The change of all conditions of life demanded a fundamental re-reflection upon the essential of the conceptual design of the city. It was regarded as a 'product of the economic development of modern times', as Ludwig Hilberseimer declared in 1927. By the 'utmost concentration and extensive organisation' an 'excess of intensity' should be achieved. The city of the future should no longer be based on the principles of speculation but on its own legality only. The functional separation of living and working led to solutions which were partly consistent, indeed, but also inhuman. Satellite towns are in fact a desirable improvement compared to the dark tenements of the 19th century, but their reduction to mere economic efficiency resulted in rejection and was even followed by demolition in some cases.

Architects and projects
Kasimir Malevic • El Lissitzky • Antonio Sant'Elia • Raymond Hood • Hugh Ferris • Ludwig Hilberseimer • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe • Vít Obrtel

Kasimir Malevic, Russia

'Life must be purged of the rubbish of the past, from parasitic eclecticism, so that it can be brought to develop in its normal way.
The victory of today over habits we have come to love requires rejection of yesterday, a clearout of the consciousness. … Everything that belongs to yesterday is eclectic: the cart, the primitive plough, the horse, home industry, landscape painting, statues of liberty, triumphal arches, factory food and above all – buildings in the ancient style.'
Kasimir Malevic (1924), Suprematistic Manifesto, 2.5.1924

Artists' Database (in German)
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El Lissitzky, Russia

'In our architecture, as in our lives as a whole, we are trying hard to create a social order, i.e. to implant instinctive qualities in our consciousness.
The ideological superstructure protects and secures our work. At first, we identified socio-economic reconstruction as a substructure for the reform we intend to undertake in architecture. It is the clear starting-point, but it would be a mistake to explain the context so simply. Life, organic growth, is a dialectical process, that says both yes (plus) and no (minus) at the same time.'
El Lissitzky (1929), Ideologischer Überbau, in: Conrads, Ulrich: Programme und Manifeste zur Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1984, p. 112

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Antonio Sant'Elia, Italy

'We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every detail; and the Futurist house must be like a gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away like tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the façade like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel, stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and relief, extraordinarily ugly in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws. It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no  longer be like a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many floors down into the earth, embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up by metal gangways and swift-moving pavements for necessary interconnections.'
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), in: L'architetture futurista. Manifesto, Milano

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Raymond Hood, USA

Artists' Database (in German) 
Artists' Film Database (in German) 

Projects
• Tower houses on a small base area, proposal for the solution of the congestion of houses, n.d.

'The city is a working tool. Generally speaking, cities do not fulfil this demand any longer. They are futile structures: they consume the body, and they work against the mind. The disorder that proliferates in them has an injurious effect: their degeneration is wounding to our self-esteem and is hurtful to our dignity. A city!
It is confiscation of nature by man. It is an act committed against nature by man, an organism of man for protection and for work. It is a creation. Strictly speaking, the poetry of nature is nothing but a construction of the mind. The city is an enormous image that activates our mind. Why should the city not, even today, be a source of poetry?'
Le Corbusier (1925), Leitsätze des Städtebaus. In: Conrads, Ulrich: Programme und Manifeste zur Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig, 1984, p. 84

Further architects and their projects

Hugh Ferris, USA
Artists' Database (in German) 

Projects
• Skyscraper, 1925, 1926 (drafts for the exemplification of the repressive effect of the New York building regulation)

Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Germany
Artists' Database (in German) 

• Skyscraper city, 1924 (scheme)
• Residential town, 1923 (scheme)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Germany
Artists' Database (in German) 
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• Multistorey building, Berlin, 1921 (draft)

Vít Obrtel, Czechoslovakia
Artists' Database (in German) 

• Multistorey building, 1921 (draft)

Picture credits

(1) Photos taken from the catalogue 'Neues Bauen International 1927 | 2002', ifa Stuttgart 2002. Herein: Reprint 'Internationale neue Baukunst', Ludwig Hilberseimer, Stuttgart 1927: © Kurt Hoffmann, Stuttgart
(2) Photos of the models: © Hans-Joachim Heyer, Boris Miklautsch