Word: plasticity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Much of it, to be sure, has a tacky, plastic, here-today-blown-tomorrow look, as if it were a city made of credit cards. But much of it has grace and substance. From nations to corporations, everybody is there to hawk and hornblow. All the crammed buildings are engaged in a mad struggle for attention. And somehow, in its jostling, heedless, undisciplined energy, it makes a person happy to be alive in the 20th century...
...example, architects turned a huge dome inside out, revealing its supporting lining of intersticed steel so that its overall look suggests tripes à la mode de G.E. IBM, in a glorious defiance of sanity, has set what appears to be a 50-ton egg on a nest of plastic in the tops of metal trees. Johnson's Wax has suspended a huge gold clam over a blue pool inside six slender white pylons that rise high and flare into unearthly petals. Eastman Kodak has built a plaza under an undulating roof of thin-shell concrete that plays hide...
Ford's Magic Skyway is worth a wait of perhaps 30 minutes, on a cool day. But lines mass there as if the company were giving away Fords. The superb showmanship of putting people in new automobiles and driving them past an assemblage of plastic reptiles and plastic cavemen by Walt Disney is more than the contemporary world is able to resist. The prehistoric pageant lasts only twelve minutes. The car radio announces: "This is the world that was," and the rider swerves past little dinosaur eggs hatching before his very eyes, while off to the left...
...revolving in their seats to stop in front of segment after segment of a central stage. The star is a man who looks like Lowell Thomas full of formaldehyde. He sits in his kitchen, taps his foot nervously, blinks, and brags about his household appliances. He is made of plastic-Walt Disney again-and so is his dog, which grrrs and twitches on the floor. Caroline Kennedy saw the dog and wanted to take him home...
...nine to four seconds, will make every business phone a candidate for replacement. Cost: $5 for installation, plus $1.50 to $1.90 extra a month. Another innovation that A.T.&T. recently introduced is the Card Dialer, which enables a user to reach frequently dialed numbers by slipping a punched-hole plastic card into the base of the phone. It cuts dialing time to two seconds, costs $15 to install, plus $3.50 a month extra, with 40 free cards. This year A.T.&T. will bring out the Trim-line phone, whose dial is embedded in the receiver; aside from being good-looking...