Utopian 'Arcosanti' Still Uncompleted

Forty years after breaking ground on what was envisioned as a utopian city, Arcosanti remains uncompleted.

Italian-born architect Paolo Soleri started building his signature design in 1970 on the basalt cliffs overlooking the Agua Fria River about 45 miles east of Prescott.

He dreamed of buildings and people interacting as a "highly evolved being." The sun would warm residents, the breeze would cool them and nature would surround them. The buildings would soar, reaching toward the sky with small apartments and large public spaces.

Soleri preached community and conservation. Arcosanti would be his experiment of thousands of people living together to teach the world how to grow. He called the vision "arcology," a word he invented combining architecture and ecology.

Today, Arcosanti remains more dream than reality.

To read more of this content at the Prescott, Arizona Daily Courier, click here.

Expo Place Labatt 50 Commercial, 1971

Streamline Moderne - A Natural for Transportation Applications

by Clifton Bertram

By the 1930s, the combination of advances in materials science and propulsion combined with the design principles of Art Deco and the functional aesthetic of the Futurists to culminate in Streamline Moderne. A vigorous and well-recognized style in architecture, it was to prove equally influential in other design arenas, from toasters to transportation.

In a stylistic orgy of advanced materials such as stainless steel, bakelite, chrome and aluminum, in its transportation applications, Streamline Moderne was unashamedly fixated on aerodynamics, speed and motion. One of the earliest examples is the innovative Lockheed Vega (1928), made famous by aviation pioneers such as Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart.

Designed by the talented Jack Northrop, it marked the limits of wooden design and single-engine performance. It had a streamlined, smoothly rounded monocoque fuselage that was made of molded plywood in two halves and glued together to produce an extremely smooth surface. It had no external struts or wires to break its smooth look and was what Northrop called "clean." The plane had cantilever (internally braced) wings set above the fuselage, a feature that had been introduced by the Dutch aeronautical pioneer Anthony Fokker in the early 1920s, and a similarly constructed tail assembly. Its wing design helped give the aircraft its superior speed.

The first automobile to exemplify the new Streamline Moderne aesthetic was the 1934 Chrysler Airflow. Engineer and designer Car Breer drew inspiration from aerodynamic principles after a trip to Selfridge AFB, and set in motion a 30-year period in automotive manufacturing where aircraft design principles became a visual manifestation of the swaggering technological confidence of the era.

"That 1934 Chrysler Airflow was Chrysler's first unit-construction car. It fundamentally changed the architecture of the American automobile by placing the passengers between the axles for a vastly improved ride. In moving the passenger cabin forward and down, the Airflow was Chrysler's first "cab forward" design. The Airflow coupe was also one of the first American cars to conceal the spare tire in the trunk. Further, the 1934 Chrysler Custom Imperial Airflow CW Limousine was the first American car to incorporate a curved, one-piece windshield. But as with many changes from the norm, the Airflow was not a commercial success and its significance in design ingenuity would not be realized until years later."

- Chrysler Design Institute website

Despite the Airflow's poor sales, the 'aircraft' aspect of ground vehicles was emphasized more and more as time went by, culminating in the fantastic and exaggerated fins of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as exemplified by the 1960 Chrysler Imperial.

Trains were subject to the streamlining craze as much, if not more so, than any other mode of transportation. Even while steam locomotives were still in wide usage, operators such as Canadian National Railways took delivery of streamlined, snorting monsters, which were further augmented by the advent of modern diesel and diesel-electrics, culminating in the first bullet trains (or Shinkansen), and ultimately the streamlined monorail in which thousands travel during trips to Disney World.

Over time, even less visibly 'speedy' objects inherited the streamline style, from tractors to toasters to trailers, design cues which are still evident today in today's postmodern era, in modern airliners, sportscars and watercraft.

When the combined impact of Streamline Moderne is considered, on both transportation and architecture, it's hard not to conclude that it was one of the most influential design movements of the 20th century.

(Photos 3 and 5 copyright 2010 by Clifton Bertram)

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Mad Men Furniture and Clothing Now Up for Auction on eBay

From Gawker.Com:

When a company picks up and moves—or when a, say, advertising firm breaks in half—what is there to do but to have a moving sale?

That's exactly what's happening with Mad Men's Sterling Cooper, the firm that the new season left behind when the cast moved to 1271 Avenue of the Americas and started Sterling Cooper Draper & Pryce.

There's a whole slew of Mad Men seasons 1-3 set props, furniture, clothes, and cool stuff for sale right now at online marketplace eBay—with the proceeds going to charity. Included among the collection of mid-century furniture and props are dresses as worn by characters Betty Draper and Joan Holloway.

For the record-according to the auction listing—Joan Holloway's measurements are: 39" x 30" x 39".

Stingers and Chop Suey: A Night Out at the Cameo Cafe

by Clifton Bertram



Growing up in a small town on the Canadian prairies in the 1960s, dinner out was reserved for special occasions. We celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and other family milestones at the only real dining establishment in town, a Chinese restaurant called The Cameo Café.

First opened in 1938, it changed hands a few times. In my day, the Cameo was run by the Tangs, one of only two Chinese families in town, and they spent more time working and socializing in the restaurant than they did in their living quarters. The very back table was reserved for the family, and the children often passed the less busy hours playing cards and gossiping.

Occasionally, Grandpa Tang would man the till, always an interesting occasion because rather than rely on the antique metal cash register, he would tally our bill using an even more traditional device, an abacus. The speed with which he would slide the abacus beads along their rods – clackety clack! – and arrive at our total was as fascinating to me as the exotic characters on the Chinese newspaper he invariably tucked in the pocket of his worn cardigan sweater.

