Megastructure

‘A brilliant historical survey.’ - Architectural Record

‘[A] very timely reissue.’ - Metropolis

‘[E]xhaustive in its presentation.’ - A Daily Dose of Architecture

‘Of all Reyner Banham’s works, Megastructure has only grown more timely as cities escalate beyond reason, and as architects and urbanists struggle for terms to describe the spaces of twenty-first century life. As Banham illustrates and as Todd Gannon, in a brilliant new foreword, elucidates further, megastructures are not simply big buildings, nor collections of them, but a new order of civic and infrastructural presence. Banham was the first to grasp this new common denominator of globalization.’ - Joe Day, Principal, Deegan-Day Design

‘As both a living relic of the past and a haunting vision of an indeterminate future (think Blade Runner 2049) the megastructure continues to capture the imagination. Important in its time for offering the first comprehensive survey on the subject, this facsimile edition of Reyner Banham’s 1976 book will appeal to a new readership interested in how the visionary architecture of the 1960s came to be built all over the world. This republication sheds light on an important chapter in the history of late modern architecture as recounted by a major architectural historian and critic who played an instrumental role in the megastructure’s formation.’ - Sarah Deyong, College of Architecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Reyner Banham (1922-1988) was an English critic and historian whose articles, books, and lectures helped define the understanding of modern architecture and technology. He is the author one of the classic books on Los Angeles landscape and urbanism, Los Angeles- The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) as well as numerous other important books including Theory and Design in theFirst Machine Age (1960), The New Brutalism-Ethic or Aesthetic? (1966), and Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (1969).

Todd Gannon is Robert S. Livesey Professor and Head of the Architecture Section at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School. His most recent book is Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech (2017) and is author and coeditor of several books including Swimming to Suburbia (2018), The Light Construction Reader (Monacelli, 2002), Et in Suburbia Ego- Jose Oubrerie’s Miller House (2013), and monographs on the work of Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Morphosis, Eric Owen Moss, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Bernard Tschumi, and UN Studio.

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