Editor’s note: Few designers in the 20^th century could match Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) in terms of sheer output and media exposure. The American industrial designer, though trained as an artist, was a design polymath, a “total” designer in the most basic sense of the word. Bel Geddes began his career as a set designer in 1918, creating elaborate sets for theatre impresarios like Max Reinhardt. He founded his world-famous design consultancy, Norman Bel Geddes and Associates, in 1927 as an industrial design studio. A capable draughtsman, Bel Geddes always promoted his own visions of the future via advertisements and books. He is also one of the first designers to coin the term “streamlining” – many of his designs featured sleek, curved contours and were featured in Sheldon Cheney’s groundbreaking Art and the Machine text from 1936.

Bel Geddes deployed many of his ideas about streamlining at the architectural scale, as seen in books like Horizons (1932) and Magic Motorways (1940). The latter, a booklet describing his models and visualizations for GM’s Futurama exhibit at the 1936 New York World’s Fair, is his most well-known project. However Horizons was the work that put Bel Geddes on the map. As a design manifesto, Horizons showed the American designer as fully conversant with contemporary trends in architectural modernism. Not only is the book a nod to Americans like Frank Lloyd Wright and Claude Bragdon, but it also namechecks architects like Le Corbusier and J.J.P. Oud, while implicitly acknowledging the work of Erich Mendelsohn (the latter being an obvious influence on Bel Geddes’ streamlined designs).

A master showman and expert self-promoter, Bel Geddes also knew how to use the media to his advantage. In 1934, on the heels of Horizons’ success, Bel Geddes published a critically acclaimed article on the scientific underpinnings of aerodynamics for a November issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Earlier, in 1931, he was already publishing his first visions of the future in a series of articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal. The April issue featured Bel Geddes own “House of Tomorrow”, a project that anticipates the same fascination with volume and form as MoMA’s 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition. For the January issue, Bel Geddes published his own future-ist (as opposed to Futurist) manifesto titled “Ten Years From Now.”

The below excerpts contain some of the Ladies Home Journal’s more architectural moments. As with many visions of the future from the past, we cannot fault Bel Geddes own naïveté, as evidenced in his preference for single-family homes over urban living. These excerpts, however, are a compelling read because they show a concept of architecture that is imbued with a strong dose of techno-idealism. Here is a taste of the future, courtesy of Norman Bel Geddes, circa 1931:

Norman Bel Geddes, “Ten Years From Now” (January 1931) ¹

All the following prophecies will be old-fashioned.

Aluminum will replace steel in railroad-car construction.

There will be double-deck streets, divided into lanes for slow stop-off traffic and lanes for express traffic.

Synthetic materials will replace the products of Nature in buildings.

Arc welding will replace riveting.

Every roof will be a garden.

Airplanes will be able to land and take off vertically.

Whole blocks, in the midst of cities, will be given over to airplane hangars, the roofs of which will form landing fields.

Exterior walls of buildings will be of thinner material to effect economy of space.

Houses, in all climates, will have flat roofs.

Every floor will have one or more terraces. So that such terraces shall not cut off light from the floor below, even small houses will be built with setbacks, as are skyscrapers today.

The garage will be part of the house and will be placed on the street front.

Service quarters will be at the front of the house; living rooms at the back.

All metal used in house construction will be so alloyed or treated as to render it noncorrosive.

In small houses the dining room, as a separate chamber, will be eliminated.

Houses, in the main, will tend to be smaller, but the fewer rooms they contain will be larger.

All rooms will be soundproof.

Steel for building will be replaced by another alloy half the weight but equal strength.






“The House of The Future” (April 1931) ²

For centuries the dwelling house has remained fundamentally unchanged. Bathrooms have been added, kitchens have achieved a certain degree of efficiency, electricity and steam heat have come to be commonplaces, but structurally the houses in which we live today have changed but little since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Certainly since the Georgian days there has been nothing new or progressive done in the field of architecture.

This should not be construed as a criticism of the styles of the past. They were excellent in their day; but this, most emphatically, is not their day. This is the twentieth century -- the century which as seen more important progress in our civilization than any other since the beginning of time.

Yet, with all our advantages, with all the aids of science and invention ready to hand, we continue not only to live in, but actually to build houses which are as outmoded as the ducking stool and the covered wagon.

...

We still insist upon placing our living quarters at the front, in the most overlooked and least private position in the house, and our service quarters at the back overlooking the garden that we prize so much; in fact, we continue to make our houses so little suited to our lives and so difficult to run that we are, in ever-increasing numbers, deserting them to live in apartments, where at least some of the more annoying problems are solved by someone else.

This desertion of the home is not natural, and I think not desired by most of the people who have been doing it. It is a very strong instinct in most people to have a home of their own, a place in which they may do as they like, when they like, and how they like.

...

In surveying what is actually being done and -- much more important -- what is going to be done, it must be realized that at the moment we are only on the threshold of what in a few years will undoubtedly be the universal architecture; and to be able to visualize what that architecture will be like, the interested person must realize the principles which are governing those architects and designers who are trying to create what we may call the twentieth-century style

What we are really doing is starting from the bottom, with our minds clear of the traditional styles and conventions of the past, and, starting from a purely utilitarian basis, trying to create a type of architectural beauty which reflects the spirit of the age and which will not soon be outdated

...

The keynote of al good contemporary work is that it must perfectly suit its ultimate purpose. We have returned to simplicity because we have realized in this age that the overornamentation and elaboration of the past are not in keeping with us today. We are more forthright people that were our forefathers, we bother less with forms and conventions, and so it is surely fitting that we carry our ideas into homes.

...

Let us not fall into the same error that has stifled architectural progress for so long; let us try to design and build houses in 1931 which in 1935 will still be perfectly in tune with our ever-progressing civilization.

In the interior will obtain the same simplicity, freedom form intricate decoration, and reliance upon the beauty of form, as the exterior will promise.

Architecture, after all, is primarily the presentation of masses in light. If the proportions are right, if the whole is designed with harmony and unity, beauty is bound to result.