Hugh Ferriss: Delineator of Gotham
Or rendering “The Vertical Sublime”
Picked up a reprinting of a 1929 book by Hugh Ferriss titled The Metropolis of Tomorrow. Ferriss was the preeminent architectural draftsman of his time who through his moody chiaroscuro renderings of skyscrapers virtually inventing the image of Gotham visitors came to the city to see and residents identified with so fondly. As Michael Mallow puts it: “By the mid-twenties, renderings by Ferriss had become almost de rigeur for successful competition projects; countless skyscrapers waited their turn to be bathed in the dark monumentality emanating from his drafting table. In these works a blasé department store appears as a giant lording over its block. Stodgy hotels cease to be stodgy hotels and become looming silhouettes emerging from the urban haze like shipwrecks. Ferriss went to grand new lengths in suppressing detail for mood, and clients loved it.”
Evidently Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said “he influenced my generation of architects more than any other man.” With The Metropolis of Tomorrow it’s easy to see why. It’s beautiful with idealistic and poetically expressed ideas about the then current state of urban architecture (including the only recently enacted zoning laws) and a fond hope that architects to come would put concept, human experience, and emotional response before mere capitalistic considerations.
The book is broken up into three sections titled, Cities of Today, Projected Trends, and An Imaginary Metropolis. In choosing which images to post I’ve decided to leave aside the first chapter with its renderings of real buildings of the period, and focus instead on a few examples from the last two chapters, all of which were imagined by Ferriss to illustrate the key concepts of his text.
Hope you enjoy.
A first impression of the contemporary city, let us say, the view of New York from the work-room in which most of these drawings were made. This, indeed, is to the author the familiar morning scene. But there are occasional mornings when, with an early fog not yet dispersed, one finds oneself, on stepping onto the parapet, the spectator of an even more nebulous panorama. Literally, there is nothing to be seen but mist; not a tower has yet been revealed below, and except for the immediate parapet rail (dark and wet as an ocean liner’s) there is not a suggestion of either locality or solidity for the coming scene. To an imaginative spectator, it might seem that he is perched in some elevated stage box to witness some gigantic spectacle, some cyclopean drama of forms; and that the curtain has not yet risen.
There is a moment of curiosity, even for those who have seen the play before. since in all probability they are about to view some newly arisen steel skeleton, some tower or even some street which was not in yesterday’s performance. And to one who had not been in the audience before—to some visitor from another land or another age—there could not fail to be at least a moment of wonder. What apocalypse is about to be revealed? What is its setting? And what will be the purport of this modern metropolitan drama?
Crowding Towers
Overhead Traffic-Ways
Churches Aloft (In which Ferriss imagines churches, the once dominant members of the skyline, revitalized by placing them atop apartments or offices.)
Apartments On Bridges
Verticals On Wide Avenues (In which the buildings footprints are shrunk and spaced further apart to allow for maximum street level traffic flow.)
Vista Through A Two-Block Building
Broadly speaking, it has been our habit to assume that a building; is a complete success if it provides for the utility, convenience and health of its occupants and, in addition, presents a pleasing exterior. But this frame of mind fails to appreciate that architectural forms necessarily have other values than the utilitarian or even others than those which we vaguely call the aesthetic. Without any doubt, these same forms quite specifically influence both the emotional and the mental life of the onlooker. Designers have generally come to realize the importance of the principle stated by the late Louis Sullivan, “Form follows Function.” The axiom is not weakened by the further realization that Effect follows Form.
It can be recalled that there have been periods in the past when architects must have been quite aware of the influence of Architecture and consciously employed it for a specific object. Moreover, it is precisely these periods that are still spoken of as the “great periods” of Architecture.
The Art Center
The Science Center
Vista In The Business Zone
Looking West From The Business Center
Night In The Science Zone
Buildings like crystal.
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheeting a steel grill.
No Gothic branch.
No Acanthus leaf.
No recollections of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science zone.
Finance
Technology
Industrial Arts
Philosophy
Religion (Notice the first image in this post, which shows Ferris in his studio, to get an idea of scale for these charcoal illustrations.)
