Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination

A complete and authoritative resource for professionals and students.

The design of imaginary, conceptual, or radical buildings is as old as the practice of architecture itself. For centuries, architects such as Piranesi, Ledoux, and Sant'Elia have drawn on their creative abilities to produce breathtaking works of imagination. Since World War II, technology has caught up with our imagination: there are few buildings that can be envisioned but not built. For the past six decades, architects have created an astonishing range of constructs and urban utopias that have influenced generations of practitioners. Architects such as Libeskind, Koolhaas, Eisenman, Hadid, and many others, whose works were once considered too experimental or controversial to construct, are creating cultural icons the world over.

This definitive history of experimental architecture since 1945 provides a thematic overview of the most important and far-reaching work produced in the last sixty years; a survey of contemporary experimental practices, shown through case studies; and an illustrated glossary of ideas, movements, people, and terms. 450+ illustrations, 250 in color.