[Image: «Fantasy House 7» by Charley Harper]. I don’t have much further information about these images, to be honest—other than to point out that they fulfilled the role of a kind of pop-speculative domestic architecture from the near-future for an earlier generation of media consumers—but click through to the Charley Harper website to see more of his work, or consider picking up a copy of the Charley Harper coffee table book for the holidays. Elsewhere, extraordinary cantilevers stretch like the prows of exotic ships over postcard-ready landmarks, and the whole series has the feel of a rather wholesome advertising campaign for the National Park service—complete with conspicuously well-placed Ford automobiles reminding you that the future is only one or two rest stops away. The Future is Accessible by Automobile
[Image: «Fantasy House 10» by Charley Harper]. Harper—who sadly passed away back in 2007—remains more widely known for his stylized animals and landscape scenes, but these uncharacteristic stabs at architectural futurism are worth a passing glance in any survey of 20th-century speculative work. [Image: «Fantasy House 2» by Charley Harper]. Minimalist cubes are suspended on cables from vast geological forms and glass houses pop up expectedly in the deepest recesses of American show caves. [Image: «Fantasy House 10» by Charley Harper]. These are so-called «fantasy houses» by artist Charley Harper, originally published in, as far as I can tell, the November 1959 issue of Ford Times, exactly 55 years ago.
