I Grattacieli ed i Loro Alleati in Terra, in Mare ed in Cielo. The Skyscrapers and Their Allies on Land, Water and in the Air.
Genova: Arti Grafiche Caimo & C, [1936]. 11¾” x 8½”. Pictorial thin card wrappers. Pp. 188, [3, index] + 10 color plates and maps (8 folded) bound in + two 11” x 23” folded promotionals laid in. Good minus: approximately 12 pages with moderate to severe adhesion damage resulting in tears and areas of text loss; wrappers a bit sunned with a touch of corner wear; light creasing and spotting to edges; some leaves unopened.
This is a remarkable work on city planning and infrastructure created by an Italian engineer, architect and designer, Renzo Picasso, and inspired by American and international cities.
Renzo Picasso was born in Genoa in 1880. His father and grandfather were both architects who had contributed immensely to his hometown. He traveled widely through European cities gaining inspiration for his work, and was heavily impacted by a trip to New York in 1911. Deviating from his family's traditional styles, Picasso created countless drawings and plans for skyscrapers, public transports, stacked roadways, towers and underground walkways before he died in 1975. Per an online archive working to collect his creations, the majority remain unpublished, and “While he is responsible for some of the buildings that currently stand in Genoa, his grander ideas remain only in their printed form.”
This work is written nearly wholly in Italian, with some English appearing mostly in the copious in-text diagrams and bound-in color plates. Picasso shows us junctions in the New Jersey “H-M 'Tube'” as well as “The two greatest competitors in Piccadilly Circus: 'Tube' and 'Bus'.” There are tables of statistics on vehicle registrations, building elevations, sea and airport traffic, as well as mathematical equations. One page has the illustrated “Champions” of height in New York and Chicago and another the “Sezioni di traffico,” sections of subways where one “need not set foot in street.” There are images of “self supporting” and “aerial” bridges, the “Skyline Genesis” of New York from 1679 to 1930 and a “Zeppelin mooring mast.”
This copy has two gorgeous promotionals for the book laid in, both with color images to three front panels and text in five languages on the reverse. One has aerial city center plans for Genoa, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and New York, and the other shows “veicoli e regolatori di via,” transit vehicles and traffic lights, with diagrams of intersections and a layout of Central Park. They boast of this book: “All the Skyscrapers-Champions, all the means of transport, from the slowest natural to the swiftest mechanical, surface, elevated, subterranean, subwater and aerial, are illustrated and analised in their position, form and value.”
The publication is undated and our research points to a release of 1936. OCLC shows cataloging discrepancies, but there appear to be 15 holdings in the United States and seven in Europe. Good -. Item #2018
Price: $675.00