Reference

Homegrown Ideas
Tokyo is known for its crazy-quilt density and eccentric apartments. An extreme case in point: Arakawa and Madeline Gins’s Reversible Destiny Lofts, which feature uneven floors, walls painted in about 40 colors, and windows at varying heights, a look some have compared to a McDonalds PlayPlace (www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/reversible-destiny-house-by-arakawa-and-gins.html). According to the architects, the goal was to make residents interact with their environment in unexpected and challenging ways. They argue that a constantly active and even adverse environment can increase an individual’s longevity. The lofts’ facade is equally challenging: www.explorra.com/attractions/reversible-destiny_9501.

Going Big

O’Neil Ford, mentor to the founders of Lake Flato, was apparently

a fan of wash-and-wear suits. According to the musician Jim Cullum Jr., Ford liked to push his sartorial choice to its less-than-logical extreme. “He stood in the shower fully clothed, in a wash-and-wear suit,” Cullum recalls (www.riverwalkjazz.org/oneil-ford-by-jim-cullum-jr). “He emerged soaking wet, and announced to us that he was leaving at once for San Antonio and intended to use ‘evaporative cooling,’ as his car had no air conditioning.” Lake Flato has gone on to use evaporative cooling and natural ventilation in many of its “ranch tech” designs, albeit in far less eccentric ways.

I Have Seen the Future
It turns out that Norman Bel Geddes’s Futurama exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair served as an inspiration for Matt Groening’s popular animated television series of the same name. The series depicts a future city in constant motion, while Bel Geddes’s exhibit literally moved people through the future it portrayed. Both feature tubes as a means of transportation: viz.dwrl.utexas.edu/content/whirling-futuramas-norman-bel-geddess-practical-and-aesthetic-transport. While many aspects of Bel Geddes’s automobile-centric vision have become reality, we’re still waiting for our flying car.