"MEGASTRUCTURE – URBAN FUTURES OF THE RECENT PAST" par Reyner BANHAM. Editions Harper & Row, New York. 1976. Première édition américaine. Imprimé en Grande Bretagne. Grand in-8, couverture toilée grise sous jaquette illustrée. 224 pages. Texte en anglais, illustré de 222 reproductions photographiques noir & blanc, in-texte, de plans, maquettes et réalisations architecturales.

 

"Megastructures represent a bold, if doomed, attempt to create the future in an architectural mould. ln the 1960s architects of the 'modern movement' became convinced it was their responsibility to design the whole human environment and out of this concept and obligation arose the Megastructure - a vast, monumental framework of structure, transportation and services within which individuals or groups or whole communities would contrive their own environments. Many were planned, few were built, but for a decade the Megastructure movement was the dominant force in architecture and urbanism - on a global scale. Reyner Banham traces the evolution, development, theory and practice of the Megastructure movement showing how it attempted 'to make sense of an (architecturally) incomprehensible condition in the world's cities, to resolve the conflicts between design and spontaneity, the large and the small, the permanent and the transient.'…"

 

Ref LAC0145