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#0086
84
ALEKSANDRA IDZIOR
ganized nature, a wilderness reformed, in effect the site of a new frontier.
As the 19th century American myth converted frontier life into a national
idiom of prosperity and promise, so Ferriss, by transforming the city into
a site of the new frontier, re-invented and re-invested urban space with
hope and abundance.
Despite the fact that the architecture of the new city is massively
monumental, the nature that the metropolis of tomorrow embodies seems
to be rather tamed. This domestication of wilderness, as Ferriss would
assure us, is a result of the architect’s intervention. The new urban fabric
follows the master plan of the draftsman, who not only designed the
city’s parks, its waterways, but also dispersed them all in an orderly way
over the city.31 Although the new metropolis is highly built and densely
populated, there is still room for vast and unobstructed areas of “great
spaciousness [andl ample vistas”.32 This open space expands even further
when oriented upward, following the direction pointed out by the tower-
buildings, which “rise to a height of a thousand feet from the ground”.33
Besides ample amounts of fresh air, this uplifting jaunt - figuratively
and literally speaking - would furthermore supply a spectacular “pano-
ramic perception”.34 This novel expedition skyward, made possible by the
31 While Ferriss city takes on the characteristic of nature, Krutikov city, and especial-
ly its dwellings, are transformed into a machine. The iacheika (cell) constitutes first the
standardized element, this leads to the single block, then to housing project, and finally to
the city. Architecture/means of transportation with clarity and coherence is imposing qual-
ities of an assembly line onto the urban structure. In effect each singular element on the
line dissolves in the assemblage.
32 Ferriss, op. cit., p. 110.
33 Ibidem, p. 109.
34 This term was coined by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in his The Railway Journey: The
Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley 1986. Schivel-
busch writes about the effects of railway locomotion on the mobile rider/observer. The 19th
century saw the expansion of travel and the rise of tourism for the middle classes. As a
result, vision was put in motion with the rise of railway journeys. The replacement of a
relatively slow coach by a speeding train shifted the rider’s attention from the foreground
to the middle and background of the landscape. The windowed and enclosed train put the
world behind glass and effectively filtered out auditory, olfactory, and haptic sensations of
the world beyond the window, forcing the reliance on sight as the only source of informa-
tion. Following Schivelbusch’s observations, I suggest, that the high-reaching skyscrapers,
envisioned by Ferriss, built of glass and transparent material, would create for the people
living in the skyscrapers of tomorrow similar effects to the participants of the railroad tra-
vel. The difference however would be that in the future the movement would be directed
vertically via elevators zooming to the top floors. For the impact of the railroad on the
American culture see: The Railroad in American Art: Representation of Technological
Change, ed. by Susan Danly, Leo Marx, Cambridge (MA) 1988; Albert Boime, The Metallic
Line of Least Resistance [in:] idem, The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American
ALEKSANDRA IDZIOR
ganized nature, a wilderness reformed, in effect the site of a new frontier.
As the 19th century American myth converted frontier life into a national
idiom of prosperity and promise, so Ferriss, by transforming the city into
a site of the new frontier, re-invented and re-invested urban space with
hope and abundance.
Despite the fact that the architecture of the new city is massively
monumental, the nature that the metropolis of tomorrow embodies seems
to be rather tamed. This domestication of wilderness, as Ferriss would
assure us, is a result of the architect’s intervention. The new urban fabric
follows the master plan of the draftsman, who not only designed the
city’s parks, its waterways, but also dispersed them all in an orderly way
over the city.31 Although the new metropolis is highly built and densely
populated, there is still room for vast and unobstructed areas of “great
spaciousness [andl ample vistas”.32 This open space expands even further
when oriented upward, following the direction pointed out by the tower-
buildings, which “rise to a height of a thousand feet from the ground”.33
Besides ample amounts of fresh air, this uplifting jaunt - figuratively
and literally speaking - would furthermore supply a spectacular “pano-
ramic perception”.34 This novel expedition skyward, made possible by the
31 While Ferriss city takes on the characteristic of nature, Krutikov city, and especial-
ly its dwellings, are transformed into a machine. The iacheika (cell) constitutes first the
standardized element, this leads to the single block, then to housing project, and finally to
the city. Architecture/means of transportation with clarity and coherence is imposing qual-
ities of an assembly line onto the urban structure. In effect each singular element on the
line dissolves in the assemblage.
32 Ferriss, op. cit., p. 110.
33 Ibidem, p. 109.
34 This term was coined by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in his The Railway Journey: The
Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley 1986. Schivel-
busch writes about the effects of railway locomotion on the mobile rider/observer. The 19th
century saw the expansion of travel and the rise of tourism for the middle classes. As a
result, vision was put in motion with the rise of railway journeys. The replacement of a
relatively slow coach by a speeding train shifted the rider’s attention from the foreground
to the middle and background of the landscape. The windowed and enclosed train put the
world behind glass and effectively filtered out auditory, olfactory, and haptic sensations of
the world beyond the window, forcing the reliance on sight as the only source of informa-
tion. Following Schivelbusch’s observations, I suggest, that the high-reaching skyscrapers,
envisioned by Ferriss, built of glass and transparent material, would create for the people
living in the skyscrapers of tomorrow similar effects to the participants of the railroad tra-
vel. The difference however would be that in the future the movement would be directed
vertically via elevators zooming to the top floors. For the impact of the railroad on the
American culture see: The Railroad in American Art: Representation of Technological
Change, ed. by Susan Danly, Leo Marx, Cambridge (MA) 1988; Albert Boime, The Metallic
Line of Least Resistance [in:] idem, The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American