Retro-futuristic architecture seems to exist outside of time, perhaps in parallel universes where the versions of the future envisioned by their creators actually became reality. They combine design elements from the decades in which they were built with futuristic elements as the architects imagined them, recalling the science fiction of their respective eras, often seeming like remnants from movie sets. Many still stand in a rapidly changing world, feeling like portals to somewhere very far away.

Walden 7 by Ricardo Bofill

Built in 1975, this housing structure by Ricardo Bofill located outside Barcelona, Spain takes inspiration from the science fiction novel Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. It originally included 446 residences in 18 towers, resulting in a labyrinth organized around seven interconnecting interior courtyards. Bofill imagined that this structure would be a utopian urban residence addressing many of the problems of urban life, with space for gardens and social interaction as well as two swimming pools. The high rise still stands and functions as an apartment building, with some units combined to create larger spaces.

Palais Bulles by Antti Lovag

The strange and bulbous Palais Bulles, or Palace of Bubbles, was built in 1989 on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Though it’s often used as a setting for fashion shoots and film festival parties, architect Antti Lovag emphasizes that how the structure is inhabited is its most important aspect. “Whether for economic reasons or lack of technical solutions, human beings have confined themselves to cubes full of dead ends and angles that impede our movement and break our harmony.”

Monsanto House of the Future by Monsanto

Did you know that infamous agrochemical giant Monsanto (known for creating Agent Orange during the Vietnam War) built a ‘house of the future’ at Disneyland in 1957? Located at the entrance to Tomorrowland, the house was designed by Monsanto in collaboration with MIT and Disney Imagineers, showcasing their vision of what life would be like in 1987. Made of fiberglass, the house was elevated on a pedestal with the intention of allowing it to rotate. Everything was modular and made of synthetic materials. Monsanto’s House of the Future closed in 1967, and though it was scheduled to be demolished in one night, the wrecking ball bounced off its tough facade, and a 2-week demolition job was ultimately required to take it down.

Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie

First built as a pavilion for the World’s Fair in 1967 after architect Moshe Safdie conceived it as his master’s thesis, Habitat 67 remains one of the most unusual buildings of its kind, featuring 146 residences and a network of interlocking forms and walkways. The architect wanted to maximize the amount of private space and natural environments within a small urban footprint, enhancing the quality of life with gardens, fresh air and views. It was intended to be the first phase of a much larger complex, but Safdie’s vision for futuristic affordable housing failed to proliferate due to the high per-unit cost of his design.

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Somewhere Outside Of Time 13 Classic Retro Futuristic Architectural Visions

There’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car monorail. Or a one-car monorail with a propeller, or a high-speed rail plane, or even an amphibious monorail that can go from the elevated track right into the water. Some of these concepts were doomed from the start, some never got enough support to get off the ground and others still stand today.

Mountain Monorail with Propeller, 1936

This fanciful concept illustrated by Kikuzo Ito in 1936, was invented by an American. The airplane propeller and tailfin keep the small car upright as it rides along the track in the mountains. An extra set of wheels extend from the sides to provide stability when it comes to a stop.

Wuppertal Schwebebahn, 1901-Present

While most early monorail systems either never made it past testing stages or were dismantled soon after construction, the Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Wuppertal, Germany remains in operation after over a century. It was initially designed to be sold to the city of Berlin; the first track opened in 1901. The cars have been replaced over the decades, but since then, the monorail line has been closed just once. It moves 25 million passengers each year.

Bennie Railplane, 1930

The propeller-driven Bennie Railplane, designed in 1930 by George Bennie, was a prototype that aimed to solve the problem of more economical and rapid transport via a high-speed monorail link from London to Paris. A short test track was built in Glasgow, Scotland, but the economic troubles of the ’30s doomed the project. The test track hung around, rusting and abandoned, through the 1950s.

Boyes Monorail, 1911

The test track for the William H. Boyes Monorail was built and demonstrated in 1911 in Seattle, Washington, with wood rails and an estimated cost of about $3,000 per mile. When it opened, the Seattle Times proclaimed, “The time may come when these wooden monorail lines, like high fences, will go straggling across country, carrying their burden of cars that will develop a speed of about 20 miles per hour.”

