The Impossible City…
Mark Lascelles Thornton is underway on a massive drafting endeavor: a fully-realized skyscraper city that spans an 8 foot by 5 foot spread. “The Happiness Machine,” as he is calling the project, collects the world’s most iconic superstructures and lines them up along a monumental axis that forms the spine of the imaginary metropolis…
Thornton’s impossible skyline borrows towering landmarks new and old from eight major cities, including New York, Chicago, London, Shanghai, and Taipei. The Willis Tower (aka the Sears Tower) and Taipei 101 bookend the piece, while its center is occupied by the likes of One World Trade Center, the Gherkin, and the Shard…
Read the whole story at Architizer; and see more of Thornton’s work on his Tumblr (from whence, the illustartions above).
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As we reorient ourselves, we might recall that it was in this date in 1967 that the first Human Be-In was held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Announced on the cover of the first issue of the The Oracle as “A Gathering of the Tribes”– and occasioned by a new law banning the use of LSD– it featured performances by the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, and speeches and readings by Richard Alpert (AKA “Ram Dass”), Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jerry Rubin. “Refreshments”– “White Lightening,” specially formulated tabs of acid– were supplied by “peoples’ chemist” Owsley Stanley. Hell’s Angels handled security, which amounted to reuniting lost children with their parents.
The Be-In of 1967 kicked off the Summer of Love.
