Back to the fabulous Modern Mechanix magazine, or rather the superb online archive maintained here (“Yesterdays technology, today”). Its pages are like a 1940s version of Dezeen, with a dash of Neaorama, a dollop of WMMNA and a sprinkle of BldgBlog – like looking at a satire of our own obsessions through the lens of nostalgia.
It’s full of ideas that have kept on surfacing in the guise of ‘new’ over the last half a century: Houses of the future, homes made from converted industrial equipment, ingenious labour saving devices, insane solutions to everyday problems, and a hysterical feeling that we must be nearing the outer limits of the kind of objects it is possible to imagine.
I’ve cherry-picked a few of my favourites, but these are just a sample of the incredible array of Neo-Dada-ist tactics, surreal material pallets, ingenious mechanics and much much more.
