Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past by Reyner Banham is the foundational text on one of architecture's most compelling obsessions — the vastly scaled, infinitely adaptable edifice that captivated a generation of visionaries before almost vanishing from practice.
About This Book
First published in 1976, Banham's study remains the defining account of the megastructure movement: its theoretical origins in Le Corbusier's more utopian drawings, its full flowering in the hands of the Japanese Metabolists, and its unexpected appearances in military architecture, infrastructure, and popular culture. Neither purely a history nor a polemic, the book is a critic's pursuit of an idea — one that was built only briefly but never quite abandoned. This republication arrives amid renewed interest in large-scale urban thinking, returning Banham's wit and scholarship to architects, historians, and designers who need to understand why the megastructure endures as a poetic proposition long after its moment in professional practice has passed.
Key Features
- 232 pages of critical history, theoretical analysis, and archival visual documentation of megastructure precedents
- Written by Reyner Banham, one of the twentieth century's most incisive architectural critics and historians
- Traces connections from Le Corbusier and the Japanese Metabolists to military, industrial, and pop-cultural examples
- Published by The Monacelli Press
What You'll Discover
- How the megastructure was theorised in the 1960s and why it retreated from mainstream practice almost as quickly as it emerged
- The intellectual lineage connecting Le Corbusier's speculative drawings to the built and unbuilt proposals of the Japanese Metabolist architects
- The presence of megastructural thinking in non-architectural contexts — military construction, industrial infrastructure, and the emerging visual language of pop culture and art
- Why the megastructure persists as an imaginative force in speculative art and science fiction, decades after its codification as an architectural type
About the Author
Reyner Banham was among the most gifted and incisive architectural critics and historians of his time, known for combining imagination, wit, and pioneering scholarship. His writing consistently sought unexpected connections across architecture, technology, and culture, and Megastructure stands as one of his most ambitious critical enterprises.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 232
- Dimensions: 262 x 238 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781580935401
- Publisher: The Monacelli Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, urban theorists, and historians with an interest in utopian modernism, the Metabolist movement, and the intellectual genealogy of large-scale urban form.