Research Catalog

Impossible heights : skyscrapers, flight, and the master builder

Title: Impossible heights : skyscrapers, flight, and the master builder / Adnan Morshed.
Author: Morshed, Adnan
Publication: Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2015]

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Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	NA2543.S6 M68 2015g	Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 291 pages; 27 cm

Summary

" The advent of the airplane and skyscraper in 1920s and '30s America offered the population an entirely new way to look at the world: from above. The captivating image of an airplane flying over the rising metropolis led many Americans to believe a new civilization had dawned. In Impossible Heights, Adnan Morshed examines the aesthetics that emerged from this valorization of heights and their impact on the built environment. The lofty vantage point from the sky ushered in a modernist impulse to cleanse crowded twentieth-century cities in anticipation of an ideal world of tomorrow. Inspired by great new heights, American architects became central to this endeavor and were regarded as heroic aviators. Combining close readings of a broad range of archival sources, Morshed offers new interpretations of works such as Hugh Ferriss's Metropolis drawings, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion houses, and Norman Bel Geddes's Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Transformed by the populist imagination into "master builders," these designers helped produce a new form of visuality: the aesthetics of ascension. By demonstrating how aerial movement and height intersect with popular "superman" discourses of the time, Morshed reveals the relationship between architecture, art, science, and interwar pop culture. Featuring a marvelous array of never before published illustrations, this richly textured study of utopian imaginings illustrates America's propulsion into a new cultural consciousness. "--

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction : The Aesthetics of Ascension -- Hugh Ferriss and the "Harmonious Development of Man" -- Ascension as Autobiography : Buckminster Fuller and His "Land to Sky, Outward Progression" -- The Master Builder as Superman : Norman Bel Geddes's Futurama -- Epilogue : The God's-Eye Vision.

ISBN

9780816673186
0816673187
9780816673193
0816673195

LCCN

2014024833

OCLC

ocn877364989
877364989
SCSB-14626159

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries