Krutikov

Arguably, the most radical realisation of a floating city is Georgii Krutikov’s City of the Future project from 1928. In the first of two post about Krutikov, we well examine the City of the Future project (often referred to as the Flying City) in more depth. Part 2 will look at Krutikov’s proposal for a flying car and see where that is leading us.

Krutikov was a student of the Soviet Rationalist Nikolai Ladovskii at VKhUTEIN (the Higher Art and Technical Institute, previously known as VKhUTEMAS, the influential school of architecture in Moscow), and presented the proposal as his final diploma project. That a student project from 1928 is so highly regarded as a pioneering piece of avant garde architectural speculation is a testament to the radical nature of the scheme presented, and also the efforts of reknown Constructivist architectural historian Selim Khan-Magomedov.

Flying City 2

Two perspective images define the project. The first, in white on a dark background, shows a shimmering, upside down paraboloid (containing the residential zone), hovering above a whirlpool industrial zone on the surface. The residential zone consists of series of rings radiating upwards. The image is illusive, evocative, dynamic, with rays of light shooting upwards.

Flying City 3

The second image is a stark contrast to the first. Rendered in dark ink on a white background, it is much more traditional architectural illustration of the residential block. Here eight 5-storey residential towers are arrange around a ring block of a communal housing block.

Flying City 1

Flying City 4

Moving between floating elements, and connecting ground to earth, are flying cabins. Krutikov conceives of these almost as detachable rooms, mobile homes.

Flying City 5

How is the city powered? How does it stay aloft? It is not clear, other than some vague assertions of 'intra-atomic energy' While there is little detail about how the Flying City actually functions, it does not reduce the proposal to pure fantasy. In presentations of precedents and research for the project, Kruitikov went to great lengths to show not only forms of mobile architecture, but also of mans' endeavours to extend horizons, and in the 'Conquest of New Spaces' precedent study, Kruitikov also showed examples of technologies (such as the railway) that were thought fanciful or ridiculous, before achieving mainstream acceptance.

In her excellent essay,
“Two Utopias of Georgia Kruitokov’s ’The City of the Future’”, Alla Vronskaya explores the project within the utopian pedagogical approach at the VKhUTEIN under Ladovskii:

“Rather than being dissociated from reality, 'The City of the Future’, explored reality at a deeper level. What the Architecture Department claimed was the Kruitikov’s ‘Flying City’ was not a science fiction, but a utopia, a word too painful for post-Revolutionary Soviet culture to be pronounced openly.

Vronskaya continues to examine how Krutikov project fitted within two utopian ideals in operation at the time of its conception: "the Romantic, post-revolutionary utopia as a hope and the proto-totalitarian utopia as a rigid social organisation, associated with the economic politics of the First Five-Year Plan."

Krutikov’s proposal oscillates between these utopian paradigms, the two defining images discussed above could be seen as occupying the two positions. The first image, of the spinning ‘gleaming thimble’ contrasts with the more prosaic architectural representation of built form and social organisation in the second, even if we are no closer to understanding how it resists gravity.

The power of Krutikov’s vision, of spinning vortices of light, remains a compelling one:

"Even eighty years later this project lends itself primarily to aesthetic appreciation, its sheer magnitude arousing feelings of awe and incredulity. The pleasure that Krutikov’s project offers is the pleasure in the sublime, a disinterested pleasure in perceiving something immense that transcends a moment and a place"

Khidekel

Khidekel composition

Earlier this year, Floating Worlds and Future Cities, an exhibition and symposium in New York, brought into focus the largely forgotten figure of Lazar Khidekel, and sought to place him properly as one of the pioneers of Suprematism. Khidekel could even be considered the first Suprematist architect, and was instrumental in helping Suprematism move beyond painting towards built form, urbanism and cosmic civilisation.

Khidekel was just 14 years old when admitted to the Vitebsk school of art, under Marc Chagall. In 1919, Kasmir Malevich founded a group called UNOVIS - Champions of the New Art - which also included El Lissitsky, Nina Kogan, Nikolai Suetin and Ilya Chashnik as well as Khidekel.

