Max Weber:“[…] our historic experience confirms that the possible can't be reached if in the world men don't try to reach the impossible”.


As we have seen, a lot of filmakers give a representation of the urban future composed by huge buildings into a chaothic city.
Is it possible to find a background for this vision of the future? Is it totally original or there are some prevoius elements that have influenced these directors? Probably one of the most important theme has been the idea of MEGASTRACTURE.
The idea of Megastructure appears for the very first time in a treatise by Fumiko Maki in 1964 titled “Investigations in Collective Forms”.
Fumiko Maki describes the Megastructure as

[…]The megastracture is a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed. It has been made possible by present-day technology. In a sense, it is a human-made feature of the landscape. It is like tile great hill on which Italian towns were built […].

Four years later Ralph Wilcoxon, in the introduction of his book, “Megastructure Bibliography”, gives a new usefull definition of this term:

[…] as a grouping of modular units which could be built upon and expanded nearly indefinitely. Smaller, prefabricated units could be added within the overarching megastructure, suited to the specific needs of its occupants. The megastructure's adaptability would enable the “hardware” of everyday life, such as utilities, to be run through the megastructure in easily accessible conduits.

Before the 1965, architects tried to discover buildings that could be considered as “ante-litteram” megastructures: the Old-London Bridge or the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, both had a lot of elements that remind of the idea of Megastructure. The big size of the bridge supporting different small stores.
In America some previous models can be found in pre-colombian buildings like pueblos in Taos, Pueblo Bonito or Mesa Verde.
We can also thing to Paolo Soleri, Rem Koolhas and Nabuaki Furuya. In 1996 these three architects are invited in Japan to design a “New Millenium City”, the only theme for the Hyper Building was a one thousand metres high structure with a surface of 1 kmq. Built for 100.000 habitants. In this vision of a building we can find many link to the idea of cities in movies as I, Robot, Blade Runner or Star Wars.
Sometimes this idea is compared to another one: the idea of Utopia.
The term Utopia has been also associated to other kind of architectures by Sant'Elia, Frei Otto or Buckminster Fuller. In Renasissance by Chris Volckman, the picture of the city of Paris remind to Sant'Elia's architecture.
Other examples of Megastructure:
“Berlin 1995”. This is a search made in 1969 about what can happen to the city or Berlin in 1995, thinking of a city for 5 million habitants. Unghers is the main author for this search, trying to build a future for a city, under a big demographic growth. The final project is a sort of huge net superimposed on the existing city, as a second layer. This search adverts to Hilberseimer's project for Grosstad, and “Urbanism Spatial” by Yona Friedman.
Expo '67 in Montreal. This Universal Exposition can be easly considered as the “explosion” of the idea of megastructure. The most important structures are the Buckminster Fuller pavillion, Habitat '67, where Moshe Safdie faces the problem of pre-fabricated housing, putting, for the fist time, into concrete form the principle of clip-on and plug-in city. As a matter of fact the idea at the base of this Expo is to build a microcosm based on the technological exploitation.
The final example of Megastructure, the final example of relation between reality and Utopia can be found in the Rome's outskirts. The Corviale is a huge building desgnied by Mario Fiorentino in 70's. The project is composed by a 1 km long structure as a housing scheme. The Corviale is a sort of simple modern stick divided in five different blocks joint by stairs. It's a real linear city, a new kind of interpretation of Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation.