{architecture} – Page 67

The world of the future

Pages from the Official Souvenir Program for the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. Very typical corporate design by RT Matthiesen and Associates but not bad for all that. The pages give an overview of the exposition, punctuated by ads from its sponsors, while the text sets forth the purpose of the event which was intended to give a taste of life in the new Space Age. NASA’s Project Mercury missions were ongoing during the time the fair was being planned so the ethos of the event was very much tied to the obsessions of the time, obsessions fuelled by Cold War competition and a desire for an automated future. The technocratic side of things is to the fore in the booklet which trots out the usual utopian vision of life in “Century 21” as being one of short working-hours, a great deal of leisure, personal air-cars, and revolving houses. My childhood encyclopaedias were filled with this sort of thing which has only given me a lifelong suspicion of any kind of wild futurology, positive or negative. Those books were also filled with pictures of monorails, and the Seattle exposition had a monorail all of its own which I’m pleased to see is still running today.

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Space Needle USA

That observation tower again. Previous posts here have exhausted the Paris Exposition Universelle as a subject so it’s time to look elsewhere, and the Century 21 Exposition which was held in Seattle in 1962 seems as good a place to start as any. If you’re interested in old expositions then it’s always good to find a decent site devoted to them, and the site for the Seattle event is particularly useful. Space Needle USA is one of the many pieces of documentary ephemera available to browse and download, a 76-page commemorative booklet by Howard Mansfield devoted to the design and building of the tower:

The Space Needle, a modernistic totem of the Seattle World’s Fair, was conceived by Eddie Carlson as a doodle in 1959 and given form by architects John Graham Jr., Victor Steinbrueck, and John Ridley. When King County declined to fund the project, five private investors, Bagley Wright, Ned Skinner, Norton Clapp, John Graham Jr., and Howard S. Wright, took over and built the 605-foot tower in less than a year.

Good to see some of the alternative designs, one of which isn’t so different to one of the designs proposed in the 19th century for a London tower that would rival the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

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Gigapixel ArtZoom

This is a few months old but I just discovered my bookmark of the page. The view is a panorama of Seattle but with a difference since this one encourages you to play hunt the artist. The streets are scattered with many of Seattle’s artists and performers, some of them easier to find than others. Michael Cohen, the director of the project explains:

We first sought out the perfect rooftop location from which to shoot such a panorama. We were lucky enough to find the Bay Vista condominium building, and thanks to the gracious owners, get access to amazing 360-degree views that include the Seattle Center, the Olympic Sculpture Park, and Seattle’s stadiums, as well Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, and Lake Union. We also discussed the project with John Boylan, who has deep roots in the Seattle art scene. He helped us attract great interest from the arts community to come out and help create this celebration of the arts in Seattle. John introduced us to Elise Ballard, who coordinated the efforts of everyone involved in producing the entire piece. And finally, videographer Kris Crews helped us assemble a team to shoot video footage of the artists and performers from the ground.

Art aside, the panorama is detailed enough to be able explore many of the otherwise hidden details of city life such as rooftop gardens and the mechanical paraphernalia that accumulate on the tops of buildings. Nice view of the Space Needle as well.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Rodler’s Fine, Useful Booklet

Another treatise on perspective, and an older one than Pozzo’s so the drawings are somewhat cruder. Eyn schön nützlich büchlin und underweisung der kunst des Messens (A Fine, Useful Booklet and Instruction in the Art of Measurement) by Hieronymus Rodler was published in 1531, and features a number of full-page views where the perspective is accurate but also alarmingly severe in places. The emptiness and unusual appearance of the scenes has an unintentional charm, they remind me of the illustrations from The Dumas Club (1993) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte where the mysterious drawings—based on old alchemical illustrations—contain subtle variations. Rodler’s book made an appearance at Giornale Nuovo in 2005 so I’ll point you there for further discussion of its technical qualities. The book itself may be browsed here or downloaded here.

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Rules and Examples of Perspective Proper, 1693

I’m working on more engraving collage at the moment so I’ve been delving into the scanned books at the Internet Archive once more in search of raw material. I still tend to use things scanned from paper volumes but the Internet Archive is useful for small details, and searches there also have the advantage of turning up things you might not otherwise see. This is one such book, an English guide to perspective for painters and architects adapted from the two-volume Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum by Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709). The title page declares the instruction to be “wholly free from the confusion of occult lines” which it certainly is, the plates would still serve as guides to the trickier aspects of perspective today. The engravings in this edition are by John Sturt.

Pozzo was a master of trompe l’oeil painting, and when you see ceilings such as this it’s no surprise that he might have a thing or two to say about perspective. The plates begin with simple shapes then graduate to the construction of the columns and capitals used in Classical architecture; at the end you have some intimidatingly complex pediments and porticoes. The University of Heidelberg has copies of Pozzo’s original books, including the second volume where things become even more elaborate.

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