Thanks to some good digging by pk at Bibliodyssey, here are some great old illustrations of the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle. I love the color and aging of the paper, and the time and effort that went into creating these images by hand. When these concepts were presented straight from the mind of the illustrator, there was a certain amount of idealism and imagination that meshed with the technicality of architectural drawing, that always tweaks both sides of my brain.

For example the third image in the series has what seem to be bubbles floating above the grounds; and the water in the fountains has a great cobalt blue hue.

Today’s computer generated concepts for proposed buildings can offer great realistic visions for a design, but there’s something lost in these types of images. It’s just all too convenient today to take an actual photo of a location for a proposed structure and superimpose the building almost exactly as it will look in a location.

PK also talks about using Google Alerts to scrounge up some of these illustrations.. gonna have to check that out!