 16

16 16

✴.0 OVERTAKE

i.

To catch up with and pass whilst travelling in the same direction

ii.

To eclipse or become greater than

iii.

An interpretation of McLuhan’s ‘Obsolesce’ law in the Tetrad of Media effects, in order to show the diminishing influence of private vehicle spaces on architecture.

✴.1 Depicting the Cult of Speed

The introduction of the automobile brought with it the emergence of a new type of city. This was a commercial city, organised by the potential of the car and reflecting the populist taste of vehicle design.1 Nevertheless it was still reflecting the modernist school of thought, with clean use of the latest minimal light structures. It often became the case that the added commercial embellishments that typified this new commercial city had prominence in the aesthetic, with the repeated clean yet audacious steel or concrete framed structures only to be uncovered cowering behind. These were new architectural devices. Forms were designed to catch the eye at speed and follow easily around corners and across freeway flyovers.

1 Alan

Hess and Alan Hess, Googie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004).p.29

This meeting of populism and technology was magnified over the competition that grew out of the globe spanning Cold War conflict. Roadside architecture became a popular medium that was stamped on the American city as a commercial and material showmanship.

The mono-centric city model was deemed obsolete by car culture. Soon enough there was satellite-recorded propaganda of these refashioned cities, as a US global export for exemplary living.

The appeal of the new roadside architecture was two fold to the US. These vivid forms depicting dynamism started to shoot up, pasted with the commercial means to how your quality of life could be just as dynamic as your car, or your city. Secondly the US was aiming to sell this redrafted urban design model globally to aid their corporations and industry. Just like technology and mass-produced appliances had been the catalyst for and benefited from the Streamline Moderne architectural style, the automotive industry of high leisure had the same symbiotic relationship with the ‘Googie’.

The dingbat, starburst or the frozen sparkler were all terms used in the 1950’s leisure architecture to describe a common graphic symbol used in ornament and signage. In printing it provided an asterisk-like symbol [✴]. Architecturally however, it was used to convey the speed and energy caught in the release of an explosive charge. The form had an association to space exploration and reflected the optimism of the unparalleled advances in this era. It was commonly used in scientific journals before World War II but only became popularised in the post war relevance to atomic energy.2

Fig. O1 Ornament on Pic Wood Theater Façade, Los Angeles.

2 Ibid.,

p. 194

T +2 2

Fig. O2 Aesthetic influence on Ball clock by George Nelson (1950) and DKR-1 chair by the Eames (1954)

Ironically by this time it had been obsolesced by scientists as an accurate depiction of the atom. This is an indication of how the Googie style bypassed scientific or technological informing in favour of merely creating the vim and vigour of the associated developments. This aesthetic concept was also echoed in furniture and product design of the time that was frequently found in homes and the roadside vernacular.3 Despite how it largely appears in its contemporary form, Los Angeles was not born out of the automotive era. Just like the Googie architecture was merely the latest drafted identity trend to be rolled out along the roadsides, the mapping of where and why these roadsides existed was just another re-drafted step in the city’s wider planning.

3 Ibid.

T3 +3

✴.2 The Car profits from the Past

A palimpsest is traditionally a manuscript or piece of writing material upon which markings can be imposed upon an earlier drawing or inscription, which has been effaced. The information received is something reused or altered which still bears visible traces of its earlier form. This term is frequently used in an architectural and urban design context for the superposition of new interventions over a predeceasing solution.

Fig. O3 Layering of the ‘City of the Future’ by Harvey Wiley Corbett, 1913.

T +4 4

The urban design of Los Angeles can be largely attributed to a palimpsest based on the evolution of the city’s serving transport systems. This city built on transport should not (as it is often interpreted) only refer to the development of automobiles. Los Angeles did not receive automotive technologies ahead of the rest of the nation or the developed globe; neither did it decide to skim the car market to create a metropolis specifically to promote transit by private vehicles. It was just that the low-density occupation of the sprawling Los Angeles basin allowed a larger extent of adaptation for car culture than other cities without compromising an engrained urban form. 4 The unique spread of developments can be largely attributed to the to the earlier preferences in transportation. From the early settling Spaniard military road systems, bases and mission districts to the Pacific Electric Railroad dictating the generation of the city, the shape and look of Los Angeles was determined by the means of how people spanned it.

The extent of automotive availability and capacity for the city to accommodate the required freeway structures went on to form the skeleton of latest automotive Los Angeles palimpsest. But whilst the volumes received on these routes grew and grew along with the vim of car culture in Los Angeles, future scenarios began to be played out, as the overcapacity and exhaustion of this system was considered more likely to dawn. With this notion, a new ‘palimpsest’ was possibly beginning to be projected in the air space above the city.

4 Banham, Reyner. Los Angeles: The Architecture of the Four Ecologies (London, The Penguin Press, 1971), p.75

T+5

5

Fig. O4 Illustration showing the extent of the freeway lifestyle and how planners must recognise most Angelenos practically live behind the wheel.

T+6

Â

6

✴.3 Mobile Lounges

In 1969 an unlikely system usually associated with rural aviation became the latest conceptual folly for shepherding Angelenos around their expanding metropolis. The Twin Otter was a Canadian utility aircraft thought to be more suited to the savage outback of rural Canada.5 It could be said it was seemingly perfect then to take on the equal task of taming an unrestrained settlement becoming harder and harder to span. Regardless, these aircraft brought the capacity to commute 19 passenger runs from short take-offs and landings from many odd corners of the city.

A problem with the proposal of rapid rail transit in Los Angeles is that by the time lines have been run along the boulevards of West Hollywood to fuel commerce, or giving equality to the social demographics of the south central region or for the beach-bound day-trippers, it will still likely leave most inhabitants several miles from a serving station. The theory for the STOL (Short take-off and landing) aircrafts was that they operated out of the existing infrastructure of small private and municipal airfields or the quieter testing grounds of larger facilities. The network could theoretically serve a greater immediate audience than opposing solutions and do it cheaper than other aircraft in the airspace below the jet-filled skies above.

These sorts of attempts marked a conscious endeavour of self-contained ‘placemaking’ by designers for transport. The application of a system with a capacity of only 19 passengers clearly displays an excess of elite spatial thinking rather than a more pragmatic solution. The use of the Twin Otter in this way came as a 40-year subsequent move to Buckminster Fuller’s sketch musings over the 4D auto-aeroplane hybrid aircraft. This provides a typical example of the rift in realisation between a design reaction to the set of human desires and the enabling of technological advancements to allow it to come to fruition.

5 Banham,

Reyner. The Architecture of the Four Ecologies (1971, The Penguin Press, London) p.91

T +7 7

Fig. O5 4D auto-aeroplane by Buckminster Fuller, 1928.

Buckminster Fuller’s transportation ‘Dymaxion’ 6 studies aimed to work largely on creating a hybrid between purpose and modes by grouping living and movement requirements in a self-contained ‘bubble’ of convenience. The creation of a place was about forming habitable ‘lounge’ type spaces as well as an efficient model for living and travelling.

Throughout the atomic era this efficiency of overlapping the quality of the environment and means of getting from a to b was a large consideration. It reflected the materialistic nature and American indulgence of the time.

6 A

term coined and copyrighted by advertising guru Waldo Warren in Chicago in 1929 as a portmanteau of Fuller’s frequent descriptions; Dynamism, Maximum and Tension.

Foster, Norman. Dymaxion Car Buckminster Fuller (London, Ivory Architecture Wordpress, 2011), p.28

8

T+8

‘An Expanding Airport’ is a short film made by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958 as part of a presentation for the design of the new Washington Dulles International Airport by Eero Saarinen. The plan abandoned long terminal hallways in favour of the introduction of ‘mobile lounges’ that deliver passengers directly from the terminal to the plane. The film demonstrates how this transition is celebrated not only to increase airport efficiency for multiple parties but in a lavish spatial experience minimising effort of the passenger.

