“And the wicked will be ashes under the soles of the feet of the good,” Malachi 4:3

Abstract

Plan comes from the word ichnos –the impression of the sole of a foot on a terrain. The ground plan of a building, historically understood as the footprint of such building on a site, acquires a new literal meaning with the emergence of the modern city. Architecture gradually starts to address problems that go beyond its own scale. The urban and the civic –the polis–, become expanded fields of the discipline. From mere representation to instrumentalisation, the act of drawing a Plan will prove to contain rhetorical and thus political power. By analysing Alexander Klein’s plans and diagrams of the “Functional House for Frictionless Living” (1928), this article narrates the ideological and moral connotations underlying the Modern Plan. Klein distinguishes “a good plan” from “a bad plan,” articulating a moral agenda and the utopic desire of social and urban reform. Cornelis Van Eesteren city axonometric will act as an extension of Klein’s argument at territorial scale. This utopia will permeate the modes of architectural production and thinking of the first half of the 20 th century, despite the contradictions, challenges and rejections that will affect the Plan in the decades after WW2.