SPACED-OUT…

DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE UNABLE TO FIT IN OUR UNREAL(IZED) ARCHITECTURE EXHIBIT

Often in the course of sifting through materials for inclusion in our library exhibits, we come across an item or two perfectly in fitting with our theme, but which, nonetheless, have to be left out given the constraints of limited space in our display cases. Such was the case in setting up our most recent exhibit, Unreal(ized) Architecture. The Wolfsonian-FIU library has some impressive holdings of the work of numerous architects from the early to mid-twentieth century whose projects, even though they were never actually constructed, had an enormous impact on future designers and architects.

The library holds a number of rare works showcasing the designs of Antonio Sant'Elia (Italian, 1888-1916). Sant’Elia became a disciple and leading light in the Futurist movement in pre-World War One Italy. Drawing inspiration from Viennese architects such as Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner and the skyscrapers just beginning to appear in American cities, Sant’Elia envisioned a futuristic urban environment in a series of drawings rendered between 1912 and 1914. His Città Nuova designs imagined an industrial city where huge skyscraper buildings with setbacks and terraces were connected by bridges and walkways. When the First World War broke out, Sant'Elia enlisted in the Italian army and died fighting the Austrians sometime during the Battles of the Isonzo in 1915. As a result of his premature death, most of his futuristic architectural designs remained unrealized, but many were widely published during the second Futurist wave of the interwar period and exercised considerable influence on generations of urban planners and architects.

The library also holds important examples of the Constructivist artwork and architectural ideas of famed Russian designer, El Lissitzky (Russian, 1890-1941). In the years between 1923 and 1925, Lissitzky came up with designs for a series of identical structures which he proposed be constructed at the intersections of a boulevard ringing central Moscow and the Kremlin. To save precious ground space, these enormous L-shaped three-story buildings were to be raised 50 meters off the ground by three pylons to be connected to tram stations and an underground subway. Lissitzky’s horizontal skyscrapers, (referred to as Wolkenbügel, or “Iron clouds” in the literature of the time), were never built, but the designs were printed in ASNOVA, the influential journal for the Association of New Architects in the Soviet Union, and in several important German publications and periodicals.

Other Constructivist-minded architects expressed their revolutionary ideas in other publications, including Arkhitektura: raboty Arkhitekturnog o fakul’teta Vkhutemasa, 1920-1927, for which Lissitzky supplied the dust jacket cover artwork. The Vkhutemas architectural school in Moscow encouraged its students to experiment with and embrace the principles of Constructivism in projects designed to completely rethink the principles of construction. Such radical ideas, however, soon earned the scorn and derision of Joseph Stalin, and projects designed and built after his rise to power took a decidedly more conservative (neo-Classical) and Socialist Realist bent.

We also left some important American industrial designers and urban planners out of the exhibition for want of space. The library holds a number of books and ephemeral items highlighting the ideas of Norman Bel Geddes (American, 1893-1958), including his Magic Motorways (1940). Even before that publication went into print, however, Americans were introduced to his ideas at the popular Futurama exhibit he designed for General Motors for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. Bel Geddes’ created a gigantic indoor panorama of a city of the future, which visitors to the pavilion could look down upon while riding along in chairs on a conveyor belt. Although his vision of a futuristic metropolis failed to materialize exactly along the lines that he envisioned, his designs for superhighways, cloverleaf entrance and exit ramps, and many other features did have a profound influence on the design of American highways linking cities to the suburbs.

MONUMENTS TO FASCIST FOLLY

UNREALIZED EDIFACES PROPOSED TO RAISE THE PROFILE OF

MUSSOLINI'S IMPERIAL CAPITAL

This afternoon, David and Ann Wilkins arrived at the Wolfsonian library to conduct some research on some of the Italian architects' proposals for radically transforming the skyline of Rome during the Fascist era. David (University of Pittsburg professor emeritus) and his wife, Ann, taught for three semesters at the Duquesne University Italian campus, and will again be teaching and leading guided tours in Rome as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations. During their visit to our own rare books and special collections library the husband-wife research team looked at some of the published works of some important Italian architects.

As the couple discovered, the library holds a good number of works by the architect Mario Palanti (1885-1979). Born in Milan, Palanti gained notoriety for a number of important monumental Renaissance Revival and Art Nouveau-style edifices he designed between 1909 and 1919 in the capital cities of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. On his return to his homeland in 1930, Palanti produced a number of drawings and published several books with designs for lofty monuments for Mussolini's Rome and other Italian cities.

Other totalitarian regimes also flirted with monumental architectural projects aimed at dwarfing the skyscraping "cathedrals to capitalism" built in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The Russians, for example, held an architectural contest between 1931 and 1933, and construction began in 1937 for a monumental “Palace of the Soviets” to be built on the ruins of a cathedral in Moscow destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The world war brought a premature end to the plans, however, and the imposing people's palace was never realized. Ironically, after the collapse of the Soviet state, the cathedral was rebuilt on the original foundations.

The Fascists were not inclined to leave their Capitialist and Communist competitors with a monopoly on monumental buildings, and in the context of such rivalry Mario Palanti began producing drawings and proposals for collosal construction projects for Rome and other Italian cities. His plans were nothing if not grandiose, but while the heroic style might have impressed Il Duce, the huge scale he envisioned was not deemed practical or desirable. Consequently, the designs remained little more than dream-like—(or nightmarish)—visions of an urban future-scape never to be realized.

Palanti's ideas, of course, were not conceived in an intellectual vacuum. Palanti's designs for re-envisioning Rome with his architectural monstrosities (or monster cities!)--drew inspiration from other contemporary architectural visionaries and works, such as Hugh Ferriss's influential, Metropolis of Tomorrow, published in 1929.