Atkinson and company

The Futurist Manifesto written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was published in 1909. To celebrate its one hundred year anniversary Atkinson+CO created two visuals of designs by the Italian futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia.

Sant'Elia's name is held with high regard among architectural students, and his drawings have been inspirational to many architects and designers. He left behind almost no completed works of architecture, yet he is one of the most compelling figures modern architecture has ever produced.

At the exhibition Nuove Tendenze of May 1914 Sant'Elia presented his new town planning ideas under the title Citta Nuova. The exhibition was accompanied with The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture an attack on what Sant’Elia perceived to be the sorry state of architectural practice.

The visualisations above were created to show the vast monolithic structures in a contemporary London setting with modern cars, buses and tube trains. They are presented here next to the drawings that were used as reference.