This could just as easily be applied to High Tech architecture. In Norman Foster’s HSBC building the structural frame is clutched to the outside. This is an explosion of the modernist concept that construction should be revealed – does it represent an ironic exaggeration of the principle (i.e. a Post Modernist comment) or a logical continuation of it? The interior fetishises engineering as the substance of architecture .
Sant’ Elia’s buildings could not be built because his vision far exceeded the technological capabilities of the day. He fantasized about a technological architecture before technology was sufficiently advanced to realise it, but High Tech buildings such as Lloyds of London actually achieve it. The HSBC and Lloyds Buildings have the megalomaniacal scale of Sant’ Elia’s visionary structures.
High Tech can be seen as both a continuation and a modification of Modernism. It confines itself to a unity of materials, time and mood, continuing the totalizing impulse of Modernism. Inside and outside are a continuum. This is one of the best Modernist conventions, which helps articulate function. Arguably it represents a Thatcherite commercialism. Canary Wharf in London was privately built during the Tory government of the late 80s in the image of American corporate capitalism. It subverted ordinary planning regulations. But High Tech is also a populist style. Rogers was concerned that architecture had lost contact with the public: his use of emblems from aircraft design constitutes a familiar, accessible imagery, as do the toy-like colours of the Pompidou Centre.
For more information on the Futurist movement, please see: