FUTURISTISM

1909 - 1944

AVI4M Lesson 3
Dr. Zina Chernyavska
 HISTORY
The Italian Futurism is the first 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
experimentation.
• International art movement
founded in Italy in 1909
• Contrast to Romanticism
• Speed, noise, machines,
pollution, and cities
• Fearing and attacking
technology
 Futurist painters made the rhythm of their
repetitions of lines
CHARACTERISTIC
• Inspired by some photographic experiments, they
S were breaking motion into small sequences, and
using the wide range of angles within a given time-
frame all aimed to incorporate the dimension of time
within the picture
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
“No architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture
of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the
skeletons of 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 neoclassicism. “
Antonio Sant'Elia (1888 – 1916)

Antonio Sant'Elia was an Italian futurist architect with almost no finished work to show, who inspired the
movie sets for The 5th Element, Blade Runner and Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Though he didn't build a lot during his short life (he was only 28 when he was killed 1916 in the Battle of the
Isonzoduring the WWI), he left wonderfully inspiring and futuristically amazing sketches and has influenced
numerous architects and still does even today.
His Ideas..
 1. That Futurist architecture is the architecture of
FUTURIST ARCHITECTUREcalculation, without restriction to prior ideas,
boldness, 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

Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Drawing

Atkinson+Co, architecture studio from East London, rendered 3D visuals from Antonio's "Citta Nuova"
(New city) sketches, originating from 1912-1914:
 2. That Futurist architecture is not
because of this an dry combination of
practicality and usefulness, but
remains art, i.e. synthesis and
expression

Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Power Station

3. 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

Antonio Sant'Elia (1914),

House with external elevators
 4. That decoration as an element
applied to 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 coloured materials.

5. That, just as the ancients drew

inspiration for their art from the
elements of nature, we must 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
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Drawing efficient integration
6. That architecture as the art of
arranging forms according to preestablished
criteria is finished

7. That by the term “architecture” is meant

the endeavour 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
FUTURISTIC ARCHITECTURE in TORONTO

City Hall, 1965

Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario

Museum, 2007 
FUTURISTIC ARCHITECTURE in TORONTO

Sharp Centre for Design at OCAD University, 2004

John P. Robarts Research Library, 1971