Are not the inhabitants of most of our American cities continually glancing at the rising masses of office or apartment buildings whose thin coating of architectural confectionery disguises, but does not alter, the fact that they were fashioned to meet not so much the human needs of the occupants as the financial appetites of the property owners? Do we not traverse, in our daily walks, districts which are stupid and miscellaneous rather than logical or serene—and move, day long, through an absence of viewpoint, vista, axis, relation or plan? Such an environment silently but relentlessly impresses its qualities upon the human psyche.
The contemplation of the actual Metropolis as a whole cannot but lead us at last to the realization of a human population unconsciously reacting to forms which came into existence without conscious design.
A hope, however, may begin to define itself in our minds. May there not yet arise, perhaps in another generation, architects who, appreciating the influence unconsciously received, will learn consciously to direct it?
But we may postpone more general conclusions until we have examined, at closer view, the existing facts. Let us go down into the streets ...
For a few more bits on Ferris see the following:
Place, Power, and the Human Being.
Tangible Futures example: Hugh Ferriss’s delineations.
High Priest of the New York Skyscraper Sex Cult.
Lastly The ASAI happens to offer an annual award for the best architectural illustrators which is named for Ferris. See here for past winners.
hide full text
• Graffiti + Sarajevo + Krylon + Michelangelo = Sistine Chapel in Iowa. Via.
• “A new idea for the exploration of Mars may be less of a scientific leap forward than a hop.” hardy-har-har. Next to Mars: Jumping, Baseball-Size Robots?
• In 1900, Eva Downing Corey undertook a “Grand Tour” to the Holy Land, and the Continent. She kept a journal. (And evidently a glue-stick or two.) Beautiful. Via.
• Just in time to deflect Global Warming questions directed at them “to understand and protect our home planet” is dropped from the NASA mission statement.
• Headline reads: Vampire sea spiders suck on prey. The horror! Someone alert Tony Bourdain, he’ll be wanting to nibble on this thing.
• Cassini’s radar eye has begun to reveal the true geological features of Xanadu. Faults, deeply cut channels, valleys, porous water ice… a rainy land where rivers flow down to a sunless sea. Nasa offers this nifty vid. The feathered hair once thought to float in the atmosphere has yet to be spotted however.
• On the saddest lowliest coin of all: Give a Penny, Take a Penny .
• Fifteen years from now, amid the rubble of a war-torn city in a distant land, a strange creature lurks in the dark (cue the ominous music)... the soldier of the future. These stories keep coming. “Soldier of the future!!!” Yet we can’t even perfect decent body armor. I’d like to think the future would not require such perfect killing machines anyhow. Ah well.
What’s so funny anyway?
I find myself less amused by the opening segments of Comedy Central’s weeknight double-punch of fake news lately. I can’t help but wonder whether programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, which have us laughing at the ineptitude, corruption, war mongering, and profiteering of our Government, are in some way diffusing what ought to be a steadily building anger; an anger which by all rights ought to be seeking a vent right about now.
The post-modern ability the culture at large has adopted which has us giggling over abuses of power, sniggering at lies, whooping at war, and chortling at all the terrifying evidence of a country coming apart at the seems strikes me as irresponsible somehow. It’s not that the shows ought not to be pointing out the absurdities, or that we ought not to be grabbing some laughter wherever we can find it, but when the “actual” press has stopped doing its job and the only dissenting voices with heavy airtime are those of comedy shows… well, it’s scary.
While we all sit around laughing things off, a list of offenses, which in ages past might have provoked a revolution among the populous, scrolls away to the horizon, unchecked. Where is the real outrage? Why aren’t we up in arms? Why is this government still in power? What is wrong with us?
If you think this is a maudlin observation, maybe you’re right, but if so today’s state of affairs still seems to beg the question: when did public opinion become so impotent as to be very nearly meaningless? Who among us want to be where we are or headed where we are headed? Who thinks endless conflict and death and debt and corruption are acceptable? Who’s happy?
Sure the world is complex, there are no easy answers, but somehow, after 5 years, laughing at those in power no longer feels like the appropriate reaction. Unless there are pitchforks involved.
