Last futures
Subtitle: nature, technology and the end of architecture
By: Douglas Murphy
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2016
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781781689752
Subjects: Forecasting; Social aspects; History; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development; Architecture; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Future Studies; ARCHITECTURE / Criticism; Architectural design
Description: "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"--
Table of contents: title: Museums of the Future; title: The City out of History; title: Megastructure Visions; title: Systems and Failures; title: Cybernetic Dreams  Reactions and Defeats; title: Apocalypse Then; title: Biospheres and the End.