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Description

Futuristic Architecture. Manifest

After the 18th century, architecture ceased to exist. The ramshackle mixture of the most varied styles that is used to disguise the skeleton of the modern house is called modern architecture. The novel beauty of cement and iron is desecrated with the superimposition of carnivalesque decorative inlays that neither the construction needs nor our taste justify, and that originate in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity or in that hallucinatory peak of idiocy and impotence that we call neo-classicism.

In Italy, these architectural ruffians are accepted and rapacious foreign incompetence is passed off as a brilliant invention, as brand new architecture.

The young Italian architects (those who learn originality by clandestinely perusing art publications) show off their talent in the new neighborhoods of our cities, where a cheerful salad of small pointed columns, large baroque leaves, pointed Gothic arches, Egyptian pillars, Rococo volutes, Renaissance putti, plump caryatids seriously show off their style and flaunt their monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearance and disappearance of forms, the multiplication of machines and the growing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the agglomeration of people, by hygiene and by hundreds of other phenomena of modern life do not cause any trouble headlong to these so-called renovators of architecture. With the precepts of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino in hand, plus the occasional book on German architecture, they stubbornly insist on reproducing the image of secular imbecility in our cities, which should, on the contrary, be the faithful and immediate of ourselves.

Description

Futuristic Architecture. Manifest

After the 18th century, architecture ceased to exist. The ramshackle mixture of the most varied styles that is used to disguise the skeleton of the modern house is called modern architecture. The novel beauty of cement and iron is desecrated with the superimposition of carnivalesque decorative inlays that neither the construction needs nor our taste justify, and that originate in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity or in that hallucinatory peak of idiocy and impotence that we call neo-classicism.

In Italy, these architectural ruffians are accepted and rapacious foreign incompetence is passed off as a brilliant invention, as brand new architecture.

The young Italian architects (those who learn originality by clandestinely perusing art publications) show off their talent in the new neighborhoods of our cities, where a cheerful salad of small pointed columns, large baroque leaves, pointed Gothic arches, Egyptian pillars, Rococo volutes, Renaissance putti, plump caryatids seriously show off their style and flaunt their monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearance and disappearance of forms, the multiplication of machines and the growing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the agglomeration of people, by hygiene and by hundreds of other phenomena of modern life do not cause any trouble headlong to these so-called renovators of architecture. With the precepts of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino in hand, plus the occasional book on German architecture, they stubbornly insist on reproducing the image of secular imbecility in our cities, which should, on the contrary, be the faithful and immediate of ourselves.