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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[1M1] INTERCHANGE. Ever since the Cardo and Decumanus were used to establish the major crossing in colonial Roman cities, the interchange has been the driving force in urban development. In fact, one can look at any city, historical or modern, and learn much about its origins and growth from its major traffic hubs. One is familiar with the nostalgic image of the crossing, a site for public interaction and commercial enterprise. Naturally, as transportation technology has developed, the interchange has evolved as well. The interchange plays just as dominant a role in city-making today, but in a very different fashion.
To many, the automobile represented a new age of speed and alienation, simultaneously horrifying and exhilarating. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Foundation Manifesto in 1909 revels in the adrenaline rush of this new machine, as well as the locomotive: We all started up, at the sound of a double-deck tram rumbling past, ablaze with multi-coloured lights, like a village in festival dress that the flooded Po tears from its banks and sweeps through gorges and rapids, down to the sea. But afterwards, the silence grew deeper, and we heard only the muttered devotions of the old canal and the creaking of the arthritic, ivy-bearded old palaces until - suddenly - we heard the roar of famished motor-cars beneath the windows... We drew near to the snorting beasts and laid our hands on their burning breasts. Then I flung myself like a corpse on a bier across the seat of my machine, but sat up at once under the steering wheel, poised like a guillotine blade against my stomach... I swung the car round in its own length, like a mad dog trying to bite its own tail, and there, wobbling towards me were two cyclists, as confusing as two equally convincing arguments, right in my line of travel. I pulled up so short that the car, to my disgust, looped into the ditch and came to rest with its wheels in the air. O maternal ditch, brimming with muddy water - O factory drain! I gulped down your nourishing mud and remembered the black breasts of my Sudanese nurse. And yet, when I emerged, ragged and dripping from under the capsized car, I felt the hot iron of a delicious joy in my heart.16
We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city: it must be an immense, tumultuous, lively, noble work site, dynamic in all its parts; and the Futurist house must be like an enormous machine. The lifts must not hide like lonely worms in the stair wells... and [instead] must climb like serpents of iron and glass up the housefronts... the street, which will no longer stretch like a foot-mat level with the porters’ lodges, but will descend into the earth on several levels, will receive the metropolitan traffic and will be linked, for the necessary passage from one to the other, by metal walkways and immensely fast escalators.17 On a grand scale, the Futurists presaged the modern multi-vehicular transportation hub of today. Now we have train terminals with multiple subterranean levels, connected to department stores, hotels, and office buildings; multi-tiered, elevated highway systems which soar above the ground; airports which have become cities in themselves, integrating restaurants, shopping malls, conference centers, chapels, and hotel rooms. These are our new interchanges. This is our new city. 16Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1960) p. 100-102 17Sant’Elia, Antonio and Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, "Futurist Architecture" in Conrads, Ulrich, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, Trans. Michael Bullock (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1964) p. 36 Images: 1. Interchange, 2. Citta Nuova, drawing by Antonio Sant’Elia
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With the introduction of
the automobile at the turn of the century, the initial course of implementation was fairly
straightforward. The automobile simply replaced the horse-and-buggy, occupying a place in
the same tight road network. As automotive technology developed, however, it became clear
that the car had more potential as a transportation device, and that it had greater
demands. Different types of roads were developed to accommodate different speeds, the
fastest speed obviously being the most anti-pedestrian. The car suggested a different
scale and character of roadway altogether, as well as a new language of safety laws and
codes for communication.
The Futurists were infatuated with modern devices for transportation, not
only the automobile and locomotive, but also the aeroplane and the elevator. In
collaboration with Antonio Sant’Elia, Marinetti published Futurist Architecture in 1914, in which they offer an
image of the Futurist city and the Futurist house:
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
