L'Architettura Chronache e Storia

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Sant'Elia studied in Milan and in Bologna. In 1912 he began work in Milan, where he became part of the futurist movement in architecture. In the short time before the outbreak of the First World War, Sant'Elia began to create his designs for the city of the future; he was a talented draughtsman and made hundreds of imaginative drawings to illustrate his ideas.

Fascinated by the possibilities of technology and by building in the USA, he was a visionary of future modern architecture. He planned cities for Italy, and in 1914 many of his drawings were shown at an exhibition of the Nuove Tendenze group in Milan. His Città Nuova was included; it envisaged electric power, skyscrapers, pedestrian precincts and traffic moving on overhead roadways at two and three different levels—a separation of pedestrian and wheeled traffic put forward by Leonardo da Vinci four centuries earlier in his sketchbooks. Sant'Elia was a socialist and developed his schemes as part of his suggestions for an ideal society.

He was killed in action in 1916, but his drawings have survived and have influenced later work.

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