‘Walks which were once filled with romantic anticipation of adventure, will become more and more irritating as the high speed flights come into service’7 This line from the film demonstrates how the novelty of experiencing new transport frontier was wearing off and how it was becoming about maximising convenience and comfort.

Fig. O6. Stills of the ‘mobile lounges’ from ‘An Expanding Airport’, 1958.

7 Eames,

Charles and Ray. An Expanding Airport (Film for Washington Dulles International Airport, 1958) 02:14; videorecording.

T9 +9

Fig. O7. Still of the interpreted scale for the jet-age of frontier, giving an insight of what the architecture motives meant for this time. ‘An Expanding Airport’, 1958.

Fig. O7. Still of the interpreted scale for the jet-age of frontier, giving an insight of what the architecture motives meant for this time. ‘An Expanding Airport’, 1958.

Comparing this approach to the contemporary planning of the Spaceport America terminal draws some conclusions on how it has been overtaken under the Tetrad of media effects. Although Spaceport America as forum for an enterprise for which the projected Comparing this approach to stands the contemporary planning of the Spaceport America custom isdraws only estimated, it employs pragmatic in the scale of sequence. terminal some conclusions ona how it has modesty been overtaken under the Tetrad of media effects. Although Spaceport America stands as forum for an enterprise for which the projected custom is only estimated, it employs a pragmatic modesty in the scale of sequence.

10

T10 + 10

✴.4 Terminal Terminals

✴.4 Terminal Terminals The nature of the terminals of transportation infrastructure is a building typology that has to have a rationale to technological progressions. Lessons can be learnt from previous requirements, but the realisation is that factors that informed the Eames film for the Eero The nature of the terminals of transportation infrastructure is a building typology that Saarinen designed Washington Dulles Airport in 1958 have evolved in the way passengers view has to have a rationale to technological progressions. Lessons can be learnt from previous and use this infrastructure. requirements, but the realisation is that factors that informed the Eames film for the Eero Saarinen designed Washington Dulles Airport in 1958 have evolved in the way passengers view Designed almost in parallel with his Trans World Airlines Terminal at JFK, Saarinen and use this infrastructure. aimed to capture the motion and experience of flight at Dulles and the symbolism associated with it. Rapid developments in aircraft technology became a key reference point for forms Designed almost in parallel with his Trans World Airlines Terminal at JFK, Saarinen evocative of jet engine planes and their trajectories streamed in the sky.8 aimed to capture the motion and experience of flight at Dulles and the symbolism associated Saarinen’s infrastructure terminals succeeded in employing a simple overarching with it. Rapid developments in aircraft technology became a key reference point for forms concept and aesthetic counterpoint what is a complex evocative of jet engineas planes and theirtotrajectories streamedprogramme. in the sky.8 Saarinen’s infrastructure terminals succeeded in employing a simple overarching concept and aesthetic as counterpoint to what is a complex programme.

Pierluigi Serraino and others, Eero Saarinen, 1910-1961 : A Structural Expressionist (Köln ; Los Angeles: Taschen, 2006).p.83

8

8

Pierluigi Serraino and others, Eero Saarinen, 1910-1961 T + 11: A Structural Expressionist (Köln ; Los Angeles:

Taschen, 2006).p.83

11

Fig. O8. Cutaway circulation diagrams of Eero Saarinen’s terminal buildings at JFK, New York, and Dulles, Washington.

T 12 + 12

The pioneering idea of ‘a mobile departure lounge on stilts and wheels’, was sold by Saarinen with the help of close friend Charles Eames to the Federal Aviation Agency and the 12 airline clientele. These would alleviate the passenger walking distances as well as the cost of taxiing and allow flexible maintenance of the aircraft. Saarinen’s involvement with the ‘mobile lounge’ concept ended there though as he was only a consultant on their design. Perhaps if the same model of vigour had been applied here, as to the terminal design then they wouldn’t have been as poorly received, branded ‘lumbering beasts, as best, in their appearance’9.

Fig. O9 A Presidential Standard: the mobile lounges were intended to showcase the ease and comfort of jet-age aviation.

McQuade, Walter. ‘Eero Saarinen: a complete architect’, The Architectural Forum 116 (April 1962) pp.102-119

9

1313 T+

Fig. O10 The inconsistent successes of mounting the mobile lounges onto the aircraft to allow passengers to move between the two.

Â

T+ 1414

Since completion of the original programme in 1962, additions and changes have been made to the terminal, which dramatically alter the intended passenger sequence from street level drop-off to boarding the aircraft. In their current use, the mobile lounges carry passengers to a secondary structure from which they gain access to the airplane. 10 This appears to be a sizable failing from the original intention, although they continue to be used, the relevance of the mobile lounge has effectively been obsolesced. The essence of the mobile lounge is in its adaptability to transfer passengers directly onto the aircraft. Therefore, if it is not serving this purpose, and the increased terminal capacity cannot be integrated, a sleeker transit system in line with the architectural aesthetic may as well be implemented to shepherd from building to building.

The subject of increasing capacity is a very valid question concerning whether these types of buildings offer viable expansion opportunities. Both Saarinen terminals have a selfcontained aesthetic that is designed to stand alone. This is the same trait of Foster and Partner’s Spaceport America. Providing successful initial launches, space tourism is a venture that is likely to experience a vast volumetric increase in passengers as pricing becomes more accessible. The design at the site in the New Mexico desert basin doesn’t lend itself to expansion on the building and is likely to be used more as a terminal model to splay out across the desert landscape to accommodate new commerce. This would then require a serving transit system for transfer between these individual entities. This could perhaps retrieve such basic ideas that the atomic thinking of 1950’s and 1960’s terminals tried to design out by taking passengers to aircraft rather than bringing aircrafts to an inter-linked replicated model.

10

Serraino and others, Eero Saarinen, 1910-1961 : A Structural Expressionist.p.87

T 15 + 15

Fig. O11 A future expanded Spaceport America?

T + 16

Â

16

✴.0 KICKSTART

i.

To start (a motorcycle engine) with the downward thrust of a pedal

ii.

To provide a swift impetus to start or resume a process

iii.

An interpretation of McLuhan’s ‘Retrieve’ law in the Tetrad of Media effects, in order to show how past motives for transport design have been notionally recalled to inform a progression under new technologies.

✴.1 Pano-rama

The panorama is an architectural aid and analytical tool, which is derived from the 19th century landscape painting term of wrapping a picture plane around a spectator. The use of the principle can be followed all the way through to modern day immersion technologies in architecture. Screenings and virtual environments created for the American exhibits of the atomic era such as Boeing’s omnimax ‘Spacearium’1 or Disneys ‘Circarama’2 using compiled projections are simply successors to the panorama.

1 Becker

and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011) p.257 2 Colomina, Beatriz. Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture, p.10 <http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/0910_etsas/0910_composicion/ca_textos/2008_colomina_im agenes.pdf > [accessed on 18th January 2013]

Roads have an intrinsic narrative due to the physical journey and compelling sequence that is delivered. Whether this is through a sequence of signage, narrative of billboards or the architecture that operates on the same level. It is a criticism of contemporary roadside leisure architecture that it does not take advantage of the narrative uncertainty that driving across the American landscape delivers.

