Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent PastA long-sought reprint of this classic of architectural history and criticism, surveying a movement that would inspire architects, fantasists, and filmmakers alike. It is an architectural concept as alluring as it is elusive, as futuristic as it is primordial. Megastructure is what it sounds like: a vastly scaled edifice that can contain potentially countless uses, contexts, and adaptations. Theorized and briefly experimented with in built form in the 1960s, megastructures almost as quickly went out of fashion in the profession. But Reyner Banham's 1976 book compiled the origin stories and ongoing mythos of this visionary movement, seeking to chart its lively rise, rapid fall, and ongoing meaning. Now back in print after decades and with original editions fetching well over $100 on the secondary market, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past is part of the recent surge in attention to this quixotic form, of which some examples were built but to this day remains--decades after its codification--more of a poetic idea than a real architectural type. Banham, among the most gifted and incisive architectural critics and historians of his time, sought connections between theoretical origins in Le Corbusier's more starry-eyed drawings to the flurry of theories by the Japanese Metabolist architects, to less intentional examples in military architecture, industry, infrastructure, and the emerging instances in pop culture and art. Had he written the book a few years later he would find an abundance of examples in speculative art and science fiction cinema, mediums where it continues to provoke wonder to this day. A long-sought study by an author who combined imagination, wit, and pioneering scholarship, the republication of Megastructure is an opportunity for scholars and laypeople alike to return to the origins of this fantastic urban idea. |
Contents
Todd Gannon | 4 |
Antecedents Analogies and Mégastructures | 19 |
Beginners and Begetters | 39 |
Megayear 1964 | 76 |
Fun and Flexibility | 90 |
Megacity Montreal | 111 |
Megastructure in Academe | 136 |
Acceptability and Exploitation | 170 |
The Meaning of Megastructure 202 | 210 |
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Common terms and phrases
A-frame academic megastructures accommodation aesthetic appear Archigram architects Architectural Forum Banham Berlin blocks bridge British Brunswick Centre building built capsules Cedric Price central Cesar Pelli competition complex concept concrete courtesy Cumbernauld Cumbernauld Town Centre detailed diagonal downtown elements environment exhibition Expo extensibility formal frame Fun Palace functions grid Habitat housing ideas imagery Italian Japanese Kenzo Tange kind Le Corbusier London look ludique magazine Maki massive mega megaform megastruc megastructuralists megastructure Melvin Charney Metabolism Metabolists Metro mobile Montreal Montreal Expo monumental Paolo Soleri parking pedestrian Pelli Peter Cook Place Bonaventure planning Plug-In City proposed radical residential Reyner Banham Sant'Elia scale scheme seems seen sixties social space spite street Tafuri Tange's Terrassenhäuser Thamesmead Theme Pavilions Tokyo towers Town Centre tradition traffic ture University urban design urban structure urbanisme spatial Utopian vision visionary visual whole Yona Friedman York