Retro rewind The View-Master makes a come back as a toy for architectural buffs

May 27, 1999
Web posted at: 12:14 p.m. EDT (1614 GMT)

By Laurel Shannon
CNN Interactive Style Editor

(CNN) -- An unassuming retro toy is taking on new life as a show-and-tell show-stopper for the water-cooler set.

In an artful blend of the cerebral and the gee-whiz, two architects are producing a series of View-Master reels of noteworthy modern buildings.

Yes, those funky little 3-D discs you played with as a kid are back. View*Productions, asterisk and all, has so far released two Architectural Classics packages of reels: Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, and three houses by Bruce Goff, a mid-century architect known in design circles for his off-the-wall modernism.

It's fun, but it's also seriously academic.

"What's catching people with this is that it brings back memories of their childhood," says Michael Kaplan, Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Tennessee and co-founder, with architect Gregory Terry, of View*Productions. "As an architect, it seems to be the perfect medium for conveying what the architect's intentions were."

Seeing double? 3-D image of Fallingwater. The viewer (or red-and-blue 3-D glasses, if you have them) directs one image to each eye, creating the illusion of depth

Fallingwater -- resplendent in 2-D

Unlike regular photographs or drawings, which depict a space in two-dimensional format, View-Master reels use old-fashioned stereoscopic technique to give depth and perspective in sharp color. Imagine the difference between reading a car manual and revving up the engine.

In the Fallingwater package, for instance, one frame puts you close to a boulder where you can peer beneath a cantilevered patio toward a terrace that seems to levitate amid the trees.

"We're tapping into nostalgia -- on the adult-toy aspect, on the low-tech aspect of it," says Kaplan. "Yet it delivers an image better than what you can get in any medium."

The master, apparently, agreed. The liner notes of the Fallingwater package quote Wright saying in 1953: "The only photograph that can be made of architecture is three-dimensional. ... So I've never been much interested in photographs of my work until lately, when this third-dimension process came in."

Even with 3-D photography available, Wright remained a holdout. "There's this about architecture," he went on to say. "Painting you can see, you can get it with your eye; music you can hear; but a building you must experience. It's in three dimensions, and no one has ever truly seen a building in a photograph. No one ever will."

The 3-D work did come closer than other photography, though, even for the demanding Wright.

According to Kaplan, it was the then-relatively-new Stereo Realist -- a camera that vastly simplified the process of 3-D photography -- that so captivated Wright. The first stereoscopic images were actually announced to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts by Sir Charles Wheatstone in June 1838. They skyrocketed in popularity after catching the fancy of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the Crystal Palace -- the building that housed Britain's Great Exhibition of 1851. A Stereoscopic Society was formed in 1893.

Stereoscopic photographs are produced using a special camera that takes separate images for the left and right eye. The viewing mechanism -- whether it's a View-Master, cellophane-lens red-and-blue glasses or a vintage "stereoscope" that looks a little like goggles on a wooden handle -- ensures that each eye sees only the intended image, creating the illusion of depth.

Picture this The Stereo Realist camera made 3-D photography accessible to amateurs. Frank Lloyd Wright was a fan

Kaplan has been taking stereoscopic photos for decades, and counts among his prized images one of the U.S. Pavilion (designed by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao) at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.

The set of three reels in the Fallingwater package ($31.95 with viewer, $21.95 without) show the exterior, interior and details of the Bear Run, Pennsylvania, home that Wright designed for the Kaufmann family, founders of a Pittsburgh department store.

Details pop out: A suspended, open-tread staircase creates a play of line and shadow; the expanse of the flagstone living room floor glistens as if glazed in water; you even sense the claustrophobically low ceilings that evoke Wright's disdain for taller people.

Bruce Goff is hardly as known or admired as Wright, but the View*Productions package is likely to delight modern-design insiders and introduce the self-taught architect's work to a wider audience.

Kaplan sums up Goff's legacy with equal parts admiration and irreverence: "Bruce Goff was an eclectic mid-century architect who did kind of oddball things."

The three "oddities" included in the 21-image homage include the Ford House (Aurora, Illinois, 1947), the Joe Price House and Studio (Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1956-1974) and the Bavinger House (Norman, Oklahoma, 1950).

Among that set ($28.95 with the viewer, $18.95 without), the Bavinger House has an unusual Tarzan-meets-the-Jetsons feel. Circular walkways with net "railings" overlook a lush indoor garden, accented by lamps with UFO-like elliptical shades and a suspended pot-belly fireplace.

Other reels are in the works. Watch for one on the Johnson Wax Building, another influential Wright project, and a series on Columbus, Indiana, a small town that boasts unique modern buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Richard Meier and other architectural luminaries.

"Fallingwater: Wright and the 3rd Dimension" and "Bruce Goff: 3 Houses" are available at architecture bookstores or online through amazon.com. The reels and viewer also can be ordered directly from View*Productions at (423) 531-2927 or by e-mailing view@usit.net.