Antonio Sant’Elia and Futurism

In the system of the main trends of Art Nouveau architecture (neoclassicism, neo-Romanticism, rationalism, irrationalism), futurism belonged to irrational trends in which avant-garde aesthetics, which denied Art Nouveau, was formed. Creative attitudes, artistic practice and life position of Sant’Elia lay in the mainstream of futurism, which played the role of a powerful artistic impetus. The futuristic epos of Sant’Elia was far ahead of the most rationalized architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He suggested thinking in terms of the city as a design unit, rather than individual buildings or fragments of urban layouts.