Amphibious Monorail, 1934

Twin amphibian cars zoom from the desert into the open sea in this concept, dreamed up by the Soviet Government and featured in Popular Science in 1934. The idea was that the cars, which could reach up to 180 miles per hour, could travel three monorail lines totaling 332 miles in length in order to tap mineral wealth in Turkestan. They were reportedly tested in Moscow.

“The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load,” explained Popular Science. “Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.”

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Retro Rail 14 Real Visionary Historic Monorail Designs

“These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible,” reads the intro to a 1900 article printed in the Ladies Home Journal entitled ‘What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.‘ And over a century later, many of them do. The “wisest and most careful men in our great institutions of science and learning” envisioned that by the year 2001, we humans would have willfully made all wild animals extinct to make room for ourselves, and we’d be eating sterile foods zipped from laboratories to our homes via pneumatic tubes. But some of these ideas are more prescient than others, accurately imagining innovations like factory farming and even the internet.

Wild Animals Don’t Exist Anymore, Except in Zoos

(image via: paleofuture)

“Man’s steadily increasing need for more space will eventually force untamed beasts to pay their way in the scheme of things, or join the species already extinct,” reads a 1926 article in the Galveston Daily News. That attitude was surprisingly common during the early 20th century, despite the fact that the predictions in the Ladies Home Journal article underestimated a century of future population growth by billions. The Ladies Home Journal article predicted that animals wouldn’t exist in the wild anymore at all, and would only be found in zoos, unless they were in use as livestock or service animals.

The article predicts that rats and mice will have been completely exterminated (along with mosquitoes, flies and roaches, which would require filling in all swamplands and chemically treating all still-water streams) and that cows will be so fat, they’ll be as slow as livestock pigs. “Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.” Sounds like modern-day conditions at many of America’s largest factory farms.

Purchases and Pre-Cooked Meals Are Delivered via Pneumatic Tubes

(image via: machinelake)

In an era when compressed food tablets actually seemed like a great idea, sterile pre-cooked meals made in laboratories rather than kitchens were an appealing concept. The Ladies Home Journal article imagines that ready-cooked meals would zoom from these central labs to private homes via a vast system of pneumatic tubes. Equipped with all manner of electrical gadgets not found in homes, these laboratories would also be able to supply food cheaper than it would cost to cook for yourself, since they’re buying ingredients in such large quantities. You press a button, your food zips to you within minutes, and then you send the packaging and utensils back to be chemically cleaned. Store purchases and mail would be delivered in much the same way.

Furthermore, you’d never have to worry about anyone breathing on your food, or exposing it to the atmosphere of the busy streets. Shopkeepers would be arrested if they dared to store food that wasn’t essentially hermetically sealed, or if they sold “stale or adulterated produce.” The miracle of always-fresh produce would be achieved using liquid-air refrigerators.

The idea of pneumatic delivery hasn’t gone away altogether – some cities use pneumatic tubes to dispose of trash, and a company called the Foodtubes Project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transferring much of the UK’s deliveries from trucks on the roads to underground tubes.

The Suburb is the Promised Land for Taller, Healthier Americans

(image via: mediaarchitecture.at)

The suburbs seemed like utopia for people living in clogged, smoggy cities. The predictions of the day envisioned Americans not only living much longer thanks to quiet lives in the peaceful suburbs, but also be one to two inches taller on average thanks to better health “due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics.” In fact, suburbs would be so amazingly beneficial for mankind, city housing would be practically eliminated, and building in blocks would be illegal.

Americans, and humans in general, are indeed taller than we were in the year 1900, thanks to ample amounts of nutritious foods, though that could very well change with the unhealthy fast-food diets that have become increasingly common over recent decades. The suburban dream hit its peak during the ’50s, however, and is now starting to fizzle, with many young people choosing to live in cities for access to efficient transportation, jobs and culture.

Zero Traffic Noise in Cities as Transit Goes Underground

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The dream of the suburbs would be achieved with quiet, high-speed transportation that was virtually invisible at surface level, with “well-lighted and well-ventilated” underground railways in broad subways or tunnels, as well as monorails and elevated streets. Trains would take passengers from New York to San Francisco in a day and a night (imagine!). It’s easy to see why this seemed so readily achievable in the year 1900; the first underground railway in the world opened in London in 1863 and transportation grew more efficient by the year. People hadn’t yet been seduced by the status and freedom of individual automobiles.

