Naked City

March 2nd, 2009 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

Hunter Gatherer has a great post about the classic 1948 film noir, Naked City, and the subsequent TV series which ran between 1958-1963, complete with a few choice clips.

Most so-called New York TV series were shot in studios. Friends, for example, was filmed in LA. In most episodes the only genuine NY image is of the front door in the West Village, and even this spells fake as an implausibly expensive location for its fictional occupants. Naked City is special because, befitting its title, it was filmed in large part, on location in New York and strips Manhattan bare to reveal an architecture that was far more coherent than today’s mixture of glass and steel modernism and pre-war masonry gothic.

This great opening shot from the movie shows how much bigger the downtown skyscraper cluster was relative to midtown, before the corporate center of gravity shifted. The financial district is dominated by the hypodermic needle like tower of what is now a focus of news half a century later, as the HQ of AIG with its injections of tax payer bail-out cash, while midtown looks relatively spartan revealing the since hidden laminated shards of the side facade of the Rockefeller Center.

Link

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Design Classics, The London Underground Map

October 16th, 2008 · 111 comments or link to (permalink)

There was a period, between the wars, when European refugees like Gropius stopped in Britain. This stimulated a brief flourishing of modernism resulting in the design aesthetic of London public transport, from the Routemaster bus (the only piece of British ‘architecture’ that Corbusier liked) to moderne Tube stations such as Arnos Grove.

But the pinnacle of London Transport’s modernist design was the Tube map which rearranged distances to produce a supremely navigable schematic diagram that is little changed today. (I have been looking for this documentary for ages).

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Eames Lounge Chair Debut in 1956 on NBC

September 3rd, 2008 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

Charles and Ray appear on a very dated TV show presented by a creature with a very dated accent to launch a chair which looks as modern today as it did then.

In two parts, second part here.

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The Original Penn Station, Spliced Together from Hollywood Movies

August 29th, 2008 · 5 comments or link to (permalink)

“Intercut scenes, from Hollywood films shot in New York’s Pennsylvania Station before it was demolished in 1963, or on stage sets representing it, form a composited narrative set in Manhattan’s great lost architectural masterpiece”.

And now the good news: the reason why we still have New York’s Grand Central, or London’s St Pancras in all their glory is because with hindsight the demolition of Euston and Penn Stations were evidently a mistake.

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Robert Hughes on Skyscrapers

August 26th, 2008 · 2 comments or link to (permalink)

Why Hughes is better known in print, in the US, is a complete mystery. He has been astounding as a documentary presenter for 30 years.

Eight minutes into this clip is an amazing snippet of the futuristic costumed dancers at the opening ceremony for the Chrysler building.

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