Megastructures

In 1964 the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki defined Megastructure as “a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed” (Investigations in Collectives Form, 1964). In the following years and decades, the term Megastructure expanded widely and it now includes architectures of different forms, functions and urban ambitions. Metabolism, Frei Otto, Constant A. Nieuwenhuys, Yona Friedman, Cedric J. Price, Archigram, Richard Buckminster Fuller are only a few of the protagonists who have developed a personal vision of the Megastructure and contributed to its evolutions. This issue of “Histories of Postwar Architecture” aims to collect several contributions in order to better define the theoretical implications, the architectural and urban declinations that the Megastructure assumed worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, the call aims to evaluate the topicality of Megastructure in relation to the present times.