Festival of Britain
1951

I would have loved to see...
I would have loved to see Verner Panton's "Visiona 2" exhibition or visited his Varna restaurant in Århus, Denmark, which my father had the pleasure of a few times.

I would also have loved to shop at "Den Permanente" in Copenhagen (a legendary store showing and selling the very best of Danish design) or seeing the completion of the Keops pyramid in Egypt around 2560 bc.

US Exhibit in Moscow
In a Buckminster Fuller dome with "Glimpses of America" by the Eames being simultaneously shown on 7 screens.

The Offices of Frank L Wright the day he designed Fallingwater.
Rumor or legend has it that FLW designed the entire Fallingwater House for Mr. Kaufman after Frank was informed that Mr. Kaufman was getting on a plane or maybe a train and was coming to FLW's offices to see the plans for his new house which FLW had been commissioned almost a year earlier to produce.

At that point in time it's been reported that FLW hadn't so much as put a single pencil line on a single sheet of paper. The flurry of activity by FLW's assistants, although he was said to have been totally calm throughout, if it's true it must have been something to witness.

And I'm not particularly a fan of FLW, but genius under the gun is always awesome.

It dates me...
...to say the least, to have to admit that I visited regularly den Permanente, that I have seen most of the Visiona?s, including Verner Panton?s. That I visited the Varna in Arhus (eating was just over my budget at the time), and I still have somewhere the strange yellow catalogue of the Memphis presentation I attended in Milan 1981, so it came as a relief to see the completion of the Keops pyramid as one of the historical references.
I have always wondered if the story about FLW and the design of Falling water was accurate. Kaufmann Jr.?s book on the subject reports exactly the same version of the events. His father needed 3-4 hours to get to Wright?s office and in that time Wright and his staff completed the drawings?I have looked at these drawings many times and knowing that you can not work with more than one person on the same drawing, at least not simultaneously, I always had doubts about this legend. Even if you have the complete concept in all it?s details in your head or on sketches, each of the produced drawings represent more than 3-4 hours of work even by the most skilled draftsman.
But my favourite moment in recent design history would be the1914 Köln meeting of the German Werkbund. I would have loved to face the bad weather of that famous day when Hermann Muthesius faced Henri Van De Velde in the discussion around the nature of future development in design. Muthesius defended a strictly rational approach that would lead to what he called type-forms. Van de Velde pleaded for the recognition of the creative and emotional aspects in design. Walter Gropius who attended the meeting wrote later from the battle front, where he was serving in the German army, to Van de Velde to support his point of view. The letter became one of the reasons why Van de Velde recommended Gropius as his successor in Weimar...etc.

Oh so bizzarre!
Woowoof, as I was reading this thread, I thought I'd like to post the 1893 fair as one of my choices as well! To have ridden that amazing ginormous Ferris Wheel must have been a truly incredible thing.

I also would love to have been one of the first westerners allowed into the Forbidden City in China or the Kyoto Imperial Palace in Japan...or maybe the shinto buddhist gardens of Ryonanji..imagine how alien all that would look to a western mind.

Wow Olive
that last photo of the zen garden is just another angle on my screen wallpaper picture. I love it.

Thanks, Olive!
When I went to Osaka in January to meet the in laws, we took a side trip to Kyoto. One thing after another, more stunning than the last. We sat on a long, deep porch looking out onto that garden. It took a great deal of effort to get up and leave.