Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Yesterday's Architecture of Today

Whenever I find old copies of L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, I sit down and browse through their proclamations of what the future will be like. Would we be living in computer-chip environments? 
of course we would 

would we be putting together apartments like giant Tetris modules? 
of course we would
would we love rhomboid patterened cartoon lightning decorated public buildings?
of course we do
(Alfred Neumann, public building at Bat-Yam, Israel, 1968)
flipping through pages of early computer generated modular systematic housing nightmares

I seem to nod off into catterpillar town suburbias


little beehive modular cellular non buildings in India
and more organic 60's  circular extravaganzas


 jolted awake by sudden robot weirdness in Israel
(Mexico Olympics 1968)


only to realise that I am looking at Satellite stations in Ahmedabad
half awake confusing satellite hats and head-carried dishes
but further, more radical advertising strangeness follows

flamboyant architecture of illustration

beyond computer systems, beyond modules, beyond strangess one can only go back to the desert