In both steampunk as well as dieselpunk, we tend to exaggerate history. Where by the turn-of-the-century, airships gradually began to enter service, in steampunk, by this time, the skies are congested with dirigibles. And where Nazi scientists performed the most dreadful human experiments, in dieselpunk, their work produces frightening creatures, half-man, half-machine, striking terror into the hearts of Allied soldiers.
In terms of aesthetic, this exaggeration is more subtle, though equally significant. We augment Victorian style with design and technology the Victorians themselves perceived as futuristic in period Scientific Romances and Voyages Extraordinaires. Similarly, dieselpunk exploits the adventure and detective stories serialized in pulp magazines throughout its era, as well as the depictions of the future published in such magazines as Popular Science and Modern Mechanix. Though the visions of many forward-looking authors and artists are now vividly recreated to conceive a dieselpunk aesthetic, when it comes to architecture, one name stands out. Invoking the art deco style of his time, this American delineator mastered the medium of shadow and light, molding form in a way that truly captured the spirit of place and being. Rather than designing buildings of his own, he specialized in creating architectural renderings which served either to sell a project or promote it to a wider audience. Thus his drawings were frequently destined for shows and advertisements and as a result, Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) acquired a reputation and found himself to be highly sought after.
By the advent of the Roaring Twenties, Ferriss had begun to develop his own style, typically presenting the building being advanced at night, lit up by spotlights, or in the fog, as if photographed with a soft focus. The shadows cast by and upon the building became almost as important as the revealed surfaces. He had somehow managed to develop a style that would elicit emotional responses from the viewer.
In 1922, skyscraper builder Hervey Wiley Corbett commissioned Ferriss to draw a series of four step-by-step perspectives demonstrating the architectural consequences of the 1916 Zoning Resolution. These drawings would later be published in his 1929 book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, in which he introduces the reader to New York City at dawn, captured still in early morning fog, when, Ferriss writes, “one finds oneself [...] the spectator of an even more nebulous panorama. Literally, there is nothing to be seen but mist; not a tower has yet been revealed below, and except for the immediate parapet rail [...] there is not a suggestion of either locality or solidity for the coming scene. To an imaginative spectator, it might seem that he is perched in some elevated stage box to witness some gigantic spectacle, some cyclopean drama of forms; and that the curtain has not yet risen.”
The human scale is what becomes particularly poignant in Ferriss’ renderings. Buildings are depicted at such an immense scale; their vastness is almost beyond comprehension. Yet we can relate to those individuals in his works, their personal perspective of the world around them becomes ours. The striking disparity of towering structures, the megaliths of our times, and the detail of personal space, is what provides this drama of place. We can relate to this drama, living vicariously in a world we may never experience, and understand it implicitly.
The intersection of a perhaps incomprehensible significance and a singular perspective of thoughts are what balance the realm of design in Ferriss’ drawings. Detail becomes acutely obvious because of the whole, not in spite of it. It is this precious sense of life in the presence of an overwhelming whole, the grand scale of place, that provides the stage for smaller realms of interaction to occur. Through his striking portrayal of yet unbuilt worlds, Ferriss lures the viewer into a drama as real as the world beyond the image. “There is a moment of curiosity, even for those who have seen the play before. Since in all probability they are about to view some newly arisen steel skeleton, some tower or even some street which was not in yesterday’s performance. And to one who had not been in the audience before—to some visitor from another land or another age—there could not fail to be at least a moment of wonder. What apocalypse is about to be revealed? What is its setting? And what will be the purport of this modern metropolitan drama?”
N. Ottens
Originally published in the Gatehouse Gazette, issue 2 (September 2008)
