Visioning Yesterday's World of Tomorrow
![Yesterdays World of Tomorrow [Read the Story..]](http://c0170361.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1924006_197913_acf6620757_l.jpg)
By Dirk HR Spennemann
26 Aug 2009
Inspired by the Space Race between the (then) Soviet Union and the U.S.A., futuristic architecture was en vogue in the late 1950s.
Australia's most iconographic building of that time is the 'Martian Embassy', the Australian Academy of Sciences Building (Canberra, ACT, Australia).
The 45.75m-diameter self-supporting reinforced concrete dome was designed by Sir Roy Grounds, of Grounds, Romberg and Boyd (Melbourne. Victoria) and completed in 1959. The curvature of the dome meets the ground with sixteen scalloped arches. A shallow moat that surrounds the dome gives the structure both a floating appearance and provide for a rich play of light.
The images were taken with my Nikolbia TTV812 camera (see related story: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/10405), which provides for magical focus drop-offs, and were postprocessed with SilverEfexPro for cyanotinting.
