Modernism dealt with quantity. It terrifyingly organized masses of people within a Cartesian space: the houses of Pagano, Diotallevi and Marescotti’s Città Orizzontale were distributed among city blocks according to the number of members a family had. Pigeonholed as if placed in the methodical cabinet of an obsessive entomologist, dwellers’ interrelations were strictly classified and predetermined on the basis of physical quantities: singles, couples, three-person families, four-person families, and so on . . . In a sort of desolated metonymy, apartments stood for inhabitants, city-blocks for groups of people, cities for masses. In such a non-human landscape, people acquired a surreal quality. Surprisingly, human figures appear in Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt perspectives. As shapes cut out in black shown in groups of two and equally distributed in space, they stand on the bridges that the architect kindly provided. You won’t notice them at first glance, but they are there nonetheless. You have to wonder if their inclusion was a joke . . .
