The Epic of Futurism: When Architecture Wanted to Outrun Time

Futurism begins when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti publishes a manifesto declaring war on yesterday, and the question of speed moves from painting into architecture. Antonio Sant'Elia draws the Città Nuova, a vertical city of movement and energy, and its principles follow: the glorification of speed, technology as more than a servant, the city as a living machine, the rejection of historical façades and the claim that buildings need not last forever. Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla paint motion itself, power stations become the cathedrals of a new age, and the book does not avoid the darker chapter of war and fascism. It then traces the movement's echo in High-Tech, Archigram, Japanese Metabolism, Deconstructivism and artificial intelligence, and reminds the reader that people also need to stop.