400 Years of Imagined Architecture Sometimes fantastic architecture gets built—think of Paxton’s Crystal Palace in London, or Gaudí’s Park Güell in Barcelona. More often it exists only on paper and in the imagination. There are good reasons: prohibitive cost, impracticality, zoning regulations. And many visionary designs are sketched provocatively—their authors would likely oppose their construction. The ideal location of the fantasy building was until quite recently the architect’s sketchbook and the popular press. Presented as a dream, a hint, a utopian caprice (the words folly and capriccio were often used), these drawings served as the viewer’s starting point for an exploration, a series of inventions, an entire epic set in the imaginary spaces depicted. These images take us out of familiar space and can also sidestep our moment in time, shunting us into the past or the future. Architectural visions often involve a displacement of the past—antique limbs grafted onto contemporaneous trunks, formal elements ransacked from several different eras. This ends up looking futuristic, as Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile blocks did in Blade Runner. Now, thanks to computers and movies, we can go beyond drawings without building: we can insert ourselves into convincing simulacra of cities and landscapes, trying out the future. The images in this collection suggest how imaginative architects moved between their now and their then without Apple or CGI. Oversized postcards measure 6 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. ISBN 978-0-7649-4682-0. |
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