In 1921, (at the age of 17!) together with Ilya Chashnik, Khidekel headed the architecture and technical department at Vitebsk School of Art, and set about implementing a radical curriculum.

"The training of architects who at the same time will be the organisers and designers of the architectural units of the blocks that will constitute the streets and cities; the training of architects who will also be able to design and plan the economic centers."
The official website at www.lazarkhidekel.com offers a tantalising glimpse of Khidekel's talents. The Suprematist works are drawings or paintings on paper, and lack the polish of finished works by Malevich or Ilya Chashnik, but are formally just as stunning.

Khidekel architecton

Suprematist composition

But it is in the architectonic works that we see Khidekel's unique talent, in translating the essence of Suprematist composition to architectural forms. His Architectons matched Malevich's own sculptural explorations, but Khidekel also went further in designing projects meant to be built, such as the Aeroclub project of 1922. As well as practical architectural projects, Khidekel continued to dream of floating cities and futurist visions of space and form. Malevich had called for his students "to show the entire development of volumetric Suprematism in accordance with the sensation of the aerial (aero) type and dynamic", and Khidekel responded with his designs for Aerograd, a city on stilts, hovering above water.

Arguably, only Gustav Klutsis with his designs for a Dynamic City was operating in the same raridied atmossphere, of a cosmic reach for architecture breaking free from the Earth.

Khidekel City on Poles

Cosmic habitat 1924

Floating structure 1923

Later, at the architectural college in Petrograd, Khidekel continued to develop his architectural ideas to more practical applications, as well as working with Malevich, Suetin and Chashnik to create Architectons and Planits.

In 1926 Khidekel created the first realised Suprematist built form, a Workers Club. It was originally credited to Malevich and published in Berlin. A restrained piece of modernism, it is reminiscent of similar avant grade designs of the Bauhaus or De Stijl architects such as Rietveld or JJP Oud.

Workers club

Workers club

In later years Khidekel continued to work on architectural projects, while continuing to create visionary drawings of structures and cities hovering just above the landscape, or orbiting the earth in space.

Khidekel floating city

Khidekel floating city

As Charlotte Douglas noted (quoted in Regina Khidekel's essay "The Trajectory of Suprematism":

"Khidekel’s distinction was that this initial vision of Suprematist structures floating in space remained a central part of his art and architecture for the next forty years, and richly informed his later development as a professional architect."
It is not surprising that architects and designers are beginning to rediscover Khidekel's and recognise his visionary works as prefiguring many later projects. In the article "Discovering Khidekel" by WAI Architectural Think Tank, Khidekel is dubbed "The Last Suprematist", still prone to dizzying spatial visions long after his peers and Suprematist mentor Malevich had retreated to a less utopian position.

Khidekel floating city, 1961

"With each brushstroke of watercolor the Bolshevik utopia of utilitarian icons was painted obsolete. With the elongated appearance of each monochromatic volume a new form of revolution was achieved. Khidekel architectural visions transcended the rhetorical games of the revolution by developing complete cities out of sublime architecture. Long before Friedman’s Architecture Mobile, Constant’s New Babylon, and Isozaki’s Clusters in the Air, Khidekel imagined a world of horizontal skyscrapers that through their Suprematist weightless dynamism seemed to float ad infinitum across the surface of earth."

Khidekel Architecton compared against Gazprom proposal,OMA

While the city hovering above the ground still remains a powerful trope in both science fiction and architectural fantasy, Khidekel's visions still manage to look futuristic, arguably more so than most of the Metabolists or Situationist projects that today feel retro-futurist, inextricably tied to the past.

Khidekel's work remains endlessly floating towards the future.

The spectacular city

"In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation."

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle.

Fabian Cancellara
Photo by Flickr user Will Rose

As I stood in Hyde Park on Saturday, among an estimated 1 million people that turned out to witness the Tour de France coming to London for the first time ever, I had the rather surreal sensation that I was participating in some kind of mass consensual hallucination.

