HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IV

Module 1(f)
History of Architecture IV
Faculty - Ar. Laxmi Menon
Assistant Professor
 Futurism
• Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born
in Italy, characterized by long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion,
urgency and lyricism:
• It is the first international art movement that can be considered an
avant-garde movement.
• They introduced with their art an ideological interest that affected
deeply culture and even social costumes, when denies all the past,
substituting it by stylistic and technical experimentations.
• 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
• It is a contrast to Romanticism, Speed, noise, machines, pollution, and
cities, fearing and attacking technology.
• They exalt Science and technique but they want them to be poetic and
lyric.
• In the Futurist manifest they mention the destruction of historical city
and museums.
• The characteristics of the movement were their interest in an art forged
out of the beauty of speed and a glorification of war.
• The physical movement as long as speed is concerned, is the cohesive
factor that allows the fusion of object and space.
• They aimed at eliminating the basic dualism of the traditional culture.
• It includes amazing shapes with dynamic lines and sharp contrasts,
and the use of technologically advanced materials.
• The Art Deco style of architecture with its streamlined forms was
regarded as futuristic when it was in style in the 1920s and 1930s.
Futuristic painters
• Futuristic painters made the rhythm of their
repetition of lines.
• Inspired by some photographic
experiments they were breaking motion
into small sequences and using the wide
range of angles within a given timeframe
all aimed to incorporate the dimension of
time within the picture.
F T Marinetti – The first Futurist
“ It is in Italy that we are issuing this
manifesto of ruinous and incendiary
violence, by which we today are founding
futurism because we want to deliver Italy
from its gangrene of professors,
archaeologists, tourist guides and
antiquaries….. For the dying, for invalids
and for prisoners it may be alright. It is
perhaps some sort of balm for their
wounds, the admirable past, at a moment
when the future is denied them. But we will
have none of it, we, the YOUNG,
Italian Poet Filippo
STRONG and LIVING futurists.!”
Tommaso Marinetti 1909
Futurist Architecture
“ No architecture has existed since 1700. A
moronic mixture of the most various stylistic
elements used to mask the skeletons of the
modern houses is called modern architecture.
The new beauty of Cement and Iron are
profaned by the superimposition of motley
decorative incrustations that cannot be
justified either by constructive necessity or by
our (modern) taste and whose origins are in
Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in
that idiotic flowering of stupidity and
impotence that took the name of Neo
Antonio Sant’Elia classicsm.
(1888 – 1916)
His Ideas
• He declared that architecture must again
begin from the beginning.
• He called for an architecture of new
materials, without ornament or decorations
and an architecture of oblique and elliptical
lines.
• He abandons the traditional architectural
presentations forms plan and elevation and
the emphasis on construction details and
relies entirely on perspective drawings
because they allowed him to convey the
atmosphere of urban dynamism.
 1. That futurist architecture is the
architecture of calculations, of
audacious temerity and of simplicity;
the architecture of reinforced concrete,
steel, glass, cardboard, textile fibre,
and of all those substitutes for wood,
stone, and brick that enable us to
obtain maximum elasticity and
lightness.
2. Futurist architecture is not because of
this an arid combination of practicality
and usefulness but remains art ie.
Synthesis and expressions.
3. Oblique and elliptical 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.
Power plant
4. 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.

5. As the ancients drew inspiration for

their art from the elements of nature, we
who are materially or superficially artificial
must find that inspiration in the elements
of the utterly new mechanic world we
have created and of which architecture
must be the most beautiful expression, the
most complete synthesis, the most
efficacious integration.
6. Architecture as the art of arranging forms
according to pre established criteria is finished.
7. 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.
Lingotto factory
Lingotto factory in Turin. With
its test track on the roof, it was
recognized in 1934 as the first
futurist invention in
architecture – Influential and
impressive
Le Corbusier called it ‘one of
the most impressive site in
industry and a guideline for
townplanning
 Neo Futurism
• Pioneered from late 1960s and early 1970s by Finnish architects Eero
Saarinen and Alvar Aalto, American architect Adrian
Wilson and Charles Luckman; Danish architects Henning
Larsen and Jørn Utzon;the architectural movement was later
named Neo-Futurism by French architect Denis Laming.
• In the early 21st century, Neo-Futurism has been relaunched by
innovation designer Vito Di Bari with his vision of "cross-pollination of
art and cutting edge technology for a better world" applied to the
project of the city of Milan at the time of the Universal Expo 2015
• The routine use of the term futurism – although influenced by Antonio
Sant'Elia's vision of Futurist architecture – must be well differentiated
from the values and political implications of the Futurist movement of
the years 1910–1920.
• The futurist architecture created since 1960 may be termed Neo-
Futurism, and is also referred as Post Modern Futurism or Neo-
Futuristic architecture.
 Neo Futurism examples
& their architects

Civil Justice Cathedral of Brasília (Oscar

Centre, Manchester (2008) Niemeyer, 1960)
by Denton Corker Marshall,
notable for its cantilevers and
straight lines.

Geisel Library, University of Portland Building in Portland,

California, San Diego (William Oregon (Michael
Pereira, 1970) Graves, 1982)