FRIDAY FUNNY: The Future Of Flight…In Retrospect

Posted by Heidi SchwartzEames-ExpandingAirport-Gate15

Back in the 1950s, a team of architects and engineers (including famed industrial designer and creator of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, Eero Saarinen) put together a brief animated film on behalf of Washington International Airport. The airport, which is now known as Washington Dulles International Airport, was designed by Saarinen along with the civil engineering firm of Ammann and Whitney.

At the time, many of the concepts incorporated into the master plan—like mobile departure lounges to transport passengers from the terminal directly to the plane—were considered quite revolutionary. Others have been deemed completely impractical.

Take a look at this nine minute film, entitled “The Expanding Airport,” which was written, produced, and directed by none other than Charles and Ray Eames.

How many of these ideas were successful and how many were flops? How many of you noticed what magazine the male passenger was reading when he almost missed his mobile lounge? I’ll give you one hint: it wasn’t Today’s Facility Manager.

Many thanks to TFM‘s FM Frequency Columnist Charles Carpenter for sending along this link.