The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 2 June 2015
by Reyner Banham
Throughout the middle of the 20th century, there was a trend in popular visions of the future that included fantasies of giant cities, with giant buildings. Think of the opening scenes of films as widely spread in time as Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner, with its gigantic pyramidal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, monumental structures envisioned for 2017. For much of the last century, actually, there has been a sub-trend in the architecture profession that favored giant buildings, huge assemblages that combined the several functions of a city all in one structure. Even famous architects like le Corbusier and Walter Gropius tagged along with the futurists, envisioning space-frame constructions miles long and miles tall, with a versatile array of "clipped-on" services, residences, highways, and shopping malls with soaring pedestrian "streets". We are all now aware of giant faceless malls and office buildings that seem, at least at a small scale, to be manifestations of this megastructure. However, as Reyner Banham relates here, a megastructure depends upon its versatility, its dynamic ability to grow or shrink with its clipped-on amenities. As a result, only a few true megastructures, by this definition, have ever actually been built.
The concept of megastructure, as such, experienced its renaissance in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s. It is, unfortunately, also associated with the Brutalist architecture common to large buildings of that era. The light space-framed and tented structures of Archigram were more suited to the fantasies of a frenzied, active and recreational future for urban inhabitants. What we got, instead, were heavy gray masses that, for all their futuristic fervor, ended up as scenes in dystopic visions. One possible exception is the concrete, but light and fantastical buildings of Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, a megastructure still slowly rising in the Arizona desert.
In this short but sprawling book, now unfortunately quite rare, except for your well-stocked local university library, Reyner Banham, an enthusiast for the design of popular culture, describes the megastructure movement from its futurist beginnings early in the century, through its various manifestations in Japanese Metabolism, the Montreal Expo of 1967, and various idiosyncratic national trends in Italy, Spain, Germany, the UK, the United States and the Soviet Union. What seems to be the theme here, though, is an exuberant notion of urban concentration that failed for practical reasons. Space frames could not sufficiently scale up while leaving enough room for clipped on residences. The scale and techonological sophistication were accessible only to the most financially secure funding sources, and also represented an establishment then considered the enemy by the young people most likely to actually live in such structures. Local oppostion to brutalist and monolithic structures diluted the effect and the success of what did eventually get built, most especially the new town centre of Cumbernauld in Scotland. The brightest moments in the movement would be the blazing visions of Archigram, Expo '67, the child's toy color of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the high-tech vertical puzzle of the Lloyd's of London building.
Nevertheless, Banham makes a convincing critical argument both for and against megastructure. It is a complex and broad history of design intentions that didn't quite work out. But he was also writing (in 1976) at a time when the "movement", such as it was, was still playing itself out. There are, today, futuristic megastructures that Banham didn't have the opportunity to explore. Indeed, some of the early proponents of megastructure are still at work in the profession today, including Renzo Piano and Cesar Pelli who are now making some of their best (not strictly megastructure) work.
Thanks to the modern possibilities of parametric design, the megastructure is still with us, if not always identified as such. Much of the development of Dubai in the past couple of decades would easily fit into the definition of megastructure, once we leave out the one requirement that the structure be endlessly adaptable. There, entire islands and peninsulas have been constructed on the sea, indoor ski slopes are chilled against the desert heat, and the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, stands. And Dubai presents itself as the world's playland, an escape for the homo ludens of which Banham writes. Dubai has styled itself a city of megastructure playgrounds. Indeed, many large cities today sport proposals for modern megastructures. If not so versatile, they yet combine the key elements of urban life, transportation cores, shopping centers, residences, corporate headquarters, and the occasional helipad. Any major international airport also functions as a megastructure, a nexus of transportation, endlessly adaptable, mobile and extendable. Banham observes as much, but at a low point in the air travel industry. Later, but before our millennial concerns for security, there was an open trend in making airports destinations in themselves, with fancy restaurants and shopping on the concourses to the loading gates. But, no more.
Still, the most relevant modern throwback to the megastructure movement is the new proposal for the headquarters of Google, in which the company proposes to build massive rigid and translucent tents and domes, beneath which the structure could be cut and pasted, entire floors of office space moved and assembled to best suit the needs of the moment. While Google is a corporate environment, they benefit from their image as playground for brilliant young tech workers, with play rooms, flexible group work spaces, free restaurants, and sprawling outdoor recreation areas. Homo ludens: young millennials in an urban playground facilitated by modern computer engineering techniques. See also, the headquarters of Facebook and LinkedIn, located nearby and which already threaten to encroach on Google's megastructure (googlestructure?).
And so, does it work? Do megastructures truly offer a grand solution to urban design? Current trends at ground level are for fine-grained design, a variety of facades and usages, even if the underlying structure is still all one building (indeed, that, too is an adaptation of megastructure). Urban residents currently tend to desire the walkable landscape of a half-nostalgic vision of city life, even while millennial development threatens that very same fine-grained landscape. In certain places, megastructure survives as a concept, but almost necessarily in monolithic and at least mildly controlled (corporate?) cultures. One can't really imagine a true megastructure, striding across the American landscape. It's just too big, too monolithic, too resource intensive for any community to accept. In the end, we may have to satisfy ourselves with the imaginary pleasures of Archigram's vivid renderings of a future that never happened, a future of buildings that would have been truly awesome to behold. At the moment, we have Banham to thank for giving us a compelling context for these visions as well.
Also by Reyner Banham: [Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies] [A Critic Writes]
See also: [Reyner Banham by Nigel Whiteley] [The Town of Tomorrow edited by Peter Chadwick & Ben Weaver]