1964: Futurism and The Space Age

Souvenir postcard featuring Phillip Johnson's New York State Pavillion, 1964. Courtesy of Patty Knoetgen, Private Collection.

Souvenir postcard featuring Phillip Johnson’s New York State Pavillion, 1964. Courtesy of Patty Knoetgen, Private Collection.

The fair’s architecture best illustrates the notion of a “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe.” Designed during the nascent space age, many of the fair’s architects worked in the futurist style, drawing explicit inspiration from new transportation innovations from cars to jet planes to space technology forms. From IBM’s smooth bubble-like pavilion to Philip Johnson’s flying saucer-esque New York State Pavilion pictured at left, the fair’s design was overtly interested in space age forms.

Another popular and still standing structure, the Unisphere, furthered the fair’s theme through design. Pictured at right, the skeletal globe

Gilmore D. Clark's Unisphere pictured in 1965.

Gilmore D. Clark’s Unisphere pictured in 1965.

designed by Gilmore D. Clark and later by the Peter Muller-Munk Associates, was meant to suggest the interconnectedness of nations in a global economy, and highlight the expansive nature of the universe beyond earth. Both ideas adhere to the fair’s theme and highlight the period’s interest in the beyond.

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