We may have high-speed trains in much of the world (though sadly, still not in most of America), but car-free cities “free from all noises” are far from our current reality. However, at least one city may be able to achieve that ideal: ‘Great City’, a dense carless metropolis being built from scratch in a rural area outside Chengdu, China.

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Future Past 7 Wonders Predicted 100 Years Ago

Yesterday’s visions of today were surprisingly accurate in some cases, but in others, they were humorously off-base. We’re not zooming around our moon colony homes in jet packs, confirming our choice in mates with scientific body odor tests, or enjoying our favorite TV shows via implants in our brains. These 12 predicted gadgets and inventions never came to be, and while we’ll never need robotic cargo horses for our milkmen, we’re still eagerly waiting for those hoverboards. See lots more fabulous retro-futurism at the Smithsonian Magazine blog, Paleofuture.

The iPad of 1935

In the April 1935 issue of the magazine Everyday Science and Mechanics, the ‘next logical step in the world of publishing’ was envisioned: a mechanical microfilm reader mounted on a large pole that would theoretically allow you to sit back in your armchair and scroll through the pages of a book with the push of a button. Of course, unlike the modern iPad, which offers the same function, it’s not exactly portable – much less so than the book sitting on the table right next to the illustrated man.

Newspaper Printed by Your Home Radio

As envisioned in the 1930s and 1960s using radio and satellite technology, respectively, the future of newspapers would involve home printing machines that spit out the day’s news automatically each morning and evening. Philco-Ford’s Newspaper Printer, featured in an episode of the CBS show ‘The 21st Century’ entitled ‘At Home, 2001’, “provides a summary of news relayed by satellite from all over the world,” says narrator Walter Cronkite. “Now to get a newspaper copy for permanent reference I just turn this button, and out it comes. When I’ve finished catching up on the news I might check the latest weather. This same screen can give me the latest reports on the stocks I might own.”

Scientific Mate Tests

How can you determine whether you will have a successful marriage? According to an April 1924 issue of Science and Invention magazine about scientific love matching, you simply hook yourself up to a mating machine that measures your physical attraction and sympathy for your chosen partner. Recording the pulses of couples and checking their breathing while they embrace, and making sure they feel ‘sympathetic enough’ while watching their partner undergo an unpleasant procedure like having their blood drawn may not sound all that outrageous, but two other tests were even stranger. In the Body Odor Test, one partner is placed inside a capsule while the other is asked to take a sniff; if they don’t find the smells too objectionable, they’re probably a good match. The Nervous Disorder test aims to find out whether couples are too nervous around each other by testing their reaction to a surprise gunshot in the air.

Automated Farms

Throughout the 20th century, visions of the future often assumed that our 21st century lives would be full of leisure thanks to machines and automated processes. By the year 2000, they figured we’d only have to work for part of the week, and robots would do all the hardest labor. Radio-controlled farm robots, as envisioned in the syndicated comic strip Closer Than We Think!, would virtually eliminate the need for manual labor in fields. And in the March 1931 issue of Country Gentleman, the ‘farmer of the year 2031’ tends his farm virtually from a large flat-panel television.

Jet Packs for Soldiers and Personal Transport

Jet packs (as seen here on James Bond) were a frequent component of futuristic technology, first emerging in the sci-fi of the 1920s and soaring in popularity by the 1960s when they were actually invented (sort of.) While jet packs do exist, they’re definitely nowhere near practical usage as personal transport or military reconnaissance. Aside from a few public demonstrations, they’re most commonly used by astronauts in outer space, where the challenges of Earth’s atmosphere and gravity don’t exist.

Headphone Television

Television represented one of the biggest technological advances of the 20th century that was actually accessible to many average people, making its evolution a major source of speculation, from the first rumors of its existence to the days when it finally became a fixture in most homes. People began to envision long-distance visual communication as soon as the telephone was invented, and some predictions – like video chat, tiny TV sets, flat-panels and interactive programs – were right on the mark. Others, like TVs that emit smells – not so much. One concept from the comic strip Closer Than We Think! imagines television receivers that are implanted right into the brain, creating images directly in the mind, “like dreams.”

