To New Horizons (1940)

After seeing this short film all we could think of was financial instruments and products.  The future that Bel Geddes imagines is a technological one. One where America is not embroiled in an entangled web of global trade where the production of our goods have moved far away from our shores.  No, this new horizon is about the density and proximity of new modes of production.  It's about technology providing for efficient means of transportation and energy reduction.

Somewhere we all got lost, even after Enron,  accounting (both in terms of balance sheets and accountability) and financial products were geared to maximize wealth. What is surprising is that this is a complete movement away from the actual creation of anything.  Where Marx once thought that capitalism would dig its own grave through producing a system of classes based on production, maybe what we have done is dug free-market capitalism's grave out of our own greed.

Architects, like flies to honey, found their work in the opulence of those overburdened with this new wealth.  As Nicolai Ourossoff remarks, in this article,

" As commissions multiplied for luxury residential high-rises, high-end boutiques and corporate offices in cities like London, Tokyo and Dubai, more socially conscious projects rarely materialized."

It is this failure to give back that I find most disturbing.  At least the industrialists were paternalistic. Today the men, and it is mostly men, who have made their millions on our backs rarely produce great cultural institutions.  Los Angeles is lucky to have an Eli Broad to promote the saving of their Museum of Contemporary Art.  But few cities have resident billionaires.

Even though we are not all in New York The Functionality is incredibly excited about the upcoming lecture, Economy Of Means: a brief history of doing more with less. Today's architectural climate is contracting like the rest of our nations economy. Where once architects were concernced with the implications of over-production, maybe exemplified in pages 320-323 of OMA's Content, James Wine's upcoming lecture might be the nostrum to what has become a profession built on supporting the over-indulgances of a few.

Maybe we can find more, but albeit smaller, work by helping the many.