Antonio

Sant'Elia
FUTURIST ARCHITECT

Futurist Architecture

Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of

architecture born in Italy, characterized by strong chromaticism,
long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, urgency and
lyricism: it was a part of Futurism, an artistic movement founded
by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first
manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism in 1909.

The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, and artists

(such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero,
and Enrico Prampolini) but also a number of architects.

A cult of the machine age and even a glorification of war and

violence were among the themes of the Futurists.

The latter group included the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who,

though building little, translated the futurist vision into an urban
form.

SantElia-Life and Works

Antonio Sant'Elia was born in Como, Lombardy.

A builder by training, he opened a design office in

Milan in 1912 and became involved with the Futurist
movement.

Between 1912 and 1914, influenced by industrial

cities of the United States and the architects
Renzo Picasso, Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, he began
a series of design drawings for a futurist Citt Nuova
("New City") that was conceived as a symbol of a new
age.

Many of these drawings were displayed at the only

exhibition of the Nuove Tendenze group exhibition in
1914 at the "Famiglia Artistica" gallery.

Villa Elisi, San Maurizio (Como)

Sant'Elia's only surviving
buiding
Antonio Sant'Elia, 1912

Vision

His vision was for a highly industrialized and mechanized city of

the future, which he saw not as a mass of individual buildings but
a vast, multi-level, interconnected and integrated urban
conurbation designed around the "life" of the city.

His extremely influential designs featured vast monolithic

skyscraper buildings with terraces, bridges and aerial walkways
that embodied the sheer excitement of modern architecture and
technology.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURIST
ARCHITECTURE

Antonio Sant'Elia signed the

"Manifesto of Futurist
Architecture" in 1914, the year
he met Marinetti.

The Futurists had been railing

against the anachronism of the
museum cities for five years
before they found an architect
to realize their visions.

All of Sant'Elia's projects were

purely visionary as no futurist
building was ever built.
MARIO CHIATTONES
CATHEDRAL OF FUTURISM

Key Features of the Manifesto

I COMBAT AND DESPISE:

All the pseudo-architecture of the avant-garde, Austrian, Hungarian,

German and American

All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative,

monumental, pretty and pleasing

The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments

and palaces

Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidal forms that are
static, solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new
sensibility

The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly

materials

I PROCLAIM:

That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of

audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced
concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard, textile fiber, and of all those
substitutes for wood, stone and brick that enable us to obtain
maximum elasticity and lightness

That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination

of practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and
expression

That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature
possess an emotive power a thousand times stronger than
perpendiculars and horizontals, and that no integral, dynamic
architecture can exist that does not include these

That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is

absurd, and that the decorative value of Futurist architecture
depends solely on the use and original arrangement of raw or bare
or violently colored materials

I Proclaim:

That just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of
nature, we who are materially and spiritually artificialmust find that
inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have
created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression,
the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration

That architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established

criteria is finished

That by the term architecture is meant the endeavor to harmonize the

environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform
the world of things into a direct projection of the world of the spirit

From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can

grow, since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be
its impermanence and transience. Things will endure less than us. Every
generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the
architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which
has already been affirmed by Words in -freedom, plastic Dynamism, Music
without quadrature and the Art of noises, and for which we fight without
respite against traditionalist cowardice

Drawings

HOUSE WITH EXTERNAL ELEVATORS

Drawings

POWER STATION

NEW CITY

SKYSCRAPERS

Applications in Urban Context

It is plausible that the center of Brazils capital, Brasilia, as a big urban

bus station, was conceived by the urban planner Lucio Costa in the late
1950s influenced by SantElias drawings.

SantElias futuristic architecture, composed of a handful of images,

reveals the possibilities of drawing as a sign of architecture and of a
movement. Largely due to his drawings, with their exaggerated use of
vanishing lines, it was possible to conjure up graphic solutions to
represent power and velocity.

Raymond Loewys inauguration of the streamline style is very likely

inspired by SantElias works.

Many later projects absorbed his proposals, such as: the openings in
steel trellises, the sloping walls, the semi-circular base vigorous towers,
the vertical rhetoric, the multi-levelled circulation, stream-lined forms.
All these realities were found suggested in the graphic quality of his
drawings

References

www.solarflarestudios.com

www.thecharnelhouse.org

Manifesto of Futurist Architecture

An Investigation of Futurist Architectural Design by Rafael

Perrone and Daniela Buchler

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