Elements of the Vertical City, project, Rome, Italy, Axonometric of torso
Friedrich St. Florian
American, born Austria 1932
1966
A finely rendered ink, graphite, and gouache drawing on board that proposes a modular “vertical city,” arranging stacked cylindrical towers and interlocking platforms to explore how dense urban life might be organized upward.
The meticulous axonometric draftsmanship immediately commands attention—the repeated cylindrical volumes, banded textures, and crisp shadowed planes read like a suspended mechanical organism whose order and repetition explain its imagined functions at a glance.
Made amid 1960s utopian experiments in megastructure, this work translates speculative ideas about high‑density, systematized urban life into a clear visual language that helped architects imagine and debate vertical, infrastructural solutions to modern city growth.
Medium
Ink, graphite, and gouache on board
Dimensions
36 x 28" (91.4 x 71.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation
Accession
1291.2000.b
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
