in Innovation

Tangible Futures example: Hugh Ferriss’s delineations

Imagine it is the year 1900 and you own a large corporation needing offices in a major city. You want to construct a building that makes a grand statement of your financial strength and contributes to the civic infrastructure. Currently the highest buildings are about 20 stories, but you are told new construction techniques are capable of building much higher. What would such a structure look and feel like? How much usable office space would there be? Would people want to work that high in the air?

Working within the constraints of new building codes and executives’ demands for bigger, more productive office space, Hugh Ferriss issued dramatic depictions of buildings that informed architects and inspired corporations. In his time, these illustrations were radically dramatic, opening the eyes of architects and corporations to the possibilities. Using the raw knowledge of architecture, he created a tangible vision and the visual language to understand the potential of skyscrapers. His style evolved to not only inform but also to elicit emotional reactions.

For a future you can conceive but not quite visualize, how might a film, a simulation, or a prototype business situation change your strategy?

  1. This is what men are made for:Science Arts and Human Values.
    Please help to eradicate ignorance, but first eradicate starvation, and insanity, help the people of the 3rd world to become more self sufficient, to become independent from jobs of exploitation, under paid, and corrupted goverments.
    I my self without having technical skills of architecture, i have vision, and i see a better world, a healthy world.
    But well… I f i’ve been lucky, i grew up on the streets and it took me 47 years to learn that we can be better. I know which are the sources of ignorance and it is very difficult to fight against this monster of the systems that’s been opressing for the whole history of human kind.
    From being animals to become religious fanatics and the domination of it, to the perpetual video game machine, to all the drugs, and ways of waste our only single precious lives, throwing out, living for nothing, it’s been said to us how to live, how to think, how to behave stereotyping absurdity, falling in to moments of frustration, despair, confusion, sterotyping personalities, trying to find something:WHERE? and WHAT?. Knowledge. Wisdom, but people is hungry…..and there is no way to think with clarity.
    We are going to wait until the power of few men that control the world with their lies, and shows, but how come a man can have a leader? i doubt of most men i see every day in down-town, i doubt of every religion that controls, and make men do the most terrible irreversible actions, in deep matters is nothing but the confution, and panic that brings ignorance, all those things create a sense of insecurity.. . . . .
    this and more, and i don’t know but i might be imagining all the things that are happening, perhaps it is just my imagination, and everything is the way it should be, but that i remember, just by SCIENCE AND ARTS, we could do better
    but first eradicate poverty and starvation.
    I have some ideas but i am powerless, i do not have the capital. and in this the economy doesn’t work it is distorted, it is such a disparity, the benefit of few and the misery of most, it should be a time for something new. ultrain

  2. The preceding comment is inappropriate in light of this genius. We need to look to the heigts of creation to inspire us to something other than the depressing circumstances of the lowest this world has to offer. Why must we always hear someone’s crying in an attempt to drown out this magnificence. If you want to reduce poverty and ignorance, have only the number of children you can afford and stop attempting to make us responsible for everyone’s bad choices.

  3. But you ARE responsible for other peoples bad choices. Maybe not you personally, but your society as a whole greatly benefits from trade agremeents, foreign policies etcetera which keeps the 3rd world on its knees. As a citizen of the EU i think its shameful how blind and ignorant Americans and Europeans are to the causes of poverty. The have resources we desire, and keeping them impoverished puts us in a better bargaining position.

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