Driving an hour from Los Angeles can take you from lawn nourishing suburban sprinkler systems to unforgiving barren deserts. Alternatively, it can also take you between two branches of whatever roadside convenience franchise happens to occur at either end of a 2-mile stretch of an axial Los Angeles boulevard. This ‘traffic’ architecture is being experienced under the shortcomings of the automobile, not the ‘cult of speed’ aesthetic championed by the first freeways. The commercial replication gives little in the way of adventure, hardly inspired by the great freedom of the American road. Nothing strange will happen. These franchises are your constant guarantee that you in fact, never actually left home.3

Fig. K1 The death of the American road as a narrative

3 Codrescu,

Andrei. ‘Road Trip’, Architecture [New York] (May 1998), pp.97-98

T+2

2

This was not always the case, the original roadside panoramas flourished unregulated, as they lined and enticed the vision of motorists. Artist Ed Ruscha’s 1966 This was not always the case, original panoramas flourished how a photographic collection documenting ‘Everythe building on roadside the Sunset Strip’4 shows unregulated, as they stretch lined and enticed vision of journey. motorists.AsArtist Ed it, Ruscha’s single concentrated could inspirethe a vehicular he put ‘all he 1966 was 4 showstake howon a photographic collection documenting building on the offers Sunset and how each façade an Strip’ uninhibited interested in was that store front plane’5‘Every

single concentrated stretch could of inspire puttoit,the ‘alluncertain he was the individual function, regardless what ait vehicular was next journey. to. This As washe true interestedofinthe was thatroad storenetwork. front plane’5 and how each façade offers an uninhibited take on narrative wider the individual function, regardless of what it was next to. This was true to the uncertain narrative of the wider road network.

Fig. K2 Ed Ruscha’s ‘Every Building on the Sunset Strip’, 1966.

Fig. K2 Ed Ruscha’s ‘Every Building on the Sunset Strip’, 1966.

4 Richard 5

Marshall and Edward Ruscha, Ed Ruscha (London ; New York: Phaidon, 2003). pp.74-75 Ibid., pp.59-60

4 Richard 5

Marshall and Edward Ruscha, Ed Ruscha (London ; New York: Phaidon, 2003). pp.74-75 Ibid., pp.59-60

T3 +3

3

This element of the panorama needs to be retrieved for restoring the vibrancy of the American automotive settlement. The commercial power that franchises pull makes it This element of the panorama needs to be retrieved for restoring the vibrancy of the impossible to banish their repetition from the kerbside, however it should enhance the American automotive settlement. The commercial power that franchises pull makes it requirement for respecting and preserving the bold frontages and the independent leisure impossible to banish their repetition from the kerbside, however it should enhance the architecture that does remain. requirement for respecting and preserving the bold frontages and the independent leisure architecture that does remain.

When referring back to McLuhan’s spatial interpretation for the car6, the Los Angeles streetscape panorama offers some insight. If the car does retrieve and enhance the notion of When referring back to McLuhan’s spatial interpretation for the car6, the Los Angeles a spatially private ego trip, within a ’shining armour’, then Ruscha’s on looking spectacle gives streetscape panorama offers some insight. If the car does retrieve and enhance the notion of a symbiotic relationship to the car and the architecture. The car provides privacy, as well as an a spatially private ego trip, within a ’shining armour’, then Ruscha’s on looking spectacle gives environment and frame through which to view the ‘drive-in movies’ that could be screened a symbiotic relationship to the car and the architecture. The car provides privacy, as well as an down the sides of each and every boulevard. It is interesting that McLuhan terms the environment and frame through which to view the ‘drive-in movies’ that could be screened pedestrian as an invader of the motorist’s privacy. It is a general commentary that Angelenos down the sides of each and every boulevard. It is interesting that McLuhan terms the not walk because the cars and their influence on planning have overruled the requirement to pedestrian as an invader of the motorist’s privacy. It is a general commentary that Angelenos walk. Does having pedestrians looking in, compromise the spatial effect of the car? not walk because the cars and their influence on planning have overruled the requirement to walk. Does havingMcLuhan’s pedestriansTetrad looking compromise the spatial However forin,the car is perceived, the effect realityofisthe thatcar? the eccentric characters of Los Angeles’ sidewalks are more likely to be buildings than pedestrians, which However McLuhan’s Tetrad for the car is perceived, the reality is that the eccentric don’t look back. characters of Los Angeles’ sidewalks are more likely to be buildings than pedestrians, which don’t look back.

Displayed on page 17 of this study. Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media : The New Science (Toronto ; London: University of Toronto Press, 1988). p.148 6

Displayed on page 17 of this study. Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media : The New Science (Toronto ; London: University of Toronto Press, 1988). p.148

6

T +4 4

4

✴.2 The Travelling Cartridge

1933 marked the start of four years of economic growth for American industry, a hiatus in a national depression and a brief return to a prosperous outlook when the American dream appeared to be fuelled by optimism in the short term. Designers knew however that this swift change in culture and aspirations had to be sustained by an innovation in technology and materials. Buckminster Fuller’s transport designs for the Dymaxion car were not an example of a mass production model for transportation, but the nurturing of a vision towards a utopian social revolution. 7

The Dymaxion8 studies had already been well established by Fuller in 1933 as a world of housing, automobiles and cartography. These visions were very much rooted in the streamline age, a design movement that tracked and referenced the history of the aerodynamics of cars, trains and planes. The technology of these modes of transport manipulates air movement into areas of high and low pressure in order to gain propulsion.

This principle became emblematic of Fuller’s work from crafted zeppelin like structures to the notion of transportation and flight to aid a lower density suburban model for living. The Dymaxion car, brought nautical overtones to the design in its rudder like rear wheel, analogous ‘boat hull’ and marine form.

Foster, Elena. Bucky Fuller and Spaceship Earth (London, Ivory Press, 2011) p.18 A term coined and copyrighted by advertising guru Waldo Warren in Chicago in 1929 as a portmanteau of Fuller’s frequent descriptions; Dynamism, Maximum and Tension.

Foster, Norman. Dymaxion Car Buckminster Fuller (London, Ivory Architecture Wordpress, 2011) p.28

7 8

5

T+5

The teardrop shape machine was intended to hover, lift and plummet more like a The teardrop shape machine was intended to hover, lift and plummet more like a duck than the more soaring avian counterparts which commonly influence vehicle and duck than the more soaring avian counterparts which commonly influence vehicle and aviation design. The successes of the Dymaxion car were mixed. Mass production was always aviation design. The successes of the Dymaxion car were mixed. Mass production was always a fanciful dream for Fuller as the project was always more of a vision. Only three models were a fanciful dream for Fuller as the project was always more of a vision. Only three models were produced (a fourth retrospectively by Norman Foster, equal in testing and homage to Fuller). produced (a fourth retrospectively by Norman Foster, equal in testing and homage to Fuller).

Although it predated people carriers by half a century, achieved a streamline aesthetic and Although it predated people carriers by half a century, achieved a streamline aesthetic and genuine innovation it was widely viewed as an unrealisable concept. genuine innovation it was widely viewed as an unrealisable concept.

Fig. K3 The development of the Dymaxion Car Fig. K3 The development of the Dymaxion Car

 Â

T 6+ 6

6

Fig. K4 Buckminster Fuller’s concept for the Travelling Cartridge.

The same was felt with Fuller’s other aerial Dymaxion transport visions, and although he didn’t give up on aircraft design, he came to realise that individual machines would be too noisy, polluting and anarchic.9 On the other hand he still viewed air terminals as obstructions to efficient travel. His travelling cartridge was a computerised system, whereby you would board a lounge ‘cartridge’ which would become a modular component of various transit systems, to expedite your journey through a continuous connection and accommodation.

Although not feasible at the time, as a medium for transport innovation there are still elements in the audacity of Fuller’s proposals that inspire designers to approach chaotic and irrational transit instances in a more systematic way.10

9 J.

Baldwin, Buckyworks : Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today (New York: John Wiley, 1996). pp. 104105 10 Ibid.

T +7 7

✴.3 An Iconic Tonic

Much like Fuller’s studies were born out of the innovative recess in a national depression and a change in culture and aspirations, the 1951 Festival of Britain was conceived as a ‘tonic for the nation’11 following the Second World War and a long period of recession.

The central showcase of the festival was the SKYLON vertical feature, constructed on the principles of the new innovative engineering concept ‘tensegrity’ 12 . The feature with its apparent lack of physical support innovated and astonished to the extent only aspired by other atomic era exhibition pieces.