A glass shelf behind the front counter held pyramid stacks of sundae bowls, two-piece contrivances with a bakelite bottom that supported a glass bowl.. Presumably, this approach was more efficient, since only the glass cup would need to be washed. I dimly recall being served a sundae called a ‘sputnik’, whose cherry was embedded inside the scoop of ice cream, symbolically representing Laika the space dog.

Each booth in the Cameo Café was equipped with a Wall-o-matic tabletop jukebox. A quarter would entitle you to leaf through the pages of songs by flipping a metal tab, and select three choices by pressing the bakelite buttons. Current hits from Frank Sinatra and The Assocaition were the order of the day, along with standards from Rosemary Clooney and Glenn Miller.

Red flocked wallpaper adorned the walls and the light fixtures possessed a vaguely Oriental theme, adding a touch of eastern exoticism to what was otherwise a rather homogenous small-town culture. Equally iconic in a small-town-Canada kind of way was the menu, whose first page offered glamorous, worldly fare such as Sweet’n’Sour Chicken Balls, Chicken Fried Rice, Beef Chop Suey, and Egg Foo-Yong. The second page featured entrees such as spaghetti and meat balls, rib-eye steak, hot turkey sandwiches with chips (not french fries!) and veal cutlets. “We Serve Chinese and Canadian Food” the menu proclaimed – accurately defining Canadian food culture years before the question of a national identity ever emerged.

The Cameo was our first licensed dining room, and as a special treat, my father would order a brandy Stinger to accompany his meal. The only problem was that not one other person in town ever ordered a drink that required white crème d menthe. The thrifty Tangs weren’t about to invest in an entire bottle for one customer, so my father had to make do with green crème de menthe, which he jovially complained reminded him of Scope mouthwash. As a result, my private nickname for my father’s drink choice was a ‘Green Hornet’.

My sister and I were also allowed a special beverage treat, a Shirley Temple. The mix of 7-Up and grenadine was almost too sickly sweet even for children, but the tall cocktail glass, the maraschino cherry and the umbrella made us feel very grown-up.

I am by no means the only one for whom restaurants like the Cameo Café loom large as a cultural influence growing up. While slowly fading today, Chinese cafes remain a fixture across Canada, and especially in the West. An article in the National Post traces them back to the building of the Canadian Pacific Rail Line in the late 19th century.

Many Chinese workers were employed building the Canadian Pacific Rail line into the early 1900s. But in 1923, Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Act, restricting Chinese immigrants from entering Canada except under the titles of merchant, diplomat or foreign student. Shut out from professional occupations and farming, many dispersed to communities along the CPR line, some opening laundromats and grocery stores, but most realizing that they could support their families running restaurants, particularly in the Prairies, where the cafés often had no competition.

As the National Post article also points out that, in recognition of the iconic role played by Chinese cafes in Canadian culture, the Royal Alberta Museum has developed a travelling exhibit that will be touring the country this fall. It will surely be an informative and nostalgic journey, one which I hope to take in.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just drop by my local Chinese cafe for an order of Sweet'n'Sour Chicken Balls.

Lesser Known London Landmarks No. 5 - A Miscellany

From top to bottom, the globe sculpture that decorates the Canada Post substation on Highbury Street, clearly related to the design aesthetic associated with the Unisphere at the 1964-1965 World Fair; a private residence at the corner of Baseline and Ridout streets; the Research and Development facility at the Labatt Brewery; the central headquarters facility for AboutTown Taxi, and a Print Three outlet (these last two are on York Street, just a few doors from one another).

All photos copyright Clifton Bertram

Fixing the World How do you renovate the United Nations? Diplomatically.

The 60-year-old United Nations complex, which almost entirely lacks sprinklers, blastproof windows, and many essentials of contemporary diplomatic architecture, does have lots of one amenity that its designers considered indispensable: ashtrays. In the lobby of the U.N.’s most visible building, the Secretariat tower, lovingly designed geometric cigarette receptacles protrude from green marble walls. In the great public rooms, pairs of vinyl-covered chairs are joined by steel bowls that haven’t seen ash in years.

The original trinity of U.N. buildings—the Secretariat, the low-slung swoop of the General Assembly, and the boxy conference building—is a decaying time machine. Rain seeps around ancient windows and leaches asbestos from crumbling ducts. Cumbersome fire doors break up the once-flowing hallways. An improvised tent for metal detectors vitiates any sense of grandeur in the approach. Where once the architecture promised a more perfect world, now it has clearly seen better days.

Renovation has begun.

To read more of this content at New York Magazine Architecture Review, click here.

Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism, 1900-1970

Thomas S. Hines, a professor emeritus at UCLA, is the dean of architectural historians in Los Angeles, the author of major studies of the pioneering modernists Richard Neutra and Irving Gill. In "Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970," he has produced a doorstop-sized magnum opus: a massive but terrifically detailed distillation of his thinking on the city where he has lived and taught, with only minor interruptions, since 1968.

Unlike such younger historians as Sylvia Lavin, Hines' colleague at UCLA and the author of a 2005 book called "Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture," Hines is not interested in putting architecture on the couch or for that matter in charting the political or economic forces that inevitably shape the cityscape from the outside in, as Mike Davis and others have done. His goal is to flesh out the giants of L.A architecture through a patient, smart and sometimes microscopic look at their most important buildings. He is a generalist and — especially when it comes to his admiration for modernism at the expense of other kinds of architecture — something of a purist.

To read more of this content at The LA Times, click here.