1939’s ‘World of Tomorrow’ Shaped Our Today

[M II A II R II K]

1939’s ‘World of Tomorrow’ Shaped Our Today


April 29, 2010

By Jon Snyder

Read More: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2...9-worlds-fair/

The New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940 promised visitors they would be looking at the “World of Tomorrow.” Not everything they saw there came true, but plenty was close. One reason for that was the fair’s own lasting influence on American architecture and industrial design.

It was a futuristic city inspired by the pages — and covers — of pulp science fiction: huge geometric shapes, sweeping curves, plenty of glass and chromium, and gleaming white walls. The fair was the last great blossoming of the Streamlined Moderne style of Art Deco. It was also heavily influenced by the still-rising International Style of such architects as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

What people saw at the fair, they wanted for themselves. And when World War II ended, the American consumer machine began giving them what they wanted, or at least what they thought they wanted, or maybe even what the marketers thought the public thought they wanted. The fair also influenced sci-fi art, both in print and in the set design of hundreds of movies and TV shows, continuing to shape our collective notions of what tomorrow is all about.

[uaarkson]

Wish I could have been there. Based on the pictures this was always my favorite world's fair.

[hammersklavier]

If I had a time machine, I'd travel back to the Philadelphia Centennial, Chicago's White City, the St. Louis World's Fair, and the 1939 "World of Tomorrow" World's Fair, for sure. It's too bad, almost, that the buildings erected for these things are meant to be transient at best, and that those fairgrounds never turned into vibrant neighborhoods...

[M II A II R II K]

We need to have another one, but with modern projections of what future cities would be like.

[LSyd]

does Ikea carry those bubble pods?

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