Antonio Sant’Elia

An Example of Futurism Architecture, By Antonio Saint Elia

Antonio Sant’Elia
b. Como, 1888;
d. Monfalcone, 1916. I

Only two years before his tragic death in the First World War, a famous architect, Antonio Sant’Elia had published a spirited manifesto accompanied by a collection of visionary drawings which were to become some of the most potent architectural images of the Twentieth Century. He studied architecture in Como, receiving a diploma in 1905, at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and subsequently at the Scuola di Belle Arti in Bologna, where he received his diploma in 1912. Early influences included both Vienna Secession and Stile Liberty architects, but it was a fasci?nation for the soaring skyscrapers of Chicago and New York which provided the inspiration for the drawings of Sant’Elia’s utopian metropolis ? the Citt? Nuova. His drawings evoke a Brave New World where the machine is omnipotent and the city consists of monumental tow?ers and stark abstract forms. In 1912 he joined with several radical Milanese architects, including Mario Chiattone and Marcello Nizzoli, to form the Nuove Tendenze group, which rejected the dogma of history in order to embrace technology and the future. Sant’Elia contributed to the group’s first exhibition some two years later. His preface to the catalogue, entitled the Messaggio, was slightly reworked and published under the title Manifesto of Futurist Architecture. This seminal document echoed much of the Futurists’ propaganda by attacking the anachronisms of the past and calling for a new order focused on the machine age.

List of major buildings / works by Antonio Sant’elia:
Memorial to the War Dead (designed, after a sketch by Sant’Elia, by Enrico Prampolini, completed by Giuseppe Terragni and Enrico Prampolini, Como, 1933). Almost 300 drawings and projects.
Bibliography
Eric Langenskiold, Michele Sanmicheli, the architect of Verona, Uppsala, 1938.
L. Puppi, Michele Sanmicheli, Padua, 1971.
Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th Century Architecture, Cambridge, 1970.
Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla, Futurism, London, 1977.
Luciano Caramel and Alberto Longatti, Antonio Sant’Elia ? The Complete Works, New York, 1987.

Filed Under S on November 26, 2008

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