I'm not sure why mobile homes stacked inside a concrete structure would be better than an apartment building. Since the 'apartmobile' was never built, I'm assuming that whatever advantages it might have had weren't sufficient to justify its construction.
This artist's conception of an eight-story steel and concrete building shows the brainchild of actor Don Beddoe which he labels an "apartmobile." The idea is to make more efficient use of land in areas where acreage is too expensive for a trailer park. Each trailer or mobile home would be lifted by a crane to its floor and inserted in its own place. (AP Wirephoto - 1968)
San Juan Capistrano Coastline Dispatch - Mar 13, 1968
Apparently it's "one of Wyoming’s default trivia tidbits" that there are only two escalators in the entire state. I just learned that piece of trivia.
The escalators are both located in the city of Casper inside banks. One is at the main branch of Hilltop National Bank. The other is in the downtown branch of First Interstate Bank.
The Sonata of Sleep wasn't a musical composition. Instead it was a building designed (but never built) in the 1930s by Soviet architect Konstantin Melnikov. He envisioned it as a place where Soviet workers could enjoy scientifically-enhanced sleep. Details from Cabinet magazine:
“Without sleep,” Melnikov argued, “fresh air will do little for our health.” He devised a building in which hundreds of workers could partake of its benefits at the same time. Named “Sonata of Sleep”—a pun on son, the Russian word for sleep or dream—the building consisted of two large dormitories either side of a central block containing washrooms. The dormitories had sloping floors, to obviate the need for pillows, and the beds were to be built-in “like laboratory tables,” in the words of Frederick Starr, author of the standard monograph on Melnikov. Starr goes on to describe the further pains Melnikov took over the ambiance:
At either end of the long buildings were to be situated control booths, where technicians would command instruments to regulate the temperature, humidity, and air pressure, as well as to waft salubrious scents and “rarefied condensed air” through the halls. Nor would sound be left unorganized. Specialists working “according to scientific facts” would transmit from the control centre a range of sounds gauged to intensify the process of slumber. The rustle of leaves, the cooing of nightingales, or the soft murmur of waves would instantly relax the most overwrought veteran of the metropolis. Should these fail, the mechanized beds would then begin gently to rock until consciousness was lost.
Model of Melnikov's Sonata of Sleep image source: interwoven
The exact same thing happened to Claudine Rossi of Caderousse, France in 1971. She left her house to go shopping, slammed the front door shut, and the whole building fell down.
If I can find one more example of this phenomenon, I'll classify it as 'no longer weird'.
In a previous post we looked at Soviet bus stops. It turns out that the Soviet era produced some weird gas stations as well. In particular, the flying saucer gas stations of Kyiv.
They looked cool, and made it so that one didn't need to worry about which side of the car the fuel tank was on.
But they had a tendency to leak fuel from overhead and had high maintenance costs. So they were eventually abandoned.
Marketing psychologist Ernest Dichter argued that home buyers place great emphasis on the feel of doorknobs when looking at a house, because "The doorknob offers the only way you can caress a house."
Clipping from "Emotion brings out the buying power," by Roger Ricklefs in The Sunbury Daily Item (Nov 21, 1972):
As a leader of the "qualitative" school of motivational research, [Ernest Dichter] believes that the real reason people buy one product over another is often a deep-seated emotion. Psyche in depth will reveal it, he thinks.
Why do big doorknobs help sell a house? Why do some men become irrationally hostile when their sock drawers are empty? Such are the questions that intrigue researchers like Mr. Dichter...
in the past two or three years Du Pont, Alcoa, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Schenley Industries and dozens of other well-known companies have commissioned studies from Mr. Dichter's Institute for Motivational Research here. The institute has annual volume of $600,000 and profits of $80,000 to $100,000.
Many people find Dichter's interpretations far-fetched. But people who accept the basic beliefs of modern psychologists find them quite plausible.
The psychologist says he's found that even a commonplace object like a doorknob has a surprising emotional significance to buyers.
"The doorknob offers the only way you can caress a house; you can't caress the walls," he says. "The way a product fills a hand is very important. How a handle does this will make an engineer prefer one technical product over another — and he doesn't even realize it," Mr. Dichter says.
During part of a baby's embryonic development, the thumb fills the palm of the hand, Mr. Dichter says. The new-born infant thus exhibits a strong desire to grasp objects, possibly to fill the palm of the hand again, the psychologist adds.
As he sees it, the same instinct later prompts a sub-conscious tendency to judge a house by its doorknob or a tool by its handle. Mr. Dichter says these findings and theories prompted a California lockmaker to enlarge the doorknobs it manufactured.
Even men's socks can inspire passion, Mr. Dichter asserts. "We find that an empty sock drawer is a symbol of an empty heart," Mr. Dichter said in a study for Du Pont's hosiery section. "When the husband finds that his sock drawer is not overflowing, he interprets his wife's neglect as symptomatic of her lack of consideration, concern and love."
Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig has been on a mission to raise awareness of Soviet bus stops. He feels that they're an under-appreciated form of architectural art, "built as quiet acts of creativity against overwhelming state control." But he warns that they're disappearing fast due to demolition.
He collected together over 150 of his photographs in the 2015 book Soviet Bus Stops. More recently, a documentary film, again titled Soviet Bus Stops, follows his years-long effort to photograph the bus stops.
The original tower was topped by a 51-foot revolving replica of the blue Bromo-Seltzer bottle, which was illuminated with 596 lights and could be seen 20 miles away. Due to structural concerns, the bottle was removed in 1936.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.