A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Examples of dystopias are characterized in books such as Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Other examples include The Iron Heel, described by Erich Fromm as "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", and the religious dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity's spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens.
The word dystopia represents a counterpart of utopia, a term originally coined by Thomas More in this book of that title completed in 1516.
The first known use of dystopian, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, is a speech given before the British House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1868, in which Mill denounced the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
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The Trylon and the Perisphere
The Trylon and Perisphere were two modernistic structures, together known as the "Theme Center," at the center of the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940. Connected to the 700-foot (210 m) spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator, the Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, 180 feet in diameter. The sphere housed a diorama called "Democracity" which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. Democracity was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the interior surface of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a 950-foot-long (290 m) spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere.
The Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline
The Trylon and Perisphere became the central symbol of the 1939 World's Fair, its image reproduced by the million on a wide range of promotional materials and serving as the fairground's focal point. The United States issued a postage stamp in 1939 depicting the Trylon and Perisphere. Neither structure survives; however, the Unisphere [symbol of the 1964 world’s fair at the same location] is now located where the
Perisphere once stood.
The Theme Center was designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux, with the interior exhibit by Henry Dreyfuss. The structures were built in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York and were intended as temporary with steel framing and plaster board facades. Both buildings were subsequently razed and scrapped after the closing of the fair, their materials to be used in World War II armaments.
The word Perisphere was coined using the Greek prefix peri-, meaning all around, about, or enclosing, surrounding. The word Trylon was coined from the phrase "triangular pylon".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trylon_and_Perisphere
also noteworthy at the 1939 World’s Fair – the General Motors Pavilion
and its Futurama exhibit – well described at this link:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-12/ff_futurama_original
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The Trylon and Perisphere hatched the even weirder "Skylon" in London in 1951-2
The Skylon
The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that apparently floated above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. [It should not be confused with Skylon Tower, the tower overlooking Niagara Falls].
A popular joke of the period was that, like the British economy of 1951, "It had no visible means of support".
Skylon at left and Festival of Britain – by John Ritchie Addison
The Skylon was the "Vertical Feature" that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell and Felix Samuely, and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, England, on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The Skylon consisted of a steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ. The architects' design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night.
Its name was suggested by Mrs A G S Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the Crawley Development Corporation.
A few days before the King and Queen visited the exhibition in May 1951, Skylon was climbed at midnight by student Philip Gurdon from Birkbeck College who attached a University of London Sairt Squadron scarf near the top. A workman was sent up a few days later to collect it.
Questions were asked in Parliament regarding the danger to visitors from lightning-strikes to the Skylon, and the papers reported that it was duly roped off at one point, in anticipation of a forecast thunderstorm.
In spite of its popularity with the public, the £30,000 cost of dismantling and re-erecting the Skylon elsewhere (£642,979 as of 2012) was deemed too much for a government struggling with post-war austerity. Skylon was removed in 1952 on the orders of Winston Churchill, who saw it a symbol of the preceding Labour Government, when the rest of the exhibition was dismantled.
Speculation as to the Skylon's fate included theories from Juder Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, that it was thrown into the River Lea in east London, or that it was dumped into the Thames, buried under Jubilee Gardens, made into souvenirs or sold as scrap. The base is preserved in the Museum of London and the wind cups are held in a private collection. An investigation was carried out by the Front Row programme on BBC Radio 4. The result was broadcast on 8 March 2011, revealing that the Skylon and the roof of the Dome of Discovery were sold for scrap to George Cohen and Sons, scrap metal dealers of Wood Lane, Hammersmith, and dismantled at their works in Bidder street, Canning Town, on the banks of the River Lea. Some of the metal fragments were then turned into a series of commemorative paper-knives and artefacts. The inscriptions on the paper-knife read "600" and "Made from the aluminium alloy roof sheets which covered the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, South Bank. The Dome, Skylon and 10 other buildings on the site, were dismantled by George Cohen and Sons and Company Ltd during six months of 1952."
The former location of the Skylon is the riverside promenade between the London Eye and Hungerford Bridge, alongside the Jubilee Gardens (the former site of the Dome of Discovery). A new connection to the original Skylon was formed in May 2007 when D&D London (formerly Conran Restaurants) opened a new restaurant named Skylon on the third floor of the Royal Festival Hall, within metres of the location of the original.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(tower)
The word dystopia represents a counterpart of utopia, a term originally coined by Thomas More in this book of that title completed in 1516.