Fig. K5 The SKYLON, centrepiece of London’s Southbank Festival of Britain, 1951.

11 Ken

12 A

Powell and Powell & Moya, Powell & Moya (Swindon: English Heritage, 2009). p.31

structural principle based on the use of isolated components in compression inside a system of

continuous tension, in such a way that the compressed members do not touch each other. Coined by Buckminster Fuller as a portmanteau of ‘tension’ and ‘integrity’.

Robert W. Marks, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (New York: Reinhold, 1960).

T8+ 8

Fig. K6 The SKYLON spaceplane by UK engineering company Reaction Engines.

The iconography of the structure has been adopted by a contemporary UK engineering study into the realms of unpiloted reusable spaceplanes. The SKYLON spaceplane uses the name, icon and optimistic spirit of the 1951 Festival of Britain showpiece as well as a likeness in form. It is an engineering statement of the latest frontier; whereas originally the structure showcased the fundamentals of tensegrity, the term association is now used to brand the latest space aeronautics technologies.13

13 Wright,

Herbert. ‘Blueprint’, 300 (London: Wordsearch Ltd, March 2011) p.29

T+9

9

How far rooted can this medium of revoking the allure and nostalgia of monumental design be read into? This example demonstrates a case to speculate that this tool of retrieving retrospective architectural and design success, will brand these technologies in the future.

With the SKYLON spaceplane, the real emphasis is in precision engineering technologies and material investigations at a micro-scale. It could be said that echoing back to the iconography of great British engineering 60 years ago detracts from this. On the reverse argument it is simply a proclamation of the highest technical achievements possible for the time, much like what the original SKYLON stood for. If this is the case then the recent calls for the re-erection of the original SKYLON 14 can be seen as contradictory to this argument. This initiative offers no contemporary role within the Tetrad to document or exploit the fruits of current technological aspirations.

It merely serves as a gesture to nationalistic nostalgia, much like the interpretation of many remaining icons of the atomic exposition architecture.

14

Pringle, Jack and Hatherley, Owen. Should the Skylon be rebuilt 60 years after the original?

(London: Building Design Online, 2008) < http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/should-the-skylon-berebuilt-60-years-after-the-original?/3118504.article > [accessed 18 January 2013]

T + 10

10

✴.4 The Look of Century 21

In 1962, a geographically isolated town, little-known beyond its state invited the nation to think big. Fifty years on, the freshly valued global city of Seattle demonstrates a civic centre of national significance. The site of the Century 21 world’s fair has a matured ethos and has remained an example cultural hub, largely the result of its iconic architecture.

Fig. K7 The space age structures of the Space Needle and the Pacific Science Center stand today as a reminder of the spirit that spread across the 74-acre site in 1962.

T + 11

11

Fig. K8 The Space Needle by architect John Graham

Â

T + 12

12

The Space Needle is a viewing platform that gained global attention during construction and became the symbol of a futuristic vision and the world fair’s icon. The steel beam sections were rolled into the curved components using rail car production techniques at the local Pacific Car and Foundry plant in Seattle15. The lift design that runs vertically between these sections typifies the futuristic aesthetic of an enigmatic capsule that could have many transport applications, much like Buckminster Fuller’s Travelling Cartridge.

Fig. K9 The initial design for the Space Needle lift capsule and as it operates today

15 Becker

and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011) p.255

T + 13

13

The Ford Motor Company pavilion was comprised of a white and gold dome structure housing ‘An Adventure in Outer Space’, a simulated flight through fields of celestial bodies and new satellite technologies. The pavilion even entertained the notion of a Century 21 farm, revolutionised by an automated harvest process. Similarly, the General Electric Living Exhibit ‘home of the future’ boasted an all-electric living model 16 . Speed of accessing information was already uncovered as paramount to future conditions. Whether it was colour television projected on surfaces, a wall-sized home computer or an electronic home library catalogue, these were all developments in media not dissimilar from the notions of Marshall McLuhan around the same time.

Fig. K10 The General Electric ‘Home of the future’ exhibition and other space age pavilions

16 Becker

and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011) p.247

T + 14

14

NASA’s $2 million exhibit was the agency’s first large scale attempt to communicate the key events of the US space program to the masses.17 It was the second largest exhibit at the fair after the federal governments science pavilion, and displayed NASA’s progress toward developing three-man space vehicles for orbital and moon flights. A contained theatre screened films about space exploration, astronomy and rocketry.

When analysing the programme of these buildings and the brief to build for ‘man in the space age’ it appears clear that there would be the parallel development of an encompassing futuristic and dynamic aesthetic to match the subject matter of the objects exhibited.

It is now becoming more apparent that the ‘man in the space (as commerce) age’ is more interested in the speed of his Internet connection than the speed of his car or other means of transit. The response to communicating speed and energy is no longer simply in the depiction of streamlined design but at a micro-scale of material investigation and invisible technologies.

Fig. K11 The US Science Pavilion by architect Minoru Yamasaki.

17 Ibid.,

p.252

T + 15

15

Fig. K12 Approach to the Century 21 site and the Space Needle from the Alweg Monorail.

T+ 1616

✴.0 EXHAUST i.

The expulsion from an engine, turbine or other machine over the course of its operation

ii.

To expound on or explore a subject or options fully so that there is nothing further to be discovered or contributed.

iii.

An interpretation of McLuhan’s ‘Reverse’ law in the Tetrad of Media effects, in order to show how the influence and salesmanship of currently accessible transit systems on spatial design will evolve to consider future developments.

✴.1 Reassessing for Space Travel

The height of the Cold War saw architects and engineers not only work under a competing nationalistic ethos that was stronger than ever but as defence contractors.1 A strong example of this new role could be seen in the work of William Pereira and Charles Luckman’s showpiece Convair Astronautics factory in San Diego between 1955 and 1958 (now demolished). The factory was constructed to assemble the Atlas missile, America’s first intercontinental craft used for manned orbital flights.2 Unlike the iconography on show at the atomic worlds fairs (which in comparison are only a medium), the Convair facility marked the first attempts to pair the mid-century modernism aesthetic with the pragmatism of a functioning space research facility.

1 Carlson, 2 John

David. B. Building for the Space Age, Architectural Forum (September 1960) pp.116-19, 202.

Zukowsky, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).p.16

Fig. E1 Lobby of the Convair Astronautics Facility (now demolished). Pereira and Luckman, 1958.

Â

T +2 2

The first attempt at designing for space travel had modernist integrity without the overt selling of technology and speed that the expositions saw. The difference being that the Convair facility housed the actual research matter and with a user group of expertise rather than the impressionable public.

The marketing capabilities are still relevant when designing for space tourism, although because of a heightened public knowledge and understanding, it is no longer valid to represent space exploration with timeworn galactic motifs and the dynamic forms of the atomic era. Now that sub-orbital conditions and experiences can be offered, the architecture should reflect a set of more direct sensory impressions.

Gravity is associated with the principle directions that are inherent within any structure. Three axial movements are innately perceptible, the ability to move up and down (height), left and right (breadth) and forwards or backwards (depth). This can be interpreted as a basis of three principle components of architecture, floor, walls and ceilings. As the vertical axis of height is tied to gravity, these architectural perceptions can be re-assessed under anti-gravity, sub-orbital conditions of weightlessness. The anisotropic character of space is defined to some extent by the effort required to move in any direction. Therefore the directional characteristics of boundaries must be re-evaluated under the environmental conditions commercial space travel may offer.3 The commercial architecture of companies like Virgin Galactic could therefore look at the sensory implications of their product, and allow it to inform spatial design elsewhere.