Automated Cooking with Plates Made on Demand

Another advancement detailed in the ‘At Home, 2001′ episode of The 21st Century with Walter Cronkite was fully automatic meal preparation in which meals made from ‘frozen or irradiated foods’ are programmed into a menu and prepared by a robotic chef. An entire meal could be chosen and prepared within seconds. But the weirdest part of this speculation has to do with the tableware rather than the food. Instead of getting plates from the cupboard, the robot would instantly mold plastic into plates, cups and bowls for one-time use, and then melt them back down when you’re done. The point? Not having to wash dishes. Although 3D printed plates are nearly possible today, this whole process seems fairly ridiculous and energy-intensive when dishes could simply be loaded into a magical dishwashing machine.

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The Future That Never Was 12 Uninvented Gadgets

At some point the science of flight became a reality. At the time, it seemed like such a futuristic shift, however, that imaginations continued to soar forward into the future, thinking about what was to come. With this vision of future flight came some wild concepts for gigantic blimps, personal aircraft, and everything in between.

(Images via iheartchaos, gajitz, dvice, youngester)

The current shape of aircraft are based on scientific principles that generate enough thrust to create lift, while still serving as an efficient means to transport cargo. This doesn’t mean this is the only way to get in the air. Tohoku University researchers are reaching into the past – they think biplanes may be the best shape for supersonic flight. Synergy aircraft are an attempt to make flight achievable by all; including families. A radical lightweight design may just be the ticket to making this a reality. Lockheed’s Cormorant is a plane concept in which the craft spends much of its time underwater, bringing stealth to a new dimension. The final image is a great example of our currents visions of the future of aircraft, which very well may look as ridiculous and outlandish as some retro futuristic examples look to us now.

(Images via airliners, crackajack, finalgear)

This experimental craft is showing its years, from when it was designed to push the limits of technology. Captain Rickenbacker’s airplane of the future was designed in 1929 and clearly never left paper, which is probably for the best. With propellers being the end all and be all of aviation, it made sense to just keep adding more. The Ekranoplan is a seaplane designed to lift off close to the surface of the water. It has a radical design and was actually used in the Russian navy for some years before being discontinued.

(Images via io9, enviro, belovedcars, leehamilton)

The future of aviation takes many forms. Take the Sky Tug for example, a futuristic blimp model that was designed for the Navy and will be entering active service, mainly for use in carrying cargo across difficult terrain, on behalf of commercial interests. The name of the crazy looking plane is Claire, and its design is an effort to create a sustainable aircraft for future air travel. Another current concept was commissioned by NASA and also hopes to accurately reflect the shape of new planes. This blue airship is able to use the helium in its stores to land and lift off effortlessly, at least, that’s the idea. Whether this plan comes to fruition is anyone’s guess.

(Images via internetdebris, psipunk, listsoplenty)

Even after seeing visions of the future of flight that are crazy by today’s standards, it’s still easy to laugh at attempts of futurism in the past. Judging by old magazines, we should all be in flying cars by now. Designer Leong Huang Zi came up with this design for the Aerial Rescue Chopper that actually looks like something that could work (though it would be mighty expensive). Lastly, a vision from the past of an actually working flying car called the ConvAir Car, that was meant to bring the power of flight home. Unfortunately, the idea never got off the ground.

(Images via electriccabinet, aviastar, io9)

Personal transport for the military and police officers have always been of interest to forward-thinkers, but it’s as yet unattainable on an inexpensive and effective basis. The De Lackner DH-4 “Aerocycle” was a prototype meant to revolutionize combat transportation, but it was deemed too impractical. Oddly enough, the final image depicts a vision of the future deemed quite practical (in the future).

(Images via warrenellis, plan59, darkroastedblend, darkroastedblend, scifilists)

This vintage craft was envisioned by Matsujir? Murakami, while the much more intimidating craft is a 1946 vision created by artist George Shepherd. The large gray ship is more watercraft than airplane, but it holds the same slick design as many of the other visions. Some craft were designed to fly, and land on water, while others were meant to “soar across the seas.” A gigantic ekranoplan, meant to be a mix between water and aircraft, is a Russian concept from 1965. Lastly, a plane that can lift off and land vertically. For obvious reasons, this is not the best way to tackle this problem…