Course, I’ve never, ever, attended a protest, let alone been on the inside of an angry mob, so what the hell do I know? Anyone have an opinion?
hide full text
• In Japan unimaginably large spaces underneath ground-level lives exist. Even beyond the high walls of nuclear power stations, incineration plants, or energy research organizations, futuristic cities that we thought only to exist in science fiction movies unfold. All this is captured by photographer Joe Nishizawa.
• Scientists believe they have found a way to probe the mysterious phenomenon of feeling you have witnessed something before: Deja vu recreated in laboratory.
• Why is the sky blue? It is a question children ask. Yet it also intrigued Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, among many other legendary thinkers. As late as 1862, the great astronomer John Herschel called the colour and polarization of skylight “great standing enigmas.” Even today, our perception of sky blue is little understood by laymen.
• Umberto Eco speaks. Outlandish theories: Kings of the (hollow) world.
• Photographic construction of alternative selves: Photography and Solipsism Via.
• In a few years, it will be hard for us to believe that we lived amongst people like these. Photographs of India’s poor, many of whom had never even seen a camera before. Take care to look at the links below as well. Via.
• The largest tear in the Earth’s crust seen in decades, if not centuries, could carve out a new ocean in Africa, according to satellite data. Wow.
• Misconceptions about samurai in Japanese pop culture. Misconceptions about Medieval armor. And with those in mind- The Medieval European Knight vs. The Feudal Japanese Samurai?
The Old Musician by Edouard Manet, 1862.
Extrapolation: The Old Musician
The old musician sat amongst the beggars. Many passersby on the afternoon streets would certainly make no distinction, and call his playing for coin begging as well. For him this was respite though. Sunday among the despised. He would play among these people for a time and forget about coin. Much like the saying “you can’t bullshit a bullshitter” there isn’t much use in “begging a beggar.” Among them he could play whatever pleased him, the childhood favorites of his homeland, the dirges, the sad songs, things the people on the street wouldn’t pay a soda-cracker to hear.
On the streets the shortest path to coin was all. Here, among the beggars, he could be welcomed rather than tolerated, a violinist rather than a fiddler. The girls and the children would enjoy it, though the men would need more drink, drink they didn’t have, to slacken their scowls. Music alone wasn’t nearly enough to salve their problems. The man in the top-hat had only just recently found himself among their number. He clung to that hat the way a tick clung to a mongrel’s skin, as though a few inches of good quality felt were all that stood between him and final heartbreak. Today the old musician would play for him. He’d play a bit from “The Beggar’s Opera,” a piece he’d learned while in England all those years ago. Yes, today he’d play for the man in the top hat but he’d sing for himself-
Through all the Employments of Life
Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;
Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:
All Professions be-rogue one another:
The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat,
The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine:
And the Statesman, because he’s so great,
Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.
Facts: The Old Musician
From a 1984 edition of the hardcover devoted to the collections of The National Gallery in Washington-
“The principal pleasure to be gained from Manet comes from the beauty of his brushwork. He mixed on his palette the exact tone he needed and with swift and certain dexterity delineated on the canvas each area of light and shadow. In The Old Musician this virtuosity of handling can be seen most clearly in the trenchant strokes that define the folds in the shirt and trousers of the boy with the straw hat, or in the more caressing feather touch on the shawl of the girl holding the baby.
Manet’s method of direct painting caused him to suppress the transitional tones of modeling which particularly suggest volume. Like Velazquez, who was also a master of brushwork, he chose an illumination which would flatten form as much as possible. Thus the light falls directly on the figures from behind the artist’s head, and the shadows are reduced to a minimum. Through this arbitrary elimination of shadow Manet was able to state local color more freely. He attained, especially in such early works as The Old Musician, the most subtle harmonies of yellowish white and faded blue, here contrasted with warm browns and blacks and soft grays. This color scheme was as far as possible from the high intensities and broken colors of the Impressionists, which he adopted at the end of his life.
