Abstract

The first decades of the twentieth century started to showcase the postcard rendered by the greatest metropolitan paradigm of the xx century: New York and its skyscrapers. A complete break from the concept of the city known to Europeans. While dystopia has born as criticism in literature form towards the Russian revolution, resulting in sci-fi skyscrapers images that take urbanism planning to new levels. A three-dimensional view of the city that goes beyond the plane emerges, at the same time as when cinema makes the skyscraper a central character of its visual narrative. Progressively, visions of a futuristic, mechanized and alienating society are only possible in a densely verticalized urban area. An accurate image, a visual fiction from 1911 that envisioned how the metropolis of New York would be in the near future. Designed by Moses King and drawn by Richard Rummell, allowing to review the paradigm of city of skyscrapers, and the actual development of the metropolitan phenomenon of verticalization produced by the skyscrapers and the conquest of height.