Hugh Ferriss – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

Philosophy from The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

I’ve procrastinated for an entire year over the idea of writing something about Hugh Ferriss and now this marvellous Flickr set has forced my hand. Ferriss (1889–1962) was a highly-regarded architectural renderer in the Twenties and Thirties, chiefly employed creating large drawings to show the clients of architects how their buildings would look when completed. But he was also an architectural theorist and his 1929 book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, which lays out his ideas for cities of the future, was a major influence on the work I produced for the Lord Horror comics during the 1990s. Ferriss’s book appeared two years after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis but bears little resemblance to Lang’s simplistic tale, despite superficial similarities. Rather than a science fiction warning, The Metropolis of Tomorrow was a serious proposal for the creation of Art Deco-styled megacities.

Lord Horror: Hard Core Horror #5 (1990).

Continue reading “Hugh Ferriss and The Metropolis of Tomorrow”

More monumental relics from the former Soviet Union. In March last year I posted some pictures from a film by Takehiko Nagakura who used CGI to show how St Petersburg would look if Vladimir Tatlin’s enormous Monument to the Third International had been built. Architectural megalomania didn’t abate with the collapse of that project and Stalin had his own plans for a number of vast buildings and monuments, including this colossal statue (or is it a building?) of Lenin intended to tower over Moscow.

These pictures come courtesy of Englishrussia.com. You can also see there a collection of (uncredited) pictures like the one above which follow Nagakura’s example and show how the Moscow of today would look had this structure been built. There’s also this strangely antique design for another vast Lenin memorial, which looks like Hugh Ferriss by way of ancient Egypt, and dizzying pictures from the top of the very large (62m tall) and very real ‘Mother Motherland’ monument in Kiev.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dead Monuments
• Enormous structures II: Tatlin’s Tower

Tag: Hugh Ferriss

Hugh Ferriss and The Metropolis of Tomorrow

Lenin Rising