Buildings for Tomorrow: Architecture that Changed Our World

Architects have always dreamed of shaping the future, of building utopian worlds filled with seemingly impossible structures that break with the past and propel man far into the 21st century. Buildings for Tomorrow reviews over 40 such projects, featuring the work of over 30 architects from 19 countries. The book splits into three sections, the respective aesthetics of which basically correspond to otherworldly, dystopian and cuddly futuristic. The prose is entertainingly hyperbolic, which suits the subject matter perfectly, and is liberally scattered with sci-fi references.

The projects range from Frank Lloyd Wrights groundbreaking Johnson Wax Building through Lautners iconic Chemosphere House to breathtaking current feats of engineering including Hadids Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg ("suggestive of the meteor-pocked hulk of a spaceship...cruising through the far reaches of the galaxy"). All are well-served by the photography and text, and this is a rattling good read on a perennially appealing strand.

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Review by Tom McGlynn, Deborah Saunt David Hills Architects.

The 40 iconic buildings in this glossy book span 70 years of cutting-edge design, transcending the various architectural ‘movements’ and finding common ground in ‘challenging convention’. They are linked by an aesthetic of the future, as prescribed in Hollywood sci-fi and comic-book fantasy, and the architecture is sub-divided into the organic, the mechanical, and the technological. Anecdotal insights help to bring the complex and often alien forms back down to earth ¬and the skin of Saarinen¹s breakfast grapefruit is cited as inspiration for the TWA Terminal. However, as the author warns, these buildings enjoy limited budget constraints and often ignore wider issues of sustainability, pre-fabrication and increasing urban densities. As such, they are perhaps unrealistic as models for the buildings of tomorrow, but provide both visual and conceptual inspiration nonetheless.