Utopia and Paper Architecture
- Janus Wayne Lim
- Mar 3, 2021
- 3 min read
Futurism and Constructivism through excerpts from of Antonio Sant’Elia, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Yona Friedman, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner.
Sant'Elia's designs inspired Blade Runner buildings
Antonio Sant’Elia & Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: Futurist architecture
Sant’Elia and Marinetti were key members of the Futurist movement in architecture. The following are the statements that they have made with regards to Futurist architecture
Modern architecture unnecessarily incorporates stylistic elements to ‘mask the modern skeleton’, and such ‘carnival decorative incrustations’ have their roots in antiquity.
The Futurist city must be rebuilt: It should be dynamic in all parts both for living and working.
Decorations must be abolished, and instead replaced with scientific and technical expertise.
The following below is a list things that the author opposes and despises:
Pseudo avant-garde architecture
Classical, theatrical, frivolous architecture
Reconstruction of monuments in ancient palaces
Forms that are static and heavy
The following is a list of things the author proclaims with regards to Futurist architecture:
Calculation of audacity and simplicity, enabling maximum elasticity and lightness
Architecture remains art, in its synthesis and expression.
Oblique and elliptical lines are more emotive than perpendicular ones
Decoration imposed upon architecture is an absurdity
Inspiration from the elements of nature
Architecture is the art of arranging form
The architect must endeavour to harmonise
The fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be obsolescenceand transcience
Yona Friedman: The 10 Principles of Space Town Planning
Friedman completed the Museum of Simple Technology in which the principles of self-construction from local materials like bamboo were applied
Friedman was an architect, urban planner and designer influential in the late 1950s, best known for his theory of “mobile architecture”.
The following are Frieman’s 10 principles:
The future of towns will be centres of life and its functions. It will be more automated and the ‘raw worker’ will lose its importance.
The new society of twins must jot be influence by the town planner.
Agriculture must be present in cities.
Towns must be air-conditioned
Modern technology must be leveraged
The new town must be an intensification of existing towns, and not ‘risen from the desert’.
Living quarters juxtaposed and superimposed
The buildings that make up twins must be skeletons that can be ‘filled at will’.
3 million inhabitants is the empirically optimum size
Future cities will contain as much as 85% of humanity (currently 50%)
Constant: New Babylon
New Babylon by Constant Nieuwenhuys
New Babyon is an anti-capitalist city perceived and designed in 1959-74 as a future potentiality by visual artist Constant Nieuwenhuys
The following are statements made by Constant with regards to his conception of the New Babylon
Institutions have been exhausted, and individualist culture is at an end
The task of the artist is to prepare the way for a future mass culture, sought within mechanization
The New Babylon project arose as an illustrative sketch and elaboration of his ideas of the future city; the thought and play model for the establishment of principles for a new and different culture.
New Babylon may be used as a proposal to give material shape to the theory of unitary town planning; it maintains a creative game with an imaginary environment
The modern city has fallen victim to utility; creativity is lost and thus ‘living’ is compromised
New Babylon takes account functional problems of current town planning. Its main theme is a new regard for social space
Architectural features of the New Babylon are as follows:
Division of scaffolding into smaller units
Raised platform, dwelling and social space form vast coherent edifice
Interior space consist of a large public space serving the purposes of social life, divided by means of moveable walls
Interconnected sectors, entering into the adventure of a labyrinth
The project is dependent upon sociological, psychological, scientific, technological, organizational and artistic factors.
Naum Gabo/ Antoine Pevsner: Basic Principles of Constructivism
Stone with Collar - Sculpture by Gabo
Siblings who were influential, sculptors, theorists in Russia’s post Revolution avant garde, pioneers of twentieth century sculpture. They laid down the basic principles of Constructivism.
The following are ideas that these men reject:
Closed spatial circumference as the plastic expression of th moulding of space
Closed mass as an exclusive element for the building up of three-dimensional and architectonic bodies in space
Decorative colour as a painterly element
Decorative lines
Static elements of form in plastic art; Lack of real movement and the inclusion of time
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