Antonio Sant’Elia was the primary driving force behind Futurist architecture. He was born in 1888 in Italy where he trained and qualified as a builder. After his training he moved to Milan where he worked as a building and continued his education in architecture. Prior to 1912 he was still not involved with the Futurists and was instead a part of the Italian Secessionist movement. However by 1914 he was fully under the influence of Futurist ideas. Antonio Sant'Elia wrote the official Manifesto of Futurist Architecture in 1914. The published manifesto was primarily a consolidation and editing of ideas previously developed in Messaggio, a document that was also written by Sant'Elia. The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture was written in a similar style to other Futurist manifestoes this one was overall quite inflammatory with an intense desire to depart as completely from the past as possible. With this decoupling from the past the Futurists fully embraced any new technologies they could get their hands on. Not only did they want new materials to be used in their new designs they did not want the new materials to go anywhere near design themes from the past The manifesto states that usage of new materials in the construction of buildings with historical designs desecrates the materials. However, even with all of this talk of the new and breaking from the past many of the designs produced where not as radical as they would have liked. Even the designs of Antonio Sant’Elia have hints of monumental architecture, with many designs featuring monumental facades and monolithic pillars. Additionally, with all of their desire to create a new city to separate from the past, no full plans were created. This shows that as much as the Futurists may have wanted to obliterate the past, such an objective is essentially impossible. |
Resources |
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture - A Critical History. pp 84-89. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc, 1985. Osborn, Bob. Bob Osborn's Futurism and the Futurists. 2003. 8 Dec 2004. http://www.futurism.org.uk/futurism.htm Sant'Elia, Antonio. Manifesto of Futurist Archtiecture. 1917. 8 Dec 2004. http://webusers.physics.umn.edu/~duvernoi/futurist.html |