Elsewhere this weekend, London hosted a Live Earth concert at Wembley and tennis finals at Wimbledon. Just one week after a failed car bomb explosion and 2 years after the 07/07 tube bombings, London was reaffirming its identity through a series of grand spectacles.

With the beautiful weather, the garish skinsuits and sleek machines of the riders, set against the backdrop of landmarks such as the House of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, while helicopter shots of the Thames and the London Eye beamed around the world, London never looked more spectacular, in the true sense of the word.

Olympics Brand Exclusion Zone

Advertising restriction zone around Olympic Park
In graphic design, an 'exclusion zone' is an area around a logo which must be left clear. Corporate brand and logo usage guidelines demonstrate the proportion of vertical and horizontal space around a logo into which no other element can intrude.

In urban design, exclusion zones are becoming commonplace in relation to sponsorship of sporting events. The Brand Exclusion Zone is the newest form of urban demarcation, and can be used not only to affect signage and advertising, but also restrict personal freedom of choice. Within this context, the London 2012 Olympics represents one of the most radical restructuring of the rights of the city in London. The 'canvas' of London will belong exclusively to the Olympic marquee brands.

In essence, London has abdicated all rights and responsibilities to the International Olympic Committee, and implemented legislation which creates radical new spatial demarcations not only within the Olympic Park, but because of the distributed nature of the Olympic venues, across the whole of central London. London has surrendered the traditional rights to the city to the demands of the Olympic 'family' and their corporate paymasters. What the IOC want, London will give. London will be on brand lockdown.

The most carefully policed Brand Exclusion Zone will be around the Olympic Park, and extend up to 1km beyond its perimeter, for up to 35 days. Within this area, officially called an Advertising and Street Trade Restrictions venue restriction zone, no advertising for brands designated as competing with those of the official Olympic sponsors will be allowed. (Originally, as detailed here, only official sponsors were allowed to advertise, but leftover sites are now available). This will be supported by preventing spectators from wearing clothing prominently displaying competing brands, or from entering the exclusion zone with unofficial snack and beverage choices. Within the Zone, the world's biggest McDonald's will be the only branded food outlet, and Visa will be the only payment card accepted.

Advertising restriction zone around Greenwich

Advertising restriction zone around Wimbledon

This brand apartheid is designed to prevent "ambush marketing", the gaining exposure of an brand through unofficial means. One of the best known examples of this was in the World Cup in 2010, where a bevy of 36 Dutch beauties in orange dresses provided by Bavaria beer gained considerable media attention, to the chagrin of the official World Cup beer, Budweiser. At London 2012, branding 'police' will be on hand to ensure that nothing like this happens, with potential criminal prosecutions against those responsible. Organising committee LOCOG will also take steps to ensure that no unofficial business tries to associate itself with the Olympics by using phrases like 'London 2012', even on such innocuous things such as a cafe menu offering an 'Olympic breakfast'. The Olympics authorities are looking to control both language and space.

Ambush marketing at World Cup 2010

And it's not just London. All the venues for the 2012 Olympics will be on brand lockdown. In Coventry, even the roadsigns will be changed so that there is no reference to the Ricoh Arena, which is hosting matches in the football tournament. Even logos on hand dryers in the toilets are being covered up. The Sports Direct Arena in Newcastle will have to revert back to St. James Park for the duration of the Olympics.

Traditionally, the most epic guerrilla marketing war has taken place between sportswear rivals Nike and Adidas. Whereas Adidas has long been an official sponsor of major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics, Nike has cast itself as the hip, streetwise alternative, and taken considerable steps to trump Adidas in gaining exposure at major sporting events.

