MAGIC MOTORWAYS

Norman Bel Geddes

Norman Bel Geddes: MAGIC MOTORWAYS. NYC: Random House, 1940. First edition. Quarto. A near-fine hardcover book with decorated cloth in a very good dust jacket: endpapers lightly discolored, as usual. The Dust jacket is lightly chipped, but wholly intact. A very nice copy of this legendary early treatise on the problems of modern transportation. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print, and needless to say-- somewhat rare.

8.25 x 10.5 hardcover book with 298 pages and 206 b/w photographs, diagrams, illustrations and plans of the general social concepts that developed through Bel Geddes' stewardship of the FUTURAMA exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The majority of the photographs are detail shots from the Futurama exhibit by Richard Garrison.

Contents:

• highways and horizons
• safety comfort speed and economy
• eliminate the human factor in driving
• separated lanes of traffic
• every highway intersection is obsolete
• full speed through bottlenecks
• daylight standards for night driving
• from the atlantic to the pacific in one day
• eliminate graft and double highway construction
• motorway services to towns and villages
• motorway tributaries to cities
• accelerating city traffic one hundred percent
• the need for increased distribution
• thinking for our grandchildren
• effects of a national motorway system

An American theatrical and industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes was the first person to seriously apply the concepts of aerodynamics and streamlining to industrial design. To Geddes, streamlining illustrated courage: "We are too much inclined to believe, because things have long been done a certain way, that that is the best way to do them. Following old grooves of thought is one method of playing safe. But it deprives one of initiative and takes too long. It sacrifices the value of the element of surprise. At times, the only thing to do is to cut loose and do the unexpected! It takes more even than imagination to be progressive. It takes vision and courage. "

In 1927, Bel Geddes left theatrical design and began designing cars, ships, factories and railways. He rapidly created streamlined forms for objects ranging from gas-ranges to trains, in addition to a revolving restaurant and, in 1929, a 9-deck amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra, a fully equipped gymnasium and a solarium.

Bel Geddes designed the famous General Motors Pavilion for the1939 New York Worldıs Fair, which included the Highway and Horizons exhibit, more commonly known as the "Futurama".

Bel Geddes expounded a philosophy of "essential forms" evolved from their systems of use, in his seminal book Horizons, published in 1932. He helped to establish a new professional niche -- that of "industrial designer", arguing for a closer relationship between engineering and design.

Price: $250.00
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