New York City: William F. Baker, PE SE, Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill / Chicago, will be giving a lecture on the Burj Dubia titled Supertallest: Designing Structure, at the New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center, 40th Floor, on May 23rd, at 6:30pm. This lecture series is done in partnership with New York’s Skyscraper Museum coinciding with their exhibit WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDING: BURJ DUBAI, on show from April 25th through August 2007.
Documentary filmmaker, Emmy Award winning, and Academy Award nominated director William Gazecki has made this homage to Jacque Fresco, self taught architect, engineer, inventor and futurist.
About six months ago I ordered my DVD of the independent film, Future by Design. This weekend I finally got around to watching it.
The film is made from a montage of footage- a contemporary interview with Jacque, Jacque in a 1974 interview with then local Miami talk show host Larry King, a geriatric tour group walking the compound of Jacque’s Venus Project, and a combination of computer rendered and stop action modeled footage of his urban planning proposals, and other architectural concepts.
The renders, drawings and especially the models are of greatest interest. Through these one can see the incredible investment in time and thought Jacque has put into his grand design. The heartfelt craftsmanship of the true believer.
The future is not what it use to be.
The problem with most visions of the future is that they usually tell us more about the era that they came from, than they do about what will follow.
More so than any real or likely future, this story tells us of a future that exists only in the mind of Jacque Fresco. Jacque is a Utopianist. Though he doesn’t see it, his vision of the future is a uniquely mid-century Western future. A utopian vision of a centrally planned, state run society. Though I’m glad not to live in Jacque’s vision for the future, I do find it just as fascinating as it is improbable.
My grumble with most who drink from this futurist fountain is the shortsightedness of envisioning a future that has no past. Let’s discount for a moment that there would be no jobs for architects or designers in Jacque’s future, because he’s already designed it all, there are also no designers or architects in Jacque’s past, because his future vision exists within a metaphorical bubble (and sometimes within a literal one).
Any real future exists as a layer on top of both the recent and distant past, and they must coexist. On a trip to modern day Rome you will find contemporary modern architecture built near post war monuments, beside Rococo structures adjacent to their Baroque forebears, surrounded by Renaissance masterpieces, built among the ruins of Roman temples. The evolution of human civilization is embodied in the architectural edifices that we live among, and build upon, both literally and figuratively. In fact, here in New York and elsewhere in high density urban areas, developers and conservationist have recently found common ground— rather than demolition before new construction, new buildings are being built above and around existing older structures. The trend has become so fashionable in New York, that this new form of reuse is sometime employed as an aesthetic unto itself, even when conservation doesn’t call for it.
Jacque Fresco, eccentric enough to be endearing, has made a living out of doing his own thing and pursuing his passions. Anyone who has so uncompromisingly followed their own vision should be respected, admired and even celebrated. The movie might not convince you of Jacque’s vision of the future, and to Gazecki’s credit I don’t think that was the movie’s intention, but it does let you step inside the mind of Fresco, and see one possible world through his mind’s eye. Until somebody builds a Venus Project based metaverse, this film will be the closest we’ll ever get to seeing the world of Jacque’s vision. It is a film worth watching, and William Gazecki should be thanked for documenting the life and ideas of this unique individual.
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR:
Hi Chris-
I just wanted to compliment and thank you for your thoughtful commentary on “Future by Design”.
You’re one of the very few people who “got it right” as to how and why the film was made, and what value it is meant to impart.
We’re having a pretty good time getting it out there- kids seem to appreciate it the most. I had one schoolteacher tell me it was “the first positive outlook on the future some of these kids have ever had”, which was nice to hear. No, Jacque’s vision of the world as he would like it to be is not likely to occur- but at least he tried, and in the process came up with some useful ideas. He’s learned a lot, too- mostly about human behavior, and how much it can change.
Rudolf Herz, from the series Dachau, Museumsbilder, 1996
Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany
Reality Bites, is the the labor of Sabine Eckmann, curator of Washington University in St. Louis’ Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The thrust of the exhibit, is that the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany has caused a reinvigoration of the German art world, and this exhibit aims to showcase the artists at the center of this art scene. The University’s website states:
[The exhibit] will feature approximately 70 artworks created since 1989, by both German artists and international figures living in Germany. The vast majority of the artworks have never been exhibited in the United States. They range from video and photography to sculpture, installation, assemblage and new media art.
One effect of German unification has been a new emphasis on experiential reality. In contrast to the abstract, simulated aspects of post-modernity, the historical realities of post-Wall Germany continue to influence the daily experience of its citizenry. Artists have reflected this in a number of ways: by employing pop-culture imagery and integrating the viewer into the creation of aesthetic experience; by creating visual spaces that compete with social environments; and by mimicking the rhetoric of globalization through the use of mapping and networking tools. Such strategies highlight the dissolution of established artistic forms – such as painting, sculpture and photography – while blurring the distinctions between art and everyday life.
