will produce futurists sculpture, whose basis is architectonic , not only as a

construction of masses but also because the sculptural block will contain within
itself architectonic elements from the sculptural environment in which the object
exists.

It was to lead in SantElias work to a remarkable redefinition of the

man/building relationship, but for Boccioni, it was to have only the crudest
consequences.

Thus, from the armpit of the mechanic there could protrude a gear wheel, the
line of a table could slice through the head of a man reading, and the fanned
pages of the book could section his stomach.

At a more theoretical and metaphysical level, this idea clearly anticipates,

again , developments of the twenties.

we proclaim the absolute and complete abolition of determined lines and

closed statues. We split open the figure and include the environment within it.

Anticipating the breakdown of the barriers between inside and out which is
to be seen in the architecture of 1927 -33.

For us, the straight line will be alive and palpitating, will lend itself to all the
expressive necessities of our material, and its basic bare severity will be a
symbol of the metallic severity of the lines of modern machinery.

Subtlety lies in seeing that the straight line would be symbolic of, and not
inherent in, mechanical design.

A source of power capable of giving a rhythmic movement properly related to its

planes and lines.

Extension of the range of the sculptors materials, which appears among

the tabulated propositions at the end of the manifesto.

Destroy the purely literary and traditional nobility of bronze and marble deny
that any one material should be used exclusively for the whole sculptural
construction .

In the same year as the sculptural manifesto, the general theory of Futurism was
carried forward and broadened by Marinetti, who published a book composed of

stray pieces, lectures etc., which he welded into a roughly continuous rhetorical
exposition of his position under the title of Le Futurisme.

The book contradicts widely held believes about Futurism and brings it nearer to
the accepted cannons of Puritanism, humanitarianism etc., on which the
mainstream modern design is supposed to rest.
Marinetti proclaims that the Futurists are against anarchism. They were against
eternal permanent values( also anti-symbolist).

We who insist that a masterpiece must be burnt with the corpse of its author
against the conception of the immortal and imperishable, we set up the art of the
becoming, the perishable, the transitory and the expandable.

The alternative is to be the beauty of the machine and the love of a machine that
may be seen reddening the cheeks of mechanics.
You have doubtless heard the observation currently made by motorists and
factory directors motors a truly mysterious, they say. It is as if they had
personalities, minds and souls.

one finds today, with increasing ease, men of the people without culture or
education who are nevertheless endowed only with what I call the gift of
mechanical prophecy, or the flair for metals. They are workmen who have
already the education of the machine and in some way are affiliated to
machinery.
Le Futurisme also introduces three themes of prime importance to the
development of modern design : opposition to handicrafts, the un-monumental
architecture of democracy, and the power station as an apotheosis of technology.

And besides, I reply to you that a life of cosmopolitan travel, the spirit of
democracy and the decay of religions have made completely useless the
vast permanent and ornate buildings that once used to express royal
authority.
The contradictory forces of the banks, the leaders of fashion,
metallurgists, engineers , the right to strike, equality before the law, the
speed of international communication and the habits of hygiene and
comfort, demand instead large, well ventilated apartment houses, tunnels,
iron bridges, hillside villas open to the breeze and view, designed for the
rapid daily care of the body.
Aesthetics, responding directly to utility have nothing to do nowadays with
royal palaces of imposing line and granite basement we oppose them

with a fully mastered and definitive Futurists aesthetic of giant

locomotives, spiral tunnels, racing cars etc.
Classical architecture contrasted against engineering products, building equated
with railways and bridges and the three main building types identified, outside of
the field of transport and communication: large, well ventilated low rental
blocks, suburban villas sited for view and breeze, halls of assembly.
live in high tension chambers where a hundred- thousand volts flicker through
great bays of glass. They sit at control panels with meters, switches, rheostats
and everywhere the rich gleam of polished levers. These men enjoy, in short, a
life power between the walls of iron and crystal, they have furniture of steel,
twenty time lighter and cheaper than ours. They are free at last from the
examples of fragility and softness offered by wooden fabrics with their rural
ornamentsHeat, humidity and ventilation regulated by a brief pass of the hand,
they feel the fullness and solidity of their own will
Two years later, Marinetti returned to this theme in his Manifesto of Geometrical
and Mechanical Splendour, and the Sensibility of numbers( March 1914), but with
a difference.

Nothing is more beautiful than a great humming power station, holding back the
hydraulic pressures of a whole mountain range and the electric power for a
whole landscape, synthesised in control panels bristling with levers and gleaming
commutators
Their enthusiastic acceptance of machinery and urban life remained untouched,
but their view of the proper artistic consequences of their social orientation had
undoubtedly altered.
Boccionis preference expressed for straight lines probably marks the beginning
of the change.
Futurism, oriented toward the world of machinery and technology and cubism
regarded as a pure geometrical construct of the mind, were drawing very close
together and by the beginning of 1914 it was time to realise the mechanistic
inspiration of futurism in terms of the pure geometrical forma towards which
Parisian art was tending. The achievement was SantElias and the product was
Futurist architecture.