3 Ibid.,

p.168

T3 +3

Fig. E2 A demonstration of the axial scaling implications of designing under new spatial conditions

Â

T +4 4

This was a consideration surprisingly overlooked in the atomic era, so obsessed with frontier in this new realm. Designing for space travel towards the end of the space race saw simple exports of the utopian model used in mid-century modern America transported as a colony. This incongruous attempt to transport the nationalistic championed suburban model into a self-contained spinning cylinder 4 shows no real insight into the dissimilar sensory conditions. It was merely the latest sales pitch by the American consensus of how people should live.

Fig. E3 The ‘Stanford Torus’. NASA study design by the University of Stanford as a proposed space habitat, 1975.

4 Ibid.,

pp.172-173

T5 +5

✴.2 Lost Lautner

This suburban model was not always viewed as the consensus. Even within wider America there became a disparity between east and west coast architectural thinking.

Architect John Lautner often declared how much he hated Los Angeles.5 For a city which stages so many of his most famous works, this opinion becomes more contradictory on inspection. What was likely a love-hate relationship became engineered and censored, much like the documenting of Lautner’s work and influence on Los Angeles.

He had ambivalent feelings towards commerce. He did not like viewing architecture as merchandise, however he lived car-culture, as did his architecture. In the original ‘Googie’s’ coffee shop he created an architecture that responded to the rhythm, proportions and function of this new building type. It was a populist movement. People would get off the highway and leisurely enjoy staying in the airy, habitable environments. So much to the extent it actually conflicted with the turnover of commercial operations.

5 Alan

Hess and others, The Architecture of John Lautner (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999). p.11

T 6+ 6

Fig. E4 ‘Googie’s’ Coffee shop (now demolished). Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, 1949.

Fig. E5 Lautner’s interior sketch for Henry’s Restaurant (now demolished), Los Angeles, 1947.

T+7

This celebration of everything the roads and freeways stood for was not a feeling shared by east coast architectural critics, who dismissed his commercial work as vulgar and cheap. It became regarded as such a blight on his work elsewhere that Lautner did not want to publicise his commercial architecture for fear it would not be understood or deliberately misrepresented.6 He became the unwilling father of the ‘Googie’ movement, and expressed his irritation with the holistic labelling of the style. In his mind every interpretation was fresh and different.

It became such a derogatory connotation for architectural value that throughout the 1980’s and 90’s many sites were abandoned and later demolished. Dismissed as the American post-war zeitgeist, Googie was derided as a lowbrow folly and became used as a synonym for undisciplined design and sloppy workmanship.7 Regardless, the boarded up shells of these structures still had the visual power to catch the eye of the driving motorist.8

The trending nature of the Tetrad theory has since retrieved this style to a level of well-documented regret at its extinction. The utopian view of roadside architecture gave an important narrative on lounge spaces and the integration of commercial methods and signage.

Most of all it gave an interpretation of what the automotive experience meant in this time. It is disappointing that the lack of acceptance not only led to the architect becoming somewhat dismissive of his own contribution but also wider architectural documentation sources largely glossing over the influence. The sparse remnants of examples are now only added to through the visual medium of photography with little sensory analysis available today.

6 Murray

Grigor and others, Infinite Space the Architecture of John Lautner, [United States]: Googie Co.,, 2009. videorecording :.

7 Alan Hess and Alan Hess, Googie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004).p.69 8 Grigor and others, Infinite Space the Architecture of John Lautner.

T+8

8

✴.3 Motion drove LA

‘I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.9 Domestic or sociable journey doesn’t end at the door or destination but at the freeway exit. The driveway can be seen as a ground level street which is merely an extension of the front door’.10

Fig. E6 The kinetic spatial experience of LA’s freeway infrastructure.

9Reyner 10 Ibid.,

Banham, Los Angeles : The Architecture of Four Ecologies (London: Allen Lane, 1971).p.23 p.213

T+9

9

Los Angeles is a populist commercial city, organised by the automobile and vast movements. This culture of dependence on the car was in itself a vehicle to allow more daring avant-garde architecture. Los Angeles as a settlement became a sprawling medium for the growth of the automotive industry, a new metropolis for a population riding on wheels.11 This wave of populism met the new available technologies of the atomic era and reshaped the landscape into the car-orientated organisation of Los Angeles that is experienced today.

The much-obsolesced Googie style offered an insight into what automotive spatial experiences meant to Los Angeles under a different era, when this culture was the peak of transport aspirations.

Some of the most valid architectural ‘place making’ in Greater Los Angeles is the triumph of these freeways structures. The clean, monolithic intersections of arced concrete show off the scale of aspirations for this ‘Autopia’. The descents experienced from some of the single carriageway filter streams that merge into the freeways achieve a kinetic experience that would have been genuinely exciting at the time of construction. Rarely were cities and buildings intended to be experienced in motion from great height. The freeway experience from these vantage points is made even more impressive due to the sense of rootedness achieved by the vast concrete and tarmac structure beneath. It is a realised extent of and clear attempt towards the commercial futurist visions of an automated transit system.

Fig. E7 Still from General Motors commercial film, ‘Design for Dreaming’, 1956.

11 Hess

and Hess, Googie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture.p.29

T + 10

10

It is all the more regrettable that the Googie roadside leisure architecture as been largely removed as the dynamic, upsweeping forms gave a kinetic interpretation of what this same experience meant under a sense of innovation. Modern buildings in Los Angeles reflect the aesthetic ideals and regional kinship to the Googie, however they are often left without the source to their vernacular interpretation.12

Fig. E8 The eye catching forms, metallic finish and structural exuberance of the Walt Disney Concert Hall

12 Ibid.,

p.202

T + 11

11

There is an important causal relationship between the medium of architecture and the functioning transport of Los Angeles in the future. Under the laws of the Tetrad, the architecture of Los Angeles as a medium for advertising the way it should be used only has a certain lifespan of potential before it reaches saturation. From experiencing the city, it is likely this saturation will come as total gridlock, an irremediable congestion of the cities arteries.

The causality can be questioned however, as a change in architectural approach as a medium could promote alternate aspirations for transporting the residents of Los Angeles.

Alternatively the development of public transport links could change the way people use the city and how its architecture is develops in the future. It could be argued that a simple relationship between the architectural planning of a city and its serving transit system cannot be described as a medium, however as long as the Angelenos have a choice in how to travel then design has a valid role in advertising the methods.

Fig. E9 Does Los Angeles have an architecture selling automotive transit or is it supply for demand?

Â

T + 12

12

✴.4 The Boosterish Walt Disney

‘It’s no use building it (an urban rapid transport system) unless we dramatize it enough to make people use it. I’m all for making Walt Disney our next Mayor, the only man in the city who can get a working rapid transit system built without the surveys and turn it into a real attraction so that people will want to ride it.’13 This quote by author Ray Bradbury is an opinion, which quickly gathers pace when understanding the attention seeking nature of Los Angeles. It is a culture that only appears to function on extremes, devoid of a middle ground apart from the physical reservation between the freeways. Even these left over spaces are of frequent deliberation as for how to squeeze their commercial potential and ease transit in Los Angeles. A former Rapid Transit District President recalls ‘I can’t tell you how many people call every day and say why don’t they just build monorails down the middle of the freeway.’14 This is an imagery that has been powered by the boosterish commercial nature of Disneyland in Anaheim.

Despite the nature of their source, these visions are not interpreted as fantasy.

Visitors to the theme park in Anaheim are initially taken by the seeming fulfilment of basic human desires. It appears to go fast, it depicts a vision of the future they want to see and it’s enjoyable to ride. It appears to be efficient without chemical or noise pollutants. Many Angelenos have expressed this possibility of bolstering their striking identity by sandwiching such a system between the flyovers of the concrete freeways.

An important aspect that is often overlooked is whether it can attract long-term commuter ridership. The whimsical nature of this debate in Los Angeles and the readiness to throw out social restraints does not give a case for this. There appears to be the ‘Disneyland’ enthusiasm for something new and shiny but without the functionality past this.

