The 1960s and 1970s were a surprisingly rich time for new ideas. A time when television executives were prepared to take risks and allow people with great imagination create unique series. "The Fantastic Journey" was a brilliantly conceived sci-fi series rushed into production and with probably not the budget it needed; but it was an inspirational concept that has been copied many times in the years since. A group of adventurers are ship-wrecked on a mysterious island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where they find the island consists of various time zones and dimensions populated by people and aliens from the past, future and other worlds as they try to find a way back home.
A frustrating model to build. Like the guy in the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" compelled to build a scale model of the mountain, this building has been in my head since 1977 when I first saw this series. It was inevitable that I would one day attempt to re-create it, but the task proved to be more problematic than I had envisaged. My original plan had been to stick tin foil around the tubes and to stick thin black lines to it to make the window frames - with the tin foil reflecting light when photographed. It proved far too tricky to do, and the scale of the window panes meant far too many little lines being KEPT STRAIGHT that it proved impossible to do as I had planned. In the end, I had to print the windows onto photographic paper - but my first attempt with the panes all the same colour looked ridiculous. Looking at photos of the original building (the Bonvanture Hotel in Los Angeles) I realised that what you see is a reflection of the sky and surrounding buildings. So I created this.