Phantom architecture : the fantastical structures the words great architects really wanted to build A skyscraper one mile high a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant: some of the most exciting buildings in the history of architecture are the ones that never got built. These are the projects in which architects took materials to the limits explored challenging new ideas defied conventions and pointed the way towards the future. Some of them are architectural masterpieces some simply delightful flights of fancy. It was not usually poor design that stymied them politics inadequate funding or a client who chose a safe option rather than a daring vision were all things that could stop a project leaving the drawing board. These unbuilt buildings include the grand projects that acted as architectural calling cards experimental designs that stretch technology visions for the future of the city and articles of architectural faith. Structures likeBuckminster Fullers dome over New York or Frank Lloyd Wrights mile high tower can seem impossibly daring. But they also point to buildings that came decades later to the Eden Project and the Shard. Some of those unbuilt wonders are buildings of great beauty and individual form like Etienne Louis Boullees enormous spherical monument to Isaac Newton; some such as the city plans of Le Corbusier seem to want to teach us how to live; some like El Lissitskys horizontal skyscrapers and Gaudis curvaceous New York hotel turn architectural convention upside down; some such as Archigrams Walking City and Plug in City are bizarre and inspiring by turns. All are captured in this magnificently illustrated book