13 Jonathan

Richmond, Transport of Delight : The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2005).p.310 14 Ibid., p.330

T + 13

13

Fig. E10 Proposal for the Goodell Monorail from LAX airport to Downtown Los Angeles, 1962.

A case study of this can be seen in Portland, Oregon where the introduced trolley system quickly became known as ‘Max’, a nostalgic personification as a little engine with the child-like attraction of adversity, as a new system up against the stubborn and established private vehicles. ‘They are talking about riding the trains, but a great many of the people in the community who like to have it there do not ride it.’15 It can be expected that Los Angeles might receive it the same way, a welcomed new kook to play with the boundary of functionality and loveable ridiculousness. Disneyland offers the illicit pleasures of mobility that do not exist – from steam trains, monorails, trams and travelators to space ships and submarine rides’16. Although this blatant model of commercial fun fair may not work for transport infrastructure, the common interest is how the architect or designer needs to show proficient skill in salesmanship of a vision as a medium. Something or someone that had the edge on General Motors and Ford’s marketing commercials.

15 16

Ibid., p.311 Banham, Los Angeles : The Architecture of Four Ecologies. p.129

T + 14

14

Tomorrowland is a themed realm of the original theme park that offers Walt Disney’s contribution and predated answers to the atomic exposition era. Tomorrowland portrays a futuristic vision of automated freeways and space exploration. This draws on and teaches many of the same commercial trades as the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle or any of the atomic World’s Fairs. Just because the interpretation is unashamedly attached to such a commercial identity as Disney, it rarely gets considered with the same validity of an example of design as a medium. It is John Lautner’s ‘Googie’ predicament. The shared mediums of showcasing in the tangible national exhibits often overlapped with those visions of a themed park of opportunities.

Fig. E11 Trans World Airlines commercially depicted ‘Tomorrowland’ in 1955.

The United States Information Agency contracted in 1959 (for the second successive year following its successful screening in Brussels in 1958) for the inclusion of Disney’s ‘Circarama’ at the American Exhibition in Moscow. This 360-degree motion picture offered a twenty-minute automotive tour of American cities and tourist attractions that played to a thousand Russian visitors an hour.17 Although successful, this relationship was detrimental to the credibility of the US aspirations on show as they were effectively loaning out the Disneyland permanent collection. The technology was exciting, in terms of communicating a tangible sense of automotive possibility through 360-degree cinema, however was exhausting an existing medium rather than building new exhibits selling frontier.

Colomina, Beatriz. Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture p.10 <http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/0910_etsas/0910_composicion/ca_textos/2008_colomina_im

17

agenes.pdf > [accessed on 18th January 2013]

T + 15

15

The American model of exhibiting was brought to disrepute once again at the last exhibition of the Atomic World’s Fairs era on home soil in New York in 1964. Many of the exhibits were subsequently transported across the nation to Disneyland in order to exhaust out the final years of their lifespan as an easily replaceable glimpse into ‘Tomorrowland’.

‘World’s Fairs are no longer on the American agenda. It’s time to re-join the global community.’18

The proposals for the 2020 world’s fair mark an almost 30-year absence from the US planning to host or even launching a bid to host a World’s Fair with the Bureau International des Expositions. Since the ill-fated cancellation of the Chicago 1992 Fair and with the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition plagued with poor attendance and bankruptcy, the nation has steered away from what they used to consider a showcasing centrepiece for global relations and commercial prosperity.

The United States Information Agency (which disbanded in 1999) and subsequent organisation the Broadcasting Board of Governors closed it’s World’s Fair office 20 years ago and has failed to appropriate funding for such events since congress did not allocate money for the Expo ’92 pavilion in Seville. This showcase and celebration for transportation frontier was planned to be designed by Angeleno architect Barton Myers to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage, however the fiscal avoidance and resulting erected marquees was regarded as a national humiliation.19 Many considered this the nail in the coffin for America’s involvement in the exposition model as we know it.

As there is a global shift towards international cooperation and the globalisation of culture, the exposition model has been influenced and poses an architectural challenge that requires revision.

18 Bernstein, Fred A. Architecture [New York] (August 2004) p.96 ‘World’s fairs are no longer on the American agenda. It’s time to rejoin the global community’ 19 Ibid.

T + 16

16

9.0 TETRADRAMA: CONCLUSIONS FOR ‘TOMORROWLAND’ It has been demonstrated that Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad of Media Effects can be applied to architectural motives reflecting transport frontier in the four interdependent narrative studies. However, what does this enable to be extrapolated for future conditions?

Using the same Tetrad model of key statements and effects with further explanation ‘glosses’, the summations of this study have been diagrammed under McLuhan’s technique demonstrated for the influence of car culture or jet age aeroplanes. This conclusive Tetrad shall then be explained using four question areas.

TETRADRAMA – an extrapolated display of architectural instances under new values of expositions and space travel commerce.

BOOSTER

OVERTAKE

Better technology is invisible technology.

The fair as an encyclopaedic showcase of material production.

Therefore new sensory architectural tools need to communicate this.

The globally connected community can be more humanistic and less competitive.

KICKSTART

EXHAUST

The development of the vehicle is a spatial

The convention of the spectacle.

Designing with sensitivity to the new spatial requirements that space tourism offers.

tool The evolution of the use of the ‘-rama’ suffix.

Learn from the use of transport developments as overt technologies, to aid the balance of privacy and publicity in architecture.

Fig. 6 Concluding Tetrad based on this study’s findings into the influence of transport aspirations on architectural motives.

85

9.1 Depicting Dynamism is Exhausting

How can transport design influence, replace or evolve the aesthetic choice of depicting dynamism?

The ‘Googie’ architectural style has been shown to closely play out roles of the Tetrad theory, from enhancing the influence of vehicular transport spaces to being obsolesced as a kitsch identity for the height of commercialism. Certain notional elements are evident to have been carried into contemporary projects such as the Spaceport America terminal building. This suggests dynamic iconography still has relevance in the design of transport hubs, and buildings such as the LAX Theme Building or Saarinen’s TWA flight center at JFK airport and Washington Dulles Terminal Building still provide a suitable manifesto for how to approach a ‘gateway’ aesthetic.

This is the key of where the style can be analysed. In these gateway examples, the architecture serves as a greeting, and has an innate boosterish responsibility to amplify the first perception of a destination. Through the prevalence of signature jet-age terminal buildings to spaceports of the future, showcasing of transport architecture as large-scale ‘pavilions’ will have a constant presence. It is therefore valid to follow the path of exposition architecture, a realm very much themed by the technological frontier of transport in the 20 th century, to see how it may be aided.

86

The ideals of the Googie style in exposition deign have been largely removed. The convention of the spectacle is changing. Contemporary exhibition design is showing a trend retrieving an ethos of ‘show and let show’ giving back expression in structure.1 It very much appears now that there was a paradox in the mid-century modern style. For an age associated with the first real attempts to document and inform the wider masses of technological advances, it does the opposite. The architecture is more concerned with creating the dynamic awe of speed and motion than a structural expressiveness informing and exhibiting the fruits of a collective research effort.

The exhibition architecture of the future needs to offer a more honest counterpoint between the value of a medium for informing and commercially fuelled objectives. This is not a call for a compromise in the spectacle. Instead, the architecture should still be representative of new technologies but be understood in terms of technical or material performance to create environments.

1 Christian Schittich, Exhibitions and Displays : Museum Design Concepts, Brand Presentation, Trade Show

Design (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2009). p.61

87

9.2 The Atomic World’s Fair has been Overtaken 9.2 The Atomic World’s Fair has been Overtaken

What could be a suitable model and architecture to provide a sustainable progression What could be a suitable model and architecture to provide a sustainable progression

to the nature of world’s fairs and expositions? to the nature of world’s fairs and expositions?