1996 was ambush marketing's breakout year, with Nike making a concerted effort to upset the official sporting sponsors of both the Euro 96 football tournament in England and the Olympic games in Atlanta:

"The 1996 edition of the European Championships, Uefa’s premier international quadrennial soccer tournament, provided an example of ambush marketing that changed the face of sports sponsorship. English sportswear company Umbro had paid for the rights to be the official sportswear supplier of the championships, only to find that Nike had purchased all the poster space and advertising sites in and around Wembley Park underground station, the main travel hub for England’s national stadium, Wembley. Nike’s move completely negated the power of Umbro’s official partnership. The same thing happened for the World Cup in 1998 when Nike hijacked Adidas’ official association in much the same way. As a consequence Uefa, European soccer’s governing body, has spearheaded the use and enforcement of marketing exclusion zones surrounding stadia, forcing the official sponsorship agencies of the competition in question to buy all the advertising space within a 1.3 mile radius of the stadia. The IOC too was quick to adopt this counter-ambushing strategy. The ability to implement such exclusion zones is now a key element in the process to decide future Olympic host cities."

In World Cup 2010 in South Africa, Nike circumvented the billboard advertising ban by projecting onto the side of a building in Johannesburg. As the authorities get wiser, Nike get smarter.

Nike Write the Future

Nike Write the Future

Whereas the Beijing Olympics represented an embracing of China into the coven of Westernism, the London Olympics will show us just how venal unfettered capitalism can be, how its default modus operandi is paranoia, and rather than a celebration of human endeavour and athleticism, it demonstrates more that the power of branding requires such strict parameters of control that nothing can be left to chance. Brand Exclusion Zones are just one manifestation of the privatisation of public space that London is fast-tracking. For a more thorough analysis of the much hyped legacy of London 2012, I urge you to read Anna Minton's Ground Control, recently updated to include a new chapter on the Olympics.

London Olympics Riot

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the marketeers are way ahead of the urbanists in understanding how the city works. The spatial politics of brand paranoia will be part of the true legacy of the London Olympics.

Previously:

Manhattan-ization

Manhattan grid

"How do I get to Broadway? ...I want to get to the center of things"
"Walk east a block and turn down Broadway and you'll find the center of things if you walk far enough."

Jon Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

The continuity of the gridiron gave rise to an open urban frontier that, by definition, extended infinitely. Before 1950, the urban gridiron flowed seamlessly into the continental grid, creating a continuum for which there was no interior and exterior.

Albert Pope, Zone Research, (via http://blog.nickaxel.net/)

In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas describes the origins of the strict gridiron street pattern of Manhattan, as commissioned in 1807 by Simeon de Witt, Gouverner Morris and John Rutherford. Even though the island was barely inhabited, the grid inscribed upon the island created thousands of city blocks, the future of the city defined and delimited.

"The Grid is, above all, a conceptual speculation. In spite of its apparent neutrality, it implies an intellectual program for the island: in its indifference to topography, to what exists, it claims the superiority of mental construction over reality.

The plotting of its streets and blocks announces that the subjugation, if not obliteration, of nature is its true ambition.

All blocks are the same; their equivalence invalidates, all at once, all the systems of articulation and differentiation that have guided the design of traditional cities. The Grid makes the history of architecture and all lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another.

The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The grid defines a balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos."

Koolhaas describes Manhattanization as a process, an irresistible force of artifice conquering nature.

Manhattan Transfer Manhattan Extended

Manhattan Extended

In 1922, long after the grid had been filled, the famed engineer T Kennard Thomson proposed extending Manhattan island to the south, with a land reclamation project that would add 'Six square miles of New Land' and '12 Lineal Miles for New Wharves. Kennard's proposal was a cut down version of his earlier 1916 plan for a Really Greater New York which planned over 50 square miles of additional land. The plan included filling in the existing East River and building a New East River channel to cut through Long Island.

Extend NY

The conceptual project ExtendNY by Harold Cooper goes even further, extending the Manhattan street grid around the world.

Extend NY

Mapping a rectilinear grid onto a sphere is not a straightforward exercise, but the result is a Google Maps overlay that allows you to see on what NY 'street' you live. (I live on the corner of 63, 696 Street and East 10794 Avenue)

Like Bud Korpenning's futile search for the heartbeat of a city in Manhattan Transfer, the city becomes ever more unknowable, less well defined, fuzzier, it extends everywhere. Everywhere is simultaneously center and periphery.

We are all New Yorkers now.