Wollman Rink, Central Park, New York; Empire State Bldg., N.Y.C., by Ed Pfizenmaier, 1954 (printed 1958).
Pfizenmaier is better known for his fashion photography, notably his behind the scenes work on Cecil Beaton's only Marilyn Monroe shoot, but I like this landscape, which I think must be manipulated with doubled images from the rink at the bottom half, or the snow wouldn't be so clear. Except maybe it would? Anyway.
/ Germaine Krull, Self-Portrait with Ikarette, 1925
The cover of Métal by Germaine Krull at Artsy.
The Getty Museum describes the work as "64 photomechanical illustrations contained in a portfolio with a black cloth binding."
Germaine Krull described by an unnamed author at Lost Woman Art.
This is a cooling tower at Calder Hall, one of the first nuclear power plants to produce electricity for general consumption - although it also produced plutonium for Britain's atomic bomb programmes.
Further images from TEF Design's page on the Mission Substation at Eighth Street, San Francisco, from their lighting and design work in 2013.
The sculptures visible in the first, second, and fourth images are by Robert Boardman Howard, and together comprise Power and Light, listed at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum.
PG&E's substation at Mission and Eighth Streets, San Francisco, from TEF Design's portfolio of images dating from their design work on the exterior and lighting of the substation, originally built in 1948, in 2013.
The XP 512E was an experimental EV built by General Motors. It debuted in 1969 alongside a gas-powered version and a hybrid at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, in a display of concept vehicles called “Progress of Power.” The 512s were designed for local use or in congested areas, and their development coincided with growing public concern about the polluting emissions from petroleum-fueled cars. The 512E’s motor was powered by an 84-volt lead-acid battery, which could be charged using a household outlet in about seven hours.
The Isle of Dogs pumping station, with its intestinal utility rendered as a temple, is another Outram landmark. Columns again contain ducting, but their capitals are inscribed with Vitruvian account of Callimachus encountering votive brackets surrounded by an Acanthus plant, while the pediment contains a winged sun from Egyptian mythology. None of this was remotely necessary—and all the better. Outdoing even Ettore Sottsass’s efforts, Outram relentlessly poured symbolic meaning into his work. Franklin writes that he “came to understand his design process as one of translation: a continual triangulation between words, images[,] and buildings.”
Anthony Paletta in his review of Geraint Franklin's book on John Outram for the Architect's Newspaper.
Outramoderne, John Outram's website about… well, I think architecture, but also probably whatever else comes to mind.
Sort of urban.
The bizarrely disguised Isle of Dogs Sewage Pumping Station, London
Technically known as the Isle of Dogs Pumping Station, it was designed by John Outram, who nicknamed it "the Temple of Storms", as described in Oliver Wainwright's article in the Guardian back in 2017 - around the time it was Grade II* listed.
The article describes how, in a rebuke to Margaret Thatcher's policy that all buildings in Docklands were to be developed by the private sector, except for utilities,
[Ted] Hollamby, [chief architect of the Docklands Development Corporation], commissioned three leading architects of the day – Outram, Richard Rogers and Nicholas Grimshaw – to design beautiful temples to water treatment that were as far from utilitarian as possible. “I had been doing a series of classical warehouse sheds, which caught Hollamby’s eye,” recalls Outram, now 83. “When I met the engineers, they had already built a model of the waterworks interior. It looked like a little cathedral, with a nave with two aisles, so I simply threw a shed roof over it. The client rather left us to get on with it, so we had a lot of fun and games.”
The Visionary City
During a dive looking for late 1980s adverts for Lego, I ended up finding this New York Times story:
Onkal (Duke) Guzey used to have to ask his small children if he could borrow their Lego toys to build his model homes. Now, five years and half a million Lego pieces later, he has built his own city. Mr. Guzey, an architect in Washington, has assembled a Visionary City
I'm used to large scale displays of Lego cities now, but this was in 1989. It also sounds pretty utopian:
its design incorporates the natural topography and resources of areas including San Francisco, San Antonio, and La Jolla, Calif. The city is intended to solve the most serious problems of urban living like pollution, traffic congestion and shortages of natural resources.
There are no cars in Mr. Guzey's city and he has designed public transportation to be accessible and appealing. The canals that encircle the downtown carry boats filled with commuters. Monorail tracks pass through apartment buildings. Trains run under waterfalls that provide electricity to power the city. George Marston, a local engineer, designed a computer program to keep the trains running, elevators operating and street lamps lighted.
The city was exhibited in Washington DC and New York City, at least, if I'm reading these articles correctly. (Perhaps understandably, they assume the audience are local readers, I think.)
Unfortunately, so far, there's no sign of photography of this city in the NYT or the Washington Post coverage (they have two stories, but both are locked away - perhaps I'll go back to the newspaper archives I was searching via my SF public library card to get those).
Mind you, not everyone was a fan.
''I don't like the idea of a perfectly controlled, 1984-type city,'' said Melissa Robinson, who works for a Washington-based news service. ''I think the Legos just take the edge off the idea of a planned city.''