The exposition model has survived under the spectacle of national and corporate The exposition model has survived under the spectacle of national and corporate display. As a display of abundance and proliferation, the fair is an encyclopedia of material display. As a display of abundance and proliferation, the fair is an encyclopedia of material production. It is a somewhat contradictory celebration of global unity and shared purpose as the production. It is a somewhat contradictory celebration of global unity and shared purpose as the architecture speaks of no consensus, rather that of competition or rivalry. They sanction fierce architecture speaks of no consensus, rather that of competition or rivalry. They sanction fierce conjecture about what the future is and what role the sponsoring nation or corporations has in conjecture about what the future is and what role the sponsoring nation or corporations has in forming that future. With high stakes on a national level however, that narrative has become forming that future. With high stakes on a national level however, that narrative has become predictable - a better future hinges on improved technology, and it is left to the architecture of predictable - a better future hinges on improved technology, and it is left to the architecture of the pavilion to embody and express this technological advancement. 22 the pavilion to embody and express this technological advancement.

Elizabeth Diller - of architecture practice Diller and Scofidio.

Elizabeth Diller - of architecture practice Diller and Scofidio.

Paraphrased from her 2002 seminar taught at Princeton University.

Paraphrased from her 2002 seminar taught at Princeton University.

2 Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Blur : The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002).

2 Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Blur : The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002). p.92. Taken from a seminar taught by Diller and Princeton University. p.92. Taken from a seminar taught by Diller and Princeton University.

88

Whilst the US was engaging to lock horns in the finance guzzling space race, perhaps the situation in Europe allowed a more impartial insight into the longevity of the nature of expositions. As the initial novelty of post-war exuberance in design and technology settled in the mid 1950’s, the assessment of this prosperous time became a more critical appraisal. There was a dawning realisation on the European continent that scientific progress was not always a blessing3. This concern was reflected in the theme of the Brussels Expo ’58 exhibitions and the brief issued to participating nations. Installations should ‘honour humankind in the fullest and most elevating sense of the word’4. This theme offered an initially welcome contrast from the construction and technological development that was convulsing their city elsewhere.

America’s contemporary vacancy in the expositional model could be attributed to the gung-ho attitude towards showcasing technology, unanimously adopted in the atomic era. This contributed to leave the nation out of touch with the requirements of a more humanistic global community in exhibition design today.

A contemporary example for a pavilion at a European exposition demonstrates the required balance between creating a sensory environment and an expressiveness of structure that could embody the architecture of not only the future of the global exposition model, but also the requirements of the space tourism era.

3 Erik Mattie, World's Fairs (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998). p.202 4 Ibid.

89

Fig. 7 The Blur Pavilion by Diller and Scofidio, Switzerland, 2002.

90

Created for the Swiss EXPO 2002, the Blur Building by architects Diller and Scofidio is a pavilion constructed with a primary building material of water. The building stands for interplay of the natural and the man-made by demonstrating a use of technological systems to highlight a physical process of nature. The ‘Smart’ building regulates the administered water vapour pressure as reaction to changing climate conditions to form a cloud, blurring the structural skeleton. Although visually striking, the blur building is a sensory architecture that opposes the ideals of the exposition ‘spectacle’.5 It purposefully lacks definition, the ‘making of nothing’ to see besides a highlighting of our dependence on vision itself. The architects describe this as ‘a visual experience; based on the absence of a visual experience – featureless, depthless, scaleless, spaceless, massless, surfaceless and contextless.’6

The structural frame, on top of which the cloud provides the building envelope, uses similar structural principles of tensegrity that were evident 50 years previously in the exposition design of Buckminster Fuller and the SKYLON. These optimistic hallmarks of the world’s fair are far from the Blur, a pavilion without purpose, with nothing to do and most importantly nothing to sell. The pavilion is designed to stimulate rather than inform, and without experiencing the building, the labeling of an attempt to create ‘nothing’ has sensory connotations. Rather than ‘a building made of nothing’, it was constantly in the state of being made with no physical end result, just the recycling of the material to and from the lake. This change in view on the finished product is revaluing the ‘spectacle’.

Fig. 8 Section construction drawing of the Blur pavilion.

5 K.Michael Hays Aaron Betsky, Laurie Anderson, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio

(New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003). p.81 6 Ibid.p.93

91

Although the Blur did employ the latest technologies, there was a very purposeful lack of a formulated ‘Futurama’ style vision of a world made better through constructed Although the Blur did employ the latest technologies, there was a very purposeful lack technologies. The technologies that constructed the Blur make no reference to a utopian future; of a formulated ‘Futurama’ style vision of a world made better through constructed they simply serve an immediate experience. Sensory experience architecture was dabbled with technologies. The technologies that constructed the Blur make no reference to a utopian future; in the immersive cinematic attempts of the atomic era expositions. Cinema experiences and they simply serve an immediate experience. Sensory experience architecture was dabbled with virtual tours were the first pioneering steps to fulfill human desire to experience speed and in the immersive cinematic attempts of the atomic era expositions. Cinema experiences and motion. The Swiss EXPO building retrieves the emphasis on audiovisual display, yet aims to virtual tours were the first pioneering steps to fulfill human desire to experience speed and manipulate the convention of the spectacle. This is done through a new model for the motion. The Swiss EXPO building retrieves the emphasis on audiovisual display, yet aims to panorama, the first mass-media phenomenon. manipulate the convention of the spectacle. This is done through a new model for the panorama, the first mass-media phenomenon.

Fig. 9 Section through the central projection space.

Fig. 9 Section through the central projection space.

92

The position of the spectator is questioned. Previously the viewer was always centered; the Blur distorts and breaks this spatial assessment. The cylindrical drum defined by a perimeter projection screen is the only enclosed chamber of the Blur. The Blur pavilion still offers a centered viewing platform, surrounded by nine projectors organised radially. Initially, they together produce a seamless panorama, however each camera then zooms in on a preselected aperture in the scene. This breaks the panorama and then forces the viewer to follow one interior spatial set up detached from the one next to it. The central position is questioned and shifts as the viewer is drawn flippantly between the spaces.

+

x1

x 10

x 20

x 30

Fig. 10 Magnification and breaking of the panorama. A distorted spatial assessment.

93

9.2 Kickstart with what works for LA

What can be learnt from the relationship between the privacy of vehicular spaces in relation to the publicity of their subject, the panoramic narrative of the mid-century modern American settlements?

The Diller and Scofidio exploration of the panorama can be directly compared and contrasted with the new ‘Cinerama’ technologies of 1950’s America and Walt Disney’s frequently used Expo piece ‘Circarama’. These mediums were brought in to combat the competing rise of audiovisual television by drawing on the notion of the panorama to sell the American landscape.

Disney’s visual trip sold how American Motors was the gateway to ‘America the Beautiful!7’ and all from the seated comfort behind the wheel.

Fig. 11 Patent drawings for Disney’s Automotive inspired ‘Circarama’.

7 ‘The Bell system presents America the Beautiful in Circarama’ < http://www.yesterland.com/circarama > [accessed on December 23rd 2012] 94

The Blur central theatre takes the same principle of the ‘Circarama’ radial projections but takes away the spectating perspective of being contained within the vehicle watching the panorama unfold. The distorted experience questions the ‘vehicular bubble’ that 20th century transport design worked to provide. McLuhan’s Tetrad principles for the automobile and the construction of the ‘panorama’ through which the car was sent to explore have been reinterpreted in an architectural application.

Whilst the visual frames set out before the viewer once symbolised frontier alone, the sensory displacement of the architecture as a whole symbolises the progression of the medium.

The experiencing person’s spatial awareness, visual understanding and preconceptions of exposition spectacles can be entertained and indulged. The awe of 1950’s and 60’s America was in overt technologies you could use, wear or drive. The awe of contemporary technologies is in their invisibility, a technology of nothing warrants an architecture of nothing.

Such applications of architecture have lost an association and requirement to be perceived as fast. The streamline age looked to stretch and emphasise linear horizontals for a panorama. Subsequent ‘slower’ architecture in form, attentiveness of material detailing and the creation of artificial environments have challenged what is now perceived as associated to showcasing frontier.

