PublishedSimon & Schuster, November 2017 |
ISBN9781471166419 |
FormatHardcover, 256 pages |
Dimensions24.6cm × 18.9cm |
A skyscraper one mile high, a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan, a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant: some of the most exciting buildings in the history of architecture are the ones that never got built. These are the projects in which architects took materials to the limits, explored challenging new ideas, defied conventions, and pointed the way towards the future.
Some of them are architectural masterpieces, some simply delightful flights of fancy. It was not usually poor design that stymied them - politics, inadequate funding, or a client who chose a "safe" option rather than a daring vision were all things that could stop a project leaving the drawing board. These unbuilt buildings include the grand projects that acted as architectural calling cards, experimental designs that stretch technology, visions for the future of the city, and articles of architectural faith. Structures likeBuckminster Fuller's dome over New York or Frank Lloyd Wright's mile-high tower can seem impossibly daring. But they also point to buildings that came decades later, to the Eden Project and the Shard. Some of those unbuilt wonders are buildings of great beauty and individual form like Etienne-Louis Boullee's enormous spherical monument to Isaac Newton; some, such as the city plans of Le Corbusier, seem to want to teach us how to live; some, like El Lissitsky's "horizontal skyscrapers" and Gaudi's curvaceous New York hotel, turn architectural convention upside-down; some, such as Archigram's Walking City and Plug-in City, are bizarre and inspiring by turns. All are captured in this magnificently illustrated book.
Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
Some of the most exciting buildings in history are the ones that never got built. This magnificently illustrated book captures some of the best of these – from medieval times up to the present. Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome over Manhattan – 2 miles in diameter and high enough to cover the Empire State Building – has to be one of the most ambitious in this book. There’s even a project from Western Australia, that probably not many peope are aware of - A cathedral at New Norcia. Would you believe that in the 1950s Abbot Gregory Gomez commissioned the famous Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi to design a cathedral for New Norcia, with seating for 820 people and standing room for a further thousand? This amazing modernist project – with 30 metre parabolic arches built in concrete and infilled with stained glass windows - was abandoned in the early 1960s because the cost was unrealistic. Only the plans and models remain – and the vast stained-glass windows that are said to be in storage. A great book for architects, anyone interested in history and design,
