A brief history of architecture fiction.

2011-07-25T16:40:28-04:00

Admittedly, commercial real estate signs are not a particularly literary sort of fiction, but this sub-genre does have its own traditions and mores. Its practitioners exercise what we might consider a tentative form of realism: After all, their stories should be plausible enough to, ideally, attract capital. Thus certain rules and strictures — relating to commercial potential, practical materials and the laws of physics — must be observed.

Rob Walker, the man behind the now defunct "Consumed" column for the New York Times Magazine and one of the founders of the Hypothetical Development Organization, reviews the history of architecture fiction over at Places-Design Observer. The piece titled Implausible Futures for Unpopular Places, discusses the work of HDO which Walker locates in a particular tradition of visual story-telling, "architecture fiction,". Some of the first examples of architectural fiction were produced by Archigram in the 1960s but Walker extends the term to more contemporary efforts like those of BLDG BLOG or the Museum of the Phantom City.

For more on this check out an old forum discussion Fantasy Architecture?.....

Archinect - News

A brief history of architecture fiction.