95

9.2 Boosterism turns to Space

What could the architecture and the enhancement of the space tourism era embody, and how does it link the knowledge and findings of this study?

The condition of commercial space travel is directly comparable to the ‘spectacle’ approach offered by the exposition pavilion of Diller and Scofidio, due to the emphasis on making sensory experiences to define an environment. The offered experience of commercial space travel largely hinges on highlighting the four minutes of sub-orbital weightlessness. Much like the car informed the ‘private ego trip’ or the jet age informed the mobile lounges of comfort and convenience, achieving a weightless environment brings the associated architecture to a very sensory root. New accepted ratios of internal spaces will start to be used in relation to the amount of effort required, or transition between the different forces exerted.

A promising variable from a design perspective is that conditions of weightlessness give possibility to almost any three-dimensional form, providing it is inherently strong enough to support an internal pressure of one atmosphere. These kinds of free-for-all formalist design opportunities typify the aspirational foundations for architecture under the American automotive and jet ages. This study’s use of McLuhan’s Tetrad theory has stated how space tourism as the latest aspiration can mould architectural motives under the same laws that the car and jet aeroplane have.

This study has shown that after two world wars that sorely tried Western humanism, people put their hopes and design in science, technology and media. If a reappraisal for a sensory architecture of the space tourism era is required, then there is still a rich journey to this point that needs maintaining. Whilst the exhibiting nationalistic model and the styles that grew from this path are caught in limbo between being preserved and scrapped, it reminds us of the need for some good housekeeping of what has been left and learnt before turning to extraterrestrial ambitions.

96

REFERENCES Books Â

Aaron Betsky, K.Michael Hays, Laurie Anderson, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003) Albrecht, Donald, The Work of Charles and Ray Eames : A Legacy of Invention (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Library of Congress and the Vitra Design Museum, 1997) Baldwin, J., Buckyworks : Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today (New York: John Wiley, 1996) Banham, Reyner, Los Angeles : The Architecture of Four Ecologies (London: Allen Lane, 1971) Baudrillard, Jean and Turner, Chris, America (London: Verso, 1988) Becker and Stein, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fair and its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation, HistoryLink, 2011) Codrescu, Andrei, Hail Babylon! : In Search of the American City at the End of the Millennium. 1st edn (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998) Codrescu, Andrei and Graham, David, Road Scholar : Coast to Coast Late in the Century. 1st edn (New York: Hyperion, 1993) Colomina, Beatriz, Privacy and Publicity : Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994) Diller, Elizabeth and Scofidio, Ricardo, Blur : The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002)

Foster, Norman. Dymaxion Car Buckminster Fuller (London, Ivory Architecture Wordpress, 2011) Hess, Alan, Googie : Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1986) Hess, Alan and Hess, Alan, Googie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004) Hess, Alan and others, The Architecture of John Lautner (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999) Hine, Thomas, Populuxe (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2007) Incerti, Guido and others, Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro) : The Ciliary Function (Milan: Skira, 2007), Klingmann, Anna, Brandscapes : Architecture in the Experience Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007) Levinson, Paul, Digital Mcluhan : A Guide to the Information Millennium (London ; New York: Routledge, 1999) Marks, Robert W., The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (New York: Reinhold, 1960) Marshall, Richard and Ruscha, Edward, Ed Ruscha (London ; New York: Phaidon, 2003) Mattie, Erik, World's Fairs (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media : The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge, 2001)

98

McLuhan, Marshall and McLuhan, Eric, Laws of Media : The New Science (Toronto ; London: University of Toronto Press, 1988) Merkel, Jayne, Eero Saarinen (London: Phaidon, 2005) Neuhart, John and others, Eames Design : The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989) Powell, Ken and Powell & Moya, Powell & Moya (Swindon: English Heritage, 2009) Rendell, Jane, Art and Architecture : A Place Between (London ; New York: I.B. Tauris ; Distributed in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) Richmond, Jonathan, Transport of Delight : The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2005) Román, Antonio, Eero Saarinen : An Architecture of Multiplicity. 1st edn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) Rosa, Joseph and McCoy, Esther, A Constructed View : The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman (New York: Rizzoli, 1994) Saarinen, Eero and others, Eero Saarinen : Shaping the Future (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006) Salas, Charles G. and Roth, Michael S., Looking for Los Angeles : Architecture, Film, Photography, and the Urban Landscape, Series: Issues & Debates (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2001) Schittich, Christian, Exhibitions and Displays : Museum Design Concepts, Brand Presentation, Trade Show Design (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2009) Serraino, Pierluigi and others, Eero Saarinen, 1910-1961 : A Structural Expressionist (Köln ; Los Angeles: Taschen, 2006) Steele, James and others, William Periera (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, Hi Marketing, 2003) Stoller, Ezra, The Twa Terminal. 1st edn, Series: The Building Blocks Series (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999) Venturi, Robert and others, Learning from Las Vegas : The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. [Rev. edn (Cambridge, Mass ; London: MIT Press, 1976) Zukowsky, John, 2001 : Building for Space Travel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001)

Journals and Other Publications Bernstein, Fred A. Architecture [New York] (August 2004) p.96 ‘World’s fairs are no longer on the American agenda. It’s time to rejoin the global community’ ‘Blueprint’, 300 (London: Wordsearch Ltd, March 2011) Clohosy Cole, Tom. Space Race (Nobrow Press, London, 2012) Codrescu, Andrei. ‘Road Trip’, Architecture [New York] (May 1998), pp.97-98

Olsen, Lance. The Future of Narrative: Speculative Criticism: or Thirteen Ways of Speaking in an Imperfect Tense.

99

Online Sources A parallel online space ran to this study at < http://mediumracecar.wordpress.com/ > by Author

Colomina, Beatriz. Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture, p.8 <http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/0910_etsas/0910_composicion/ca_textos/2008_colomina_imagenes.p df > [accessed on 18th January 2013] Jankovic, Nikola. Decosterd and Rahm: The Museum of the Imaginary Man < http://en.artpress.com/uploads/pdf/246.pdf >[accessed 18th December 2012] ‘The Bell system presents America the Beautiful in Circarama’ < http://www.yesterland.com/circarama > [accessed on December 23rd 2012] Online Etymology Dictionary < http://www.etymonline.com > [accessed 11th January 2013]

< http://www.laimyours.com > [accessed 6th January 2013]

< http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/space_skylon > [accessed 7th January 2013]

Video-recordings and Film Banham, Reyner and others, Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, S.l.: s.n., Modcinema distributor, 2011. viderecording

Bricker, Eric and others, Visual Acoustics: The modernism of Julius Shulman, [United States]: Arthouse Films, 2008. videorecording :

Eames, Charles and Ray. An Expanding Airport [Film for Washington Dulles International Airport], 1958; videorecording. < http://vimeo.com/4139559 > [accessed 2nd October 2012]

Grigor, Murray and others, Infinite Space the Architecture of John Lautner, [United States]: Googie Co.,, 2009. videorecording : Jackson, O’Shea and others, Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames, [United States]:Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, 2011. videorecording ; < http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/videos > [accessed 2nd August 2012] Kiedis Celebrates the Ruscha, [United States]:Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, 2011. videorecording ; < http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/videos > [accessed 22nd December 2012] ‘Design for Dreaming’ (General Motors Commercial Film, 1956) < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ccAf82RQ8 >, videorecording : [accessed 14th December 2012]

Key Location Field Research Visits Boeing Museum of Flight, 9404 East Marginal Way, Seattle, WA Seattle Center, Site of the ‘Century 21 Exposition’ Seattle 1962 World’s Fair, WA Eames Office, 850 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA LAX Theme Building, 201 World Way, Westchester, Los Angeles, CA Tomorrowland at Disneyland, Anaheim, CA

100