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The future of cities

An exhibition at Triennale di Milano marks the centenary of the death of Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia, the author of the Manifesto of Futurist Architecture.

Antonio Sant'Elia, railway station studies

The extraordinary visions and promises we see in the cities of the future designed by Antonio Sant’Elia include forms that only acquired concrete shape in the twenty-first century. A considerable corpus of original drawings will go on display for the first time in Milan. From the Pinacoteca di Como and from private collectors, they show the Città Nuova, a project for a great “New City” of the future, on which the young Sant’Elia was already at work in April 1914.

Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916). Il futuro delle città, veduta dell'installazione alla Triennale di Milano, 2016

Taking inspiration also from the most advanced Art Nouveau artists, but without ever losing touch with the world around him, Antonio Sant’Elia created a jigsaw puzzle of urban forms on paper, in which the connections – bridges, covered paths and walkways – have the same importance as the houses, squares and stations.

Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916). Il futuro delle città, installation view at Triennale di Milano, 2016

This Città Nuova, later renamed Città Futurista (“Futurist City”), has a complete nervous system of quivering threads that lead vehicles on rails, propelling freight elevators and treadmills, lighting lamps and advertising signs: a metropolis that lives on electricity, like a vast hive in which the city is constantly on the move.

“The Antonio Sant’Elia. All’origine del progetto” exhibition at the Pinacoteca di Como will act as an introduction to Sant’Elia’s studies. A selection of drawings made in 1913 shows the pure architectural forms that led to the creation of his Città Nuova project. To illustrate this work in the round, the drawings are accompanied by three-dimensional models, specially made for the occasion, which provide a much clearer visual idea of them.