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

To people of 100 or even 50 years ago, the metropolises of today would look utterly foreign. Our elevated highways, massive airports, high population density and huge skyscrapers would be breathtaking to someone from a far earlier era. But futurists of the past did their best to imagine the world of tomorrow – otherwise known as our today – and came up with some wild imagery.

San Francisco

Above (and at top) is ship engineer and inventor Alexander Weygers‘ vision of San Francisco  as he saw it from 1950. The disc-shaped objects near the water are Weygers’ patented flying machine which he dubbed the Discopter. In his visions of future American cities, Weygers imagined large Discopter ports in every city, allowing for safe and convenient travel for the city’s residents.

Los Angeles

Architect Harlan Georgescu envisioned these sky-high mixed-use buildings becoming an integral part of future downtown Los Angeles. The buildings were meant to be 500 feet tall; Georgescu’s design put living, working, dining, shopping and recreational spaces in each building. Every structure would provide homes for 200 families in the space that would normally only support 12 conventional, ground-level homes. His Sky Lots plan included a suspended freeway running between the buildings – then out to the suburbs – to alleviate some of the city’s terrible traffic problems.

Houston

In the 1920s, Houston Post writers took a stab at predicting the city’s skyline in 1980. Note the same type of elevated freeways envisioned for LA, these also leading straight into and through tall buildings. Elevated walkways were also featured in the design, essentially doubling the pedestrian space for Houston residents. Houston did eventually develop a skyline containing plenty of tall, distinctive buildings and elevated roads – it looks like the Houston Post had (mostly) realistic expectations for the future of their city.

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Retrofuturistic Urbanism 6 Cities As They Could Have Become

“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

Architects working with robots, firefighters equipped with artificial wings, electric learning machines and airships for everyone: this is the year 2000 – as imagined in 1910 – and it’s a vision of mechanical wonder decked out in Edwardian finery. French artist Villemard produced these illustrations predicting what life would be like at the dawn of the 21st century, and while some are hilarious, others are surprisingly accurate.

Firmly entrenched in the Industrial Age, the forward-thinking minds of the early 20th century were sure about one thing: machines would play an increasingly vital role in daily life well into the future. Reaching 90 years into the future, Villemard correctly anticipated technological advances like teleconferencing, radio news broadcasts and motorized roller-skates.

We may not have motorized hair-brushing machines, robot tailors or headsets that enable us to learn by osmosis, but we certainly rely on technology to perform more of our basic tasks than ever before. Villemard’s idea to use radium as a heat source would have proved disastrous, of course, but he wasn’t too far off – nuclear power was right around the corner.

When these images were created, suspended monorails, electric trains, blimps and bi-planes were state-of-the-art technology, seeming like the height of innovation. So it seemed only natural that, by the new millennium, we’d all be navigating the skies in personal aircraft, chased by police officers that resemble flying squirrels. And while floating airships are now largely a thing of the past, we’re still waiting on the flying cars we were promised by futurists so many decades ago.