The first known use of dystopian, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, is a speech given before the British House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1868, in which Mill denounced the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Trylon and the Perisphere
The Trylon and Perisphere were two modernistic structures, together known as the "Theme Center," at the center of the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940. Connected to the 700-foot (210 m) spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator, the Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, 180 feet in diameter. The sphere housed a diorama called "Democracity" which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. Democracity was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the interior surface of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a 950-foot-long (290 m) spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere.
The Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline
The Trylon and Perisphere became the central symbol of the 1939 World's Fair, its image reproduced by the million on a wide range of promotional materials and serving as the fairground's focal point. The United States issued a postage stamp in 1939 depicting the Trylon and Perisphere. Neither structure survives; however, the Unisphere [symbol of the 1964 world’s fair at the same location] is now located where the
Perisphere once stood.
The Theme Center was designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux, with the interior exhibit by Henry Dreyfuss. The structures were built in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York and were intended as temporary with steel framing and plaster board facades. Both buildings were subsequently razed and scrapped after the closing of the fair, their materials to be used in World War II armaments.
The word Perisphere was coined using the Greek prefix peri-, meaning all around, about, or enclosing, surrounding. The word Trylon was coined from the phrase "triangular pylon".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trylon_and_Perisphere
also noteworthy at the 1939 World’s Fair – the General Motors Pavilion
and its Futurama exhibit – well described at this link:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-12/ff_futurama_original
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Trylon and Perisphere hatched the even weirder "Skylon" in London in 1951-2
The Skylon
The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that apparently floated above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. [It should not be confused with Skylon Tower, the tower overlooking Niagara Falls].
A popular joke of the period was that, like the British economy of 1951, "It had no visible means of support".
Skylon at left and Festival of Britain – by John Ritchie Addison
The Skylon was the "Vertical Feature" that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell and Felix Samuely, and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, England, on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The Skylon consisted of a steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ. The architects' design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night.
Its name was suggested by Mrs A G S Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the Crawley Development Corporation.
A few days before the King and Queen visited the exhibition in May 1951, Skylon was climbed at midnight by student Philip Gurdon from Birkbeck College who attached a University of London Sairt Squadron scarf near the top. A workman was sent up a few days later to collect it.
Questions were asked in Parliament regarding the danger to visitors from lightning-strikes to the Skylon, and the papers reported that it was duly roped off at one point, in anticipation of a forecast thunderstorm.
In spite of its popularity with the public, the £30,000 cost of dismantling and re-erecting the Skylon elsewhere (£642,979 as of 2012) was deemed too much for a government struggling with post-war austerity. Skylon was removed in 1952 on the orders of Winston Churchill, who saw it a symbol of the preceding Labour Government, when the rest of the exhibition was dismantled.
Speculation as to the Skylon's fate included theories from Juder Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, that it was thrown into the River Lea in east London, or that it was dumped into the Thames, buried under Jubilee Gardens, made into souvenirs or sold as scrap. The base is preserved in the Museum of London and the wind cups are held in a private collection. An investigation was carried out by the Front Row programme on BBC Radio 4. The result was broadcast on 8 March 2011, revealing that the Skylon and the roof of the Dome of Discovery were sold for scrap to George Cohen and Sons, scrap metal dealers of Wood Lane, Hammersmith, and dismantled at their works in Bidder street, Canning Town, on the banks of the River Lea. Some of the metal fragments were then turned into a series of commemorative paper-knives and artefacts. The inscriptions on the paper-knife read "600" and "Made from the aluminium alloy roof sheets which covered the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, South Bank. The Dome, Skylon and 10 other buildings on the site, were dismantled by George Cohen and Sons and Company Ltd during six months of 1952."
The former location of the Skylon is the riverside promenade between the London Eye and Hungerford Bridge, alongside the Jubilee Gardens (the former site of the Dome of Discovery). A new connection to the original Skylon was formed in May 2007 when D&D London (formerly Conran Restaurants) opened a new restaurant named Skylon on the third floor of the Royal Festival Hall, within metres of the location of the original.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(tower)
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