\u201cA racing car \u2026 is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.\u201d Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Architecture should take over not just the ground and the space above it, said Sant\u2019Elia, but should also burrow into it: buildings should \u201cplunge storey deep into the earth.\u201d And ornament should be replaced by a scientific approach to building, in which beauty would emerge through the logical lines and masses of the buildings. Architects should abandon their love of decoration, moldings, porticoes and other antique details, and place their faith in the grouping of masses on a grand scale.<\/p>\n
Drawing the future<\/h3>\n
The past, then, was laid aside, and the aim was to find a new way of building that truly lived up to modern needs, modern technology and the pace of modern life. Sant\u2019Elia developed these ideas in a breathtaking series of drawings of cities\u2014the drawings may have come before the manifesto, but this is not known for sure.<\/p>\n
Sant\u2019Elia\u2019s drawings depict not just skyscrapers, but also building types of the 20th century\u2014airports, power stations and so on. Most dramatic are grand apartment buildings, with tall, stepped fa\u00e7ades, sweeping roadways and narrow bridges, and dramatic, towering railway stations.<\/p>\n
The futurists liked to portray their movement as coming from their own thoughts alone, and representing a complete turning-away from past and present architecture. But Sant\u2019Elia\u2019s drawings owe something to the skylines of American cities, especially New York. They are unique, though, and have been widely admired since they were shown in an exhibition called Nuove Tendenze in 1914.<\/p>\n
A changed world<\/h3>\n
But they are only drawings. Sant\u2019Elia joined the Italian army and was killed in the First World War before he had the chance to build much. When the war ended in 1918, the world seemed a different place, and in architecture the time for the outrageous claims of the futurists seemed long gone. But architects remembered Sant\u2019Elia\u2019s drawings, and his ideas about the coming together of technology and an ornament-free machine aesthetic. His ideas had an influence on the more straight-laced designs of the modernist architects of the 1920s and 1930s. His sense of drama probably also influenced those who wanted to find a modern route to grand effects\u2014from the architects of Art Deco to Ridley Scott in the film \u201cBlade Runner.\u201d Even in the 1980s the future seemed futurist.<\/p>\n
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