Aero City. Arches over Water

In the section of his volume entitled “Experimental Urban Planning Designs,” Khan-Magomedov explores Khidekel’s different futuristic cities, such as the Aero-City, Garden City, City over Water, Floating City, and Flying City, which for Khan-Magomedov manifested the evolution of Khidekel’s cosmic habitats hovering above the Earth, “to the idea of mechanically raising an entire city above the earth.” These elevated complexes were so far ahead of their time that some of Khan-Magomedov’s colleagues could not believe they were envisioned and produced by their fellow countryman in the 1920s. “If he got the idea of the city on stilts prior to Yona Friedman and the idea of the floating city prior to the Japanese Metabolists, he was a genius”, said one of them. “Why not? wondered Khan-Magomedov. “Isn’t it time for us to stop looking for geniuses out there only? But our domestic genius, unlike the foreign ones, never insisted on his brilliance, and was warily waiting for his “formalistic” works . . . to be brought into the academic and creative domain via my book.”