Antonio Sant'Elia

Antonio Sant'Elia (30 April 1888 – 10 October 1916) was an Italian architect and a key member of the Futurist movement in architecture. He left behind almost no completed works of architecture and is primarily remembered for his bold sketches and influence on modern architecture.

Early years
Antonio Sant'Elia was born in Como, Lombardy. A builder by training, he studied at the Brera Academy in Milan with Giuseppe Mentessi, and then at the University of Bologna, where he graduated in architecture in 1912. The same year, he opened a design office in Milan and became involved with the Futurist movement after meeting with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Writing
The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture was published in Lacerba in August 1914. It has been attributed to Sant'Elia, though some historians dispute this. In it, the author states that "The decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the use and original arrangement of raw or bare or violently colored materials". Sant'Elia's vision consisted in an industrialized and mechanized city of the future, which he saw not as a conglomerate of individual buildings but a vast, multi-level, interconnected and integrated urban conurbation designed around the "life" of the city.

Work
Between 1912 and 1914, influenced by the United States urban landscape as well as by architects such as Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and Renzo Picasso, Sant'Elia started working on a series of sketches for a futurist "Città Nuova" ("New City") designed to symbolize a new age. Many of his drawings were exhibited at the only show of the Nuove Tendenze group (of which he was a member) in May-June 1914 at the Famiglia Artistica gallery in Milan. Today, about 170 of his works on paper are on permanent display as part of the collection of Pinacoteca Civica di Palazzo Volpi, Como. Sant'Elia's work featured vast monolithic skyscraper buildings with terraces, bridges and aerial walkways that embodied the sheer excitement of modern architecture and technology. His monumentalism, however, was also influenced by Art Nouveau architect Giuseppe Sommaruga.

A nationalist as well as an irredentist, Sant'Elia, together with other futurists such as Mario Sironi, Umberto Boccioni and Marinetti, joined the Italian army as Italy entered World War I in 1915. Sant'Elia was killed during the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo, near Gorizia, in 1916.

Legacy
Sant'Elia left behind very few examples of his architecture work. Among those are Villa Elisi in San Maurizio (nowadays a subdivision of Brunate), and a War Memorial in Como. The latter was completed by Giuseppe Terragni in 1933. Though most of Sant'Elia's designs were never realized, his utopian vision turned out to be quite influential for generations to come. Sant'Elia is often cited as a precursor to architects such as John Portman and Helmut Jahn. The production design of dystopian films like Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis and Ridley Scott's 1982 Hollywood movie Blade Runner is also indebted to Sant'Elia's ideas.

Works

 * La Città Nuova, 1914