Let The Pictures Do The Talking Part Four: Hugh Ferriss and his World of Tomorrow

Although trained as an architect, Hugh Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but early on in his career, specialised in creating architectural renderings of other's architects' work. As a delineator, his work was in creating a perspective of a building or project as part of the sales process or for advertising.
By the mid-twenties, countless New York skyscrapers were queued up to be bathed in Ferriss's moody draftmanship. The city was transformed into a dramatic chiaroscuro, the buildings massed in shadow and fog, lit and obscured by roaming spotlights; the structures themselves almost overwhelmingly gigantic, like the houses of gods.

Ferriss intended his work as an example to other architects that they would put concept, human experience and emotional response before capitalistic concerns. What he also did was create a visual language to understand the potential of skyscrapers. Look at Batman's Gotham City or the recent Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow to see the effect that Ferriss still has in popular culture. The art really speaks for itself. It's staggeringly beautiful. All cities should look like this...