Space Age Nostalgia

The Jetsons first aired on September 23, 1962.

A couple things have turned my mind to the Space Age over the past few days.

First, today marks 50 years since The Jetsons premiered. Although the original run was just one season, I must have seen each episode multiple times as reruns. I never really loved the show, but it did capture my imagination with its bright mid-century futurism. Yeah, it was a cartoon, but the science fiction tropes of the setting authentically reflected optimistic views of future technology, such as the robotic maid and flying cars.

Well, with fifty years yet to go before we get to the Jetsons' time, we might have robotic servants, but I'm doubting that there will be floating cities and flying cars anytime soon. ;-)

Space Shuttle Endeavour flies over northern Redondo Beach

The second thing that brings up Space Age nostalgia took place last Friday. As the Endeavour flew around the Southland, it seemed to be a bittersweet celebration. The dreams of manned space flight feel so distant, from a different era. Of course, I have no fond memories of the Cold War and living under Mutually Assured Destruction, but the space program seemed like the bright and inspiring silver lining to the long nuclear standoff.

Finally, when Endeavour flew into view, I was so excited to wave goodbye to this old icon. Certainly, I enjoy looking at the images from our robot explorers on Mars or floating through space, but I really hope that a manned space program isn't too far away in the future.

Oh well, there's always our imagination in which to explore new worlds and fantastic situations. ;-)

Judy Jetson, dreaming of a bright future.

Let's listen to some music.

Variations on a Googie Theme

LAX Theme Building from Parking Lot (2011) by Danny Heller

With brilliant hues and broad design, the exploration of light and space is a principle feature to Los Angeles art, capturing the fleeting instant of time in a flash of opulent color. Likewise, a fascination with novelty and "futurism" is integral to the city's ever-changing appearance.

Danny Heller's "LAX Series" solo show at the George Billis Gallery explores both of these elements. In a series of ten paintings, he examines the iconic Theme Building under widely different lighting conditions and from a variety of perspectives, bringing out the geometric nuances with subtle gradations of flowing illumination. A masterpiece of Googie architecture, the Theme Building has a unique structure that lends itself to such a study.

Heller is an accomplished regionalist painter who is well practiced at capturing the look and feel of the Southern Californian environment, be it busy cityscapes or quiet scenes of suburbia, evoking an authentic sense of place. The "LAX Series" is an ambitious project in that each work needs to express significant differences of character and mood, conveying distinct experiences in perceiving the subject, but it also needs to maintain a cohesive commonality through which comparative assessments of the individual paintings may be formed.

Theme Building and Road (2011) by Danny Heller

It's tough to accomplish, but I think Heller scores the goal with these paintings. If the premise of such a series is to impart the painter's experience of a structure through both sight and physical presence, then these works accomplish the job, allowing the viewer to share in the aesthetic insights signified by the overall composition.

Windows of the Future

"Punch card" windows along the northern face of Ahmanson Hall at Otis College


How will buildings of the future look? How can an architect in the present discern the shape of an aesthetic yet to come? Is futurism accomplished by an emphatic rejection of the Past? Or is it the extrapolation of modern cutting edge imagery projected into structural design?

We discussed the concept of futurist architecture when visiting the Space Park campus in Redondo Beach. Today, we are visiting the old IBM Aerospace Building in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is now part of Otis College of Art and Design, but was originally built for IBM by Eliot Noyes in 1963. Renamed Ahmanson Hall, this structure is a fine example of futurist architecture.

It is a seven story cube with each face segmented into "punch card" patterns. Clearly, Noyes took the look of the computer technology of his day and projected it conceptually as a design scheme for a "futuristic" building. Nearly fifty years later, it doesn't look anything like how the future of architecture actually turned out, but it does eloquently express a "futuristic" forward-looking aesthetic.

Otis' Ahmanson Hall, the "Punch Card" Building, was built in 1963.


In this regard, futurist architecture shares certain qualities with science fiction. The goal of a good SF story isn't to "predict" the future, but to consider a contemporary issue in the light of future potentialities. In the Punch Card Building, Noyes foresees the importance of computation in the future. So, the symbolism of his era's computer technology is utilized as a design principle to enclose the workspace. The residents of the Punch Card are literally surrounded by the presence of computation.