For Manet, in spite of a strong instinct for the traditional, became a leader of the Impressionists’ revolt. The public attacked his pictures, as they attacked the other Impressionists, but less because of his method of painting than because of a certain outre quality in his subject matter. In The Old Musician, for instance, what is the meaning of the brooding octogenarian on the extreme right, who is bisected so unconventionally by the frame? Perhaps he was put there simply to balance the composition, for Theodore Duret, who knew Manet well, said he painted this troupe of beggars merely because it pleased him to preserve a record of them and for no other reason. And yet one senses a significance which just escapes, a hidden meaning which is baffling. In Manet’s pictures these recurrent and tantalizing affectations infuriated his contemporaries and were in part the reason he never attained the popular admiration which he so desperately desired.”
hide full text
Tom Sachs is exactly the kind of artist I’d expect to shrug my shoulders at, and perhaps mumble a “ho-hum” to anyone who brought him up. His work has in large part embraced the irony so common in contemporary art, much of it incorporating brand logos (the Chanel Guillotine or the Prada Deathcamp for example) and winking reproductions of the banal. the Sperone Westwater site says: “Tom Sachs takes his inspiration from the collective American imagination, borrowing his subjects from among the status symbols of mass culture: weapons, fast food, hip hop, surfing, and skateboarding, and he mixes them with the symbols of American wealth that sees in luxury, conformism, and designer labels a reinforcement of their elite social status.” Exactly the kind of thing which I’d expect to bore my pants off.
However
On seeing his two most recent pieces, a life sized blue whale and a reconstruction of the command area on the bridge of an aircraft carrier… well, I’ve gotta give it up to him. These pieces are fantastic, not least of all because they are made of his trademark “low” materials. The whale, Balaenoptera Musculus, for example, is made mainly from foam core and hot glue, a conservator’s nightmare and in as much a flagrant “fuck you” to his own legacy, and by extension, Art history.
You can see them, and the rest of his most recent show, here, for more check out his homepage or at the following: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
hide full text
• Have a nagging feeling I’ve linked this before but what-the-hey, it’s a good one. The Magic Mirror of Life an appreciation of the camera obscura.
• The complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart analyzed based on the audio content with the result being a map with different regions showing distinct categories of Mozart’s music: Map of Mozart. Via.
• Interesting. Open-Ended Utopia: The art of Rirkrit Tiravanija.
• Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power - at least if you are a man. I (or my girlfriend) could have told you that!
• Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness. More and more psychologists and researchers believe they know what makes people happy. But the question is, does a New Yorker want to be happy? Answer: Fuck you.
• The Urban Pantheist catalogues the myriad species in the city. Via.
• Some historic info on the real Deadwood South Dakota.
Mutagen
Updated
You’ve noticed the sound of your questioning voice resonate and echo longer as the depth of the empty space here has grown with each passing day. “Why is The Nonist so quiet?) quiet?)) quiet?)))” In answer I can offer a single word from the back of my lair which ought to go far in explaining my absence: Promotion.
A couple of weeks ago I was promoted at the office
and having to devote more of my mental energies toward work I’ve found I have less to devote to the site. This may be temporary, an adjustment period in which my stress and annoyance gradually return to acceptable levels. And then again it may not. In either case I’ve decided to take the advice of some friends and fellow bloggers and make a small change here at The Nonist.
From here on out, or for the foreseeable future at least, I will be changing to a regular publishing schedule. New content can be expected on Sundays and Thursdays. I hope that by pulling back from the possible 7 to the concrete 2 I’ll be able to stretch out a bit and craft even better content with less filler, and, I guess it goes without saying, less needless stress on yours truly.
Though this need not be anything other than a minor scheduling change I am choosing to consider it a mutagen and as such am feeling compelled to rethink and refocus.
Mutation
As obliquely hinted at in this post I am feeling artistic… stirrings. I find the act of blogging as it stands to be less and less interesting. I feel almost as if it amounts to little more than reportage. “Tonight’s big story- Guy in living room finds something which interests him on internet! A few explanatory paragraphs at 11.” As I hope you’ve noticed I do my best to crosscut all the links and bald reportage with completely off-topic writing and original content. But even this partial retreat from the flow of what’s “topical” does not seem quite enough. After all as more bloggers ensconce themselves in their specialized niches everything begins to fit comfortably into the fold. I always find myself wondering, “How can a blog go beyond what it is, however artistic, and cross-over into the a space where it is itself Art?” I have as of yet not been able to form a satisfactory reply, so I won’t even pretend at having an answer.
