As the 2003 Artist in Residence at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California, Syd Mead mounted a one-man exhibition and produced this art piece specifically for that show, which was then bestowed to PCC and now hangs in the Shatford Library on campus.
This illustration depicts the first launch of an elaborate construction called the "Village Machine" — designed to carry several dozen passengers to isolated global locations for remote adventures with all the creature comforts of a world-class, six-star resort. The scene is the polar underground fabrication facility just as the launch aperture is opened and the finished machine, with its complement of adventurous passengers, lifts off — bound for an exotic destination with the passengers and entire crew safely strapped into acceleration couches in the uppermost unit.
A characteristic Mead vision: radical technology in service of leisure, engineered with the same rigor as anything military or industrial. The future is comfortable. It launches from the ice.