Last Futures
Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture
by Douglas Murphy
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Pub Date Jan 12 2016 | Archive Date Jan 12 2016
Verso Books (US) | Verso
Description
Whatever happened to the last utopian dreams of the city?
In the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation that hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the ’60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant-garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.
In the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation that hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the ’60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant-garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.
Advance Praise
Praise for The Architecture of Failure:
“The subject is so complicated, so emotional, so ironic and so melancholic altogether that it really does take a writer of some skill to explain. And it gets it with this book.”
—Building Design
“Murphy’s polemic is both informed and persuasive.”
—Architecture Today
“The Architecture of Failure can be recommended as a lively piece of critical history and a stimulus to constructing something more durable from the ruins of the present.”
—Richard Weston, Architect’s Journal
“One hopes that it is a but a taster for a much larger work to come.”
—Rosa Ainley, Review 31
“The subject is so complicated, so emotional, so ironic and so melancholic altogether that it really does take a writer of some skill to explain. And it gets it with this book.”
—Building Design
“Murphy’s polemic is both informed and persuasive.”
—Architecture Today
“The Architecture of Failure can be recommended as a lively piece of critical history and a stimulus to constructing something more durable from the ruins of the present.”
—Richard Weston, Architect’s Journal
“One hopes that it is a but a taster for a much larger work to come.”
—Rosa Ainley, Review 31
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781781689752 |
| PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