What I do know is this: I long ago made the first “mistake” of blogging, which is offering broad and eclectic content. Avoiding a focus and eschewing a niche is a sure fire way to relegate yourself to confused obscurity. You are continually in the act of disappointing people, of failing to meet their expectations, of changing where people seek the familiar. Having chosen right at the outset to do this, to let my online space mimic my own mental state, there is little reason why I shouldn’t at this point just commit total blog-suicide and descend into even more abstract, opaque, complex, and unmarketable forms of expression. In doing so I may alienate yet more of you who stop by simply to see what “neat” things I’ve dug-up and linked, but then that’s a price I am willing to pay. If I never see another referer-log entry for the posts on chindogu, the erotic coloring book, making love in 1975, or any other trifle I did little else but report on, well, all the better.
What changes are coming? I can’t say exactly, perhaps none. Perhaps this mode of simply curating is the natural order and I can not escape it within the confines of the blog form. But then again perhaps I will go months without a single outgoing link? Perhaps I’ll do nothing but write a serialized bit of fiction about an amnesiac autodidact? Perhaps I’ll post… well, as I’ve said, I really don’t know. But I am formally announcing my intent right now to do my best to cast-off the yoke I took up voluntarily and look for something new with the tiny slice of time I have.
Thus freed I feel both giddy and confused, the infusion of possibility enlivening, its uncontrolled flow a chaotic crush. How might I utilize the stretched time? What will I do with the thrice erased surface? I have no idea. My hope, however, is that what follows will satisfy deeper cravings in myself and, terrifically unlikely as it might be, some of yours as well.
So consider this a gentleman’s warning that what The Nonist is may henceforth change.
In Summation
From here on out I will (generally) be posting two days a week only, Sundays and Thursdays. In that my time has become if anything even more valuable to me, and I feel compelled to make a choice between spending that time doing that which satisfies me and that which merely distracts me, what I choose to post on those two days may very well veer away from what we have gotten used to here. Or perhaps not. I may be in the first stages of blog-suicide or blog-rebirth. We shall see. Hope in either case to see you all around.
And rather than being a whiny little douchebag about it I will do my best to continue posting as always. I only mention it so that if I go a few days here and there without updating you will know why without my having to post some longwinded self-involved explanation. Alright? Business as usual commencing now.
hide full text
George Wesley Bellows, Forty-two Kids, 1907
For God was as large as a sunlamp and laughed his heat at us and therefore we did not cringe at the death hole. -Anne Sexton
Or
If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back? -Stephen Wright.
• Dig into the Instruments for Science (1800-1914) pages which reproduce for your geeky pleasure the scientific trade catalogs in the Smithsonian collections. Includes, but is by no means limited to: levers, pulleys, manometers, balances, air pumps, barometers, drawing instruments, electric machines, extensometers, telescopes, spectroscopes, photometers, tuning-forks, dissecting instruments, metallurgical equipment, galvanometers, turbines, electromagnets, theodolites, sextants, microscopes, globes, and glass prisms. Pictured above is Amslers Polar Planimeter. Enjoy… you big dork.
• The online world of linguistics is fast, funny, and bears no resemblance to hours spent in a classroom. Linguists and wordsmiths (including Grant Barret from Double Tongued Word Wrester) talk about new words, new blogs and new usage. NPR audio: How the Web Is Changing Language. Via.
• “A picture must be painted in such a way that the viewer can understand its meaning. If the people who see a picture cannot grasp its meaning, no matter what a talented artist may have painted it, they cannot say it is a good picture.” -Kim Jong-il. Art in North Korea.
• Card Culture. On the design impact of credit cards and “affinity” cards. Via.
• An interesting paper on: Life (Briefly) Near a Supernova (pdf). Via.
• Proverbial wisdom from around the world in the form of 12,000 proverbs from 300 different countries. Search by keyword or browse by country.
• The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age, circa 1996, and The Olduvai Theory: Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization (pdf) circa 2006. Can’t wait for post-industrial civilization.
