"The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferris a great example of how any field, taking upon it a vision of the future, ultimately tries to create a new system of benign government. Ferris was an architect who, in 1929, published a series of sketches about what cities could and should look like. Plainly stating that architecture affects people's actions at the subconcious level, he creates an environment within which people might just act better.
In spirit this is so much like Thomas More's Utopia or Edward Bellamy's Looking backward that it's freaky.
Ferriss's city is enourmous. The base of its largest buildings take up eight blocks. They're so big and specially purposed that he says the word "building" no longer fits--they should be called "centers." There's a business, government, art and science center. Each building is its own city with banks, gyms, shops, restaurants.
In the city of the future, religions act in harmony. They're housed in a triple building. One is for the executive offices, the next for "aspirational activities" and the third, and the highest, is for charities.
The description of the Science Zone is a poem:
"Buildings like crystals.
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.
No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science Zone."
And yet for all the artificiality of it -- the buildings are concrete and the layout is geometric -- Ferris embeds organic aspects. Between the huge centers, buildings climb no more than six stories and they ascend insize towards the centers like "foothills." The roofs are covered in two feet of soil so trees can grow.
Ferris concludes his work: "Are we to imagine that this city is populated by human beings who value emotion and mind equally with the senses, and have therefore disposed their art, science and business centers in such a way that all three would participate equally in the government of the city?"
Ferris did much to influence our ideas about what the city of tomorrow should look like. But as new as his ideas were, it's clear that they're compelling for how they embody our ancient ideals, hopes and fears.