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.
...MoreReview Samuel Zipp (2016) Review of "Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder". Journal of American History (pp. 1238-1239).
Book
Anthony F. Arrigo;
(2014)
Imaging Hoover Dam: the Making of a Cultural Icon
(/isis/citation/CBB752609542/)
Article
Heathcott, Joseph;
(2013)
Ephemeral City: Design and Civic Meaning at the 1904 World's Fair
(/isis/citation/CBB001201124/)
Book
Rydell, Robert W.;
Schiavo, Laura Burd.;
Bennett, Robert;
(2010)
Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB001230773/)
Book
Roberts, Sam;
(2013)
Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America
(/isis/citation/CBB001213238/)
Article
Amy Slaton;
(1996)
Aesthetics of a Modern Industry: Buildings of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad's Scranton Yards
(/isis/citation/CBB628277884/)
Book
Amy D. Finstein;
(2020)
Modern mobility aloft : Elevated highways, architecture, and urban change in pre-interstate America
(/isis/citation/CBB845299669/)
Book
Sonia Hirt;
(2014)
Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation
(/isis/citation/CBB187954773/)
Article
Vardi, Itai;
(2011-12)
Auto Thrill Shows and Destruction Derbies, 1922--1965: Establishing the Cultural Logic of the Deliberate Car Crash in America
(/isis/citation/CBB001231786/)
Book
Westwick, Peter J.;
(2012)
Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California
(/isis/citation/CBB001201066/)
Book
LeMenager, Stephanie;
(2014)
Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001422323/)
Book
Marilyn Musicant;
(2014)
Los Angeles Union Station
(/isis/citation/CBB755993162/)
Chapter
Berger, Michael L.;
(1992)
The car's impact on the American family
(/isis/citation/CBB001181630/)
Book
Wachs, Martin;
Crawford, Margaret;
(1992)
The Car and the city: The automobile, the built environment, and daily urban life
(/isis/citation/CBB001181628/)
Thesis
Jeon, Chihyung;
(2010)
Technologies of the Operator: Engineering the Pilot in the U.S. and Japan, 1930--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001567196/)
Book
Graham M. Simons;
(2019)
Early French Aviation, 1905–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB542836660/)
Book
Kerry Ross;
(2015)
Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB755143266/)
Book
Glazer, Nathan;
(2007)
From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City
(/isis/citation/CBB000950914/)
Book
Anker, Peder;
(2010)
From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design
(/isis/citation/CBB001220077/)
Article
David Espinosa-Espinosa;
A. César González-García;
Marco V. García-Quintela;
(2018)
Urban Planning and Ritual Action in Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten, Germany): Understanding a Non-solar Orientation Pattern
(/isis/citation/CBB118474108/)
Article
Angela R. Bielefeldt;
Nathan E. Canney;
(2016)
Relationships Between Religion, Spirituality, and Socially Responsible Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB907977542/)
Be the first to comment!