viz.

Image Credit: SliceofGreen

In anticipation of the Harry Ransom Center’s upcoming exhibition of Norman Bel Geddes’s futuristic designs, I’ve become completely fascinated with the work of a man whom the Ransom Center describes as “an innovative stage and industrial designer, futurist, and urban planner who, more than any designer of his era, created and promoted a dynamic vision of the future—streamlined, technocratic, and optimistic.” This week, instead of focusing on the futurescapes of Bel Geddes after 1927 (the year Bel Geddes launched his industrial-design career), I will discuss a lesser-known Bel Geddes—the man as a father who built fantastic doll houses for his daughters. This man was a big dreamer (per French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, whom we’ll meet later in this post), one who dealt in miniatures.

Image Credit: screenshot from Target Austin, via TAMI 

H/T: Dr. Randi Cox, Stephen F. Austin State

Recently I attended the Cold War Cultures conference here at UT and had the pleasure of attending several especially provocative panels. Of particular interest was a talk by Stephen F. Austin State’s Dr. Randi Cox’s on Target Austin, a 1960 PSA film that localizes the threat of nuclear war by imagining an attack on the Texas capital.