Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder - Softcover

Morshed, Adnan

 
9780816673193: Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0816673195 ISBN 13: 9780816673193
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2015

Synopsis

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.

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About the Author

Adnan Morshed is associate professor of architecture and architectural history at the Catholic University of America.

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Publisher
Univ Of Minnesota Press
Publication date
2015
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0816673195
ISBN 13 
9780816673193
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
3
Number of pages
296

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780816673186: Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0816673187 ISBN 13:  9780816673186
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2015
Hardcover