Future Cities

The man in the street watches a 72-story building go up and queries: What will cities look like in the future? What innovations will there be; how will people live in the tall buildings? Two architect-prophets have recently published books* in which each essays to predict the future of the metropolis. Le Corbusier, a Swiss whose real name is Charles Edouard Jeanneret, famed in Paris for his revolutionary ideas and dicta on city-planning, tells didactically and illustrates exhaustively his version of the future. Hugh Ferriss, romantic U. S. draftsman of modernistic architectural elevations in black and white, illustrates his predictions with drawings which he calls "not entirely random shots in the dark."

Le Corbusier's hypothesis is that man, a reasonable being who pursues his way with a purpose, will build his city on the principles of geometry --"the means created by ourselves whereby we perceive the external world and express the world within us." The Corbusier battle cry is Order; without it tomorrow's metropolises will be but romantic jumbles as are contemporary London, New York and all Continental cities. According to him, city planners must use architectural physic and surgery. Obstacles will be man's persistent following of the least resistance line, his respect for the past. As the straight line is best for the ideal city, the curved line being too rococco and impractical in an age of metal construction, the city of the future must be planned rectangularly. His projected city has a concentrated business district in the centre of vast areas of suburban residence zones. In the morning the workers pass by rapid transit to large "vomitories" or stations whence they are whisked by subways to the basements of their respective skyscrapers. The vertical city quickly fills up, work is begun. Shortly after noonday the working day is over--"the city will empty as though by a deep breath." If man applies himself, says Le Corbusier, the ideal can be realized. He sums up: "Immense industrial undertakings do not need great men."

Hugh Ferriss's city of tomorrow is zoned according to its peculiar activities, each of which dictates its own architecture. Centres and sub-centres comprise the Business Zone, the Art Zone, the Science Zone, each with its ramifying departments. Buildings of glass and steel arise 1,200 ft., supporting vehicular highways on varying levels. There are avenues 200 ft. wide at half-mile intervals. Draughtsman Ferriss transfers this obvious, romantic vision into a series of pleasing, misty drawings made appealing by the use of breath-taking perspectives and powerful light effects. Practical critics observe that the scheme is ephemeral and utilizes such tricks as leaving out windows which, if represented, would convey the proper scale and give a realistic effect to Architect Ferriss's momentous masses, but would make these masses seem much less momentous and startlingly visionary. The drawings are accompanied by a lyrical text which breaks out into blank verse at times and ends with an epilog--The City Could Be Made in the Image of Man Who is Made in the Image of. . . .

*THE CITY OF TOMORROW--Le Corbusier-- Payson & Clarke ($7.50). THE METROPOLIS OF TOMORROW--Hugh Ferriss--Ives Washburn ($7.50).

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