The Accidental Futurist - Steven M. Johnson’s Utopic Visions
Over at The Atlantic, Steven Heller looks at the work of ex-urban planner/illustrator of sublime futuristic visions, Steven M. Johnson: Johnson might be the love child of the satirists Bruce McCall and Glen Baxter. In fact, design critic and former Dwell editor Allison Arieff described him as R. Crumb meets Buckminster Fuller. His distinct sardonic sensibility was borne of insatiable subversive desires. “I guess my story is unusual for a few reasons,” he told me recently, “one being that I sneered at art classes in high school, bypassed art school, and only took a couple of art classes in college, the main ones being pencil drawing classes taught by Bauhaus founder Josef Albers, when I was in my first undergraduate years majoring in English at Yale.”
Above is an “automobile abandonment zone,” where motorists can leave their troubled vehicles in exchange for public transit. The second is an exercise in enhanced leisure/home security: The Swimming Pool Moat. More of Johnson’s creations can be viewed here. (via Annals of Americus)