…[The exhibit] consists of three thematic sections: “Re-dressing Germany,” “Traumatic Histories” and “Global Spaces.” Each explores a particular manifestation of change either initiated or accelerated by unification and its aftermath.
The show is also significant as the first major exhibit since the completion of the museum’s new digs. If the exhibit is meant to showcase the reemergence of Germany as a major cultural force in Europe and the World, it is also a nod to St. Louis and its own reemergence as a culturally significant city worthy of hosting such a conceptually inspired exhibit.
Another trophy building in St. Louis
Many middle American cities have a new strategy to lure tourist- bring in an internationally award winning architect to build a modern art museum, and they will come. The addition of the Pritzker Laureate, Fumihiko Maki designed Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University is now bringing in the kind of major international exhibits one would generally expect to find on the East or West coast. For St. Louis, this is their second Pritzker Laureate designed museum. The Pritzker Laureate, Tadao Ando designed Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts was completed in 2001. And this doesn’t include the copycat designed Contemporary Art Museum, right next door. In 1900, St. Louis was the fourth largest city by population in the United States, behind only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia and the largest city West of the Mississippi River. In 1966, it became home to the Eero Saarinen designed Gateway Arch. Since then it’s growth has not matched that of other American urban centers. None the less, it is an older established American city already boasting a large collection of architecturally significant buildings, and its recent flurry of modern art museum construction by such prominently recognized architects has reasserted itself as a major cultural hub in middle America.
Shown L to R: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, MO; The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH; The Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI.
When I was a child, growing up in Memphis, my Great Grandparents lived in a Lustron home on Barfield Lane. My Mother told me how, as a child herself, she remembered the day that the truck showed up to deliver the parts.
Lustron homes were the brainchild of Carl Strandlunds, a WWII contractor who saw an opportunity to build low-cost, low maintenance homes for the returning GI at the end of the war. The homes were built entirely of steel, and prefabricated in a converted automobile factory. They were sold on the merits of their practicality and durability. The square steel siding panels were baked porcelain enamel coated, and never needed painting. The house can be cleaned with a water-hose. Many of the surviving Lustron homes remain in remarkably good condition to this day.
Though the enterprise was an initial success, the production of the homes came to an abrupt stop after only a couple thousand had been made. In the late 90s, a documentary, Lustron, The House America’s Been Waiting For, was produced. It tells a tale of political intrigue and how the Lustron company was shut down by the politic-ing of Carl Strandlund’s detractors. The documentary can be purchased on DVD from KDN films.
EDIT:Get your FREE Lustron Home, Now! No, this is not a joke. Quantico Marine Corps base is offering 58 of them- free, to anyone willing to dissassemble them and take them away. You have until March 1, 2007 to submit an RFP. Go here now.
Of the current pre-fabricated homes on the market, the LV Series manufactured by Rocio Romero (shown above), with its “Smooth Hardisoffit® Panels” and primarily steel construction, owes the most to the Lustron homes.
Though among some home buyers they still suffer the stigma of being perceived as gussied-up siblings of the trailer park, many high-quality prefabricated homes available today offer chic modern esthetics, with higher quality construction than their built-on-site suburban brethren. The pre-engineered construction and industrial components offer a fit and finish rarely matched in builder homes.
I’m an urban apartment dweller myself, however, if I were in the market for a freestanding home, and were I unable to afford a custom architect built home (likely), I would opt for a prefabricated home before I’d consider either a used home, or even new construction.
As a phenomenal resource, I suggest having a look at Fab PreFab. A perusal through their site will overwhelm you with just how many quality homes are on offer in the prefabricated home market. I suggest going straight to their “Fab List” of homes available now.
The Skyscraper Museum (NYC) is sponsoring the winter/spring lecture series, Mixed Greens, An International Survey of State-of-the-Art Sustainable Skyscraper Design.
Ross Wimer, Design Partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will launch the series with his lecture, Environmental Contextualism: Strategies for a Dynamic Sustainable Architecture. He will discusses his twisting Infinity Tower, a 75-story helix-shaped residential structure now under construction in Dubai, and the planned North Bund complex in Shanghai, illustrating the adaptation of energy-efficient towers in the extremes of climate and local environments.
Date: January 25th, Location: 7 World Trade Center, Time: 6:30pm
I’ve been a subscriber to METROPOLIS for… oh, about a decade now. In the aftermath of September 11th, I participated in some of the (II)r.dot meetings that Susan co-founded and co-chaired with Beverly Willis.
While the nearly completed building looks a bit more primer gray in appearance than the bright white of the pre-construction 3D renderings, the Renzo Piano designed building still makes a stunning addition to the New York skyline.
Which also gives a perfect excuse to see the Pritzker Prize Laureate Architect Zaha Hadid designed Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 6:05AM 
