walls of translucent glass.
sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.
no gothic branch: no acanthus leaf: no recollection of a plant world.
a mineral kingdom.
gleaming stalagmites.
forms as cold as ice.
mathematics.
night in the science zone.'
-Hugh Ferriss
His images where magic... a powerfully compelling world simultaneously familiar and new. Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962), the most sought after architectural renderer of the 20th Century, defined the six objectives of his work as follows:
Ferriss was intensely concerned with a vision of the future, but unlike Le Corbusier's dispersed, loosely organized 'ville Radieuee', he envisioned a dense, compact, and powerful organism. The skyscraper represented the center of Ferriss' vision, for he it not a cathedral of commerce, but rather as a structure of material progress and power. Ferriss saw the future in dams, bridges, silos, and skyscrapers, and expressed in his renderings the power and fascination of unlimited space. The metropolis of tomorrow.
- to convey advanced realizations of proposed structures
- to aid in the crystallizing of ideas in the architect's mind
- to interpret the architectural significance of existing structures
- to serve as criterion and guide in city planning
- to assist in evolving new types of architecture
- to strengthen the psychological influence of architecture on human values
Instead of the close juxtaposition of built masses that occurr in the city, Ferriss proposed widely spaced structures of even more formidable proportions rising to a maximum height of 100 feet and covering an area of six to eight city blocks.
Three such structures set in a triangular formation would constitute the nucleus of the city. Each would dominate a realm of human endeavor-- science, business, and art. Radiating in a fan shape from these megastructures would be lower buildings of decreasing height. The effect would be that of 'a wide plain... from which would rise at considerable intervals, towering mountain peaks...'
Hugh Ferriss and his vision of the city of tomorrow.
Recommended Reading:
Metropolis of Tomorrow
Hugh Ferriss
Hardcover (May 1998)
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 0910413118
Go To Page: 1
