DOI issue:
Rozprawy
DOI article:Idzior, Aleksandra: Imagination with no limits: the frontier in the Soviet and American projects of a "future city" at the end of the 1920s
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42379#0077
IMAGINATION WITH NO LIMITS: THE FRONTIER IN THE SOVIET AND AMERICAN PROJECTS
75
cityscape in New York was changed by the construction of skyscrapers,
nascent highways and suburbs. These economic and technological differ-
ences led to extremely uneven results with regard to what was actually
built in Moscow and New York. Due to these discrepancies, projects ex-
ecuted on paper, which are restricted only by the architects’ own licentia
poetica, rather than by material or technological confines or the expecta-
tions of a commissioner, offer a more compatible site for examination.
Furthermore, “paper architecture” allows more imaginary, indeed, uto-
pian potential to be revealed.
It is precisely this extreme inventiveness, which enabled Krutikov
and Ferriss to promote, on the one hand, residences hovering in the air,
and on the other, skyscrapers that batter the firmament with densely
massed and huge complexes reaching toward the sky, that prompted my
fascination with their projects. The intrinsic features of “paper architec-
ture,” its visionary scope, lack of creative constraints and unlimited pos-
sibilities for imagination to soar - all of which Krutikov and Ferriss fully
utilized - present a promising ground for an extended field of inquiry.
More than built architecture, they invite an investigation of both archi-
tects’ visualizations of urban form within their respective ideological
frameworks, rather than strictly within the parameters of the stylistic,
material and technological status quo of the architectural enterprise. My
interest leads me to reevaluate Krutikov’s and Ferriss’s projects and the
ways in which the architects interacted with their publics, to disclose a
politics of representation that operates as much via the material art ob-
ject as through the discourses in which it is positioned.8 Hence, I want to
discover the circumstances that prompted these two designers to suggest
such intriguing imaginary concepts of the ideal city. Evidently their vi-
sions announced novel ways to rethink the form of a modern city, but
why is the improbable concept of “flying” such an important part of Kru-
tikov’s gorod, and why does Ferriss’s metropolis evoke mountainous for-
mations? What were the conditions at play at the end of the 1920s that
prompted both architects to propose such eccentric visions?
Krutikov and Ferriss, following the established tradition of utopian
imagining, would demonstrate that while the “real city” often falls short
of providing a completely satisfying milieu for its residents, an envi-
sioned city can highlight contemporary shortcomings and articulate de-
sires for an alternative urban life. Utopian thinking, the capacity to im-
8 According to Thomas Crow, Codes of Silence: Historical Interpretation and the Art of
Watteau, “Representations”, 12, 1985 (Fall), p. 4 to create a contextual framework is to
build linkages “between art objects and contiguous, intermediate zones of social practice
that are not integral to the artist’s professional culture”. Here quoted after Hollis Clayson,
Materialist Art History and Its Points of Difficulty, “Art Bulletin”, 77, 1995, 3, p. 367.
75
cityscape in New York was changed by the construction of skyscrapers,
nascent highways and suburbs. These economic and technological differ-
ences led to extremely uneven results with regard to what was actually
built in Moscow and New York. Due to these discrepancies, projects ex-
ecuted on paper, which are restricted only by the architects’ own licentia
poetica, rather than by material or technological confines or the expecta-
tions of a commissioner, offer a more compatible site for examination.
Furthermore, “paper architecture” allows more imaginary, indeed, uto-
pian potential to be revealed.
It is precisely this extreme inventiveness, which enabled Krutikov
and Ferriss to promote, on the one hand, residences hovering in the air,
and on the other, skyscrapers that batter the firmament with densely
massed and huge complexes reaching toward the sky, that prompted my
fascination with their projects. The intrinsic features of “paper architec-
ture,” its visionary scope, lack of creative constraints and unlimited pos-
sibilities for imagination to soar - all of which Krutikov and Ferriss fully
utilized - present a promising ground for an extended field of inquiry.
More than built architecture, they invite an investigation of both archi-
tects’ visualizations of urban form within their respective ideological
frameworks, rather than strictly within the parameters of the stylistic,
material and technological status quo of the architectural enterprise. My
interest leads me to reevaluate Krutikov’s and Ferriss’s projects and the
ways in which the architects interacted with their publics, to disclose a
politics of representation that operates as much via the material art ob-
ject as through the discourses in which it is positioned.8 Hence, I want to
discover the circumstances that prompted these two designers to suggest
such intriguing imaginary concepts of the ideal city. Evidently their vi-
sions announced novel ways to rethink the form of a modern city, but
why is the improbable concept of “flying” such an important part of Kru-
tikov’s gorod, and why does Ferriss’s metropolis evoke mountainous for-
mations? What were the conditions at play at the end of the 1920s that
prompted both architects to propose such eccentric visions?
Krutikov and Ferriss, following the established tradition of utopian
imagining, would demonstrate that while the “real city” often falls short
of providing a completely satisfying milieu for its residents, an envi-
sioned city can highlight contemporary shortcomings and articulate de-
sires for an alternative urban life. Utopian thinking, the capacity to im-
8 According to Thomas Crow, Codes of Silence: Historical Interpretation and the Art of
Watteau, “Representations”, 12, 1985 (Fall), p. 4 to create a contextual framework is to
build linkages “between art objects and contiguous, intermediate zones of social practice
that are not integral to the artist’s professional culture”. Here quoted after Hollis Clayson,
Materialist Art History and Its Points of Difficulty, “Art Bulletin”, 77, 1995, 3, p. 367.