Manmade Modular Megastructures

There will be 8.3 billion human being on Earth by 2030. For the guest–editors of this issue of D Jonathan Schwinge and Ian Abley, the more the better. They controversially suggest that humanity might create a world of expensive megacities – including one around old London. Doing so will advance the art, science and processes of manufacturing. But to deploy those abilities, they say, society must reject the dogma of sustainability that insists only small can be beautiful.

Schwinge and Abley call for development on a bold scale. They argue that by rapidly super–sizing the built environment society is not made vulnerable to natural or man–made hazards, and that design innovation surpasses bio–mimicry. Designers can learn from materials scientists working at the smallest of scales, and from systems manufacturers with ambitions at the largest. This issue calls for creative thinking about typologies and topologies, and considers what that also means for Africa, China, and Russia. Megacities everywhere demand integration of global systems of transport, utilities and IT in gigantic structures, constantly upgraded, scrapping both the sky and the ground, outward into the sea.

Editorial (Helen Castle).

Introduction: Things Will Endure Less Than Us (Ian Abley).

Beyond Little Britain (Ian Abley).

Fumihiko Maki (Jennifer Taylor).

People, Not Architecture, Make Communities (James Heartfield).

London 2030: Taking the Thames Gateway Seriously (Ian Abley).

Travelling in a Straight Line (Oliver Houchell).

Cloud Piercer: Mile High (Jonathan Schwinge).

Architecture with Legs (Ian Abley + Jonathan Schwinge).

Standing Tall in the Estuary (Natasha Nicholson + Pamela).

Charlick Mega Rural: Made in Sunderland (Jonathan Schwinge).

Mass–Customisation and the Manufactured Module (James Woudhuysen).

Why Drive a TT and Live in a Broken Teapot? (Ian Abley).

Triumph and Tragedy on the Home Front (Martin Pawley).

Prefabricating Memory Lane: Whatever Happened to Systems? (John McKean).

Designer Volumetric at IKEA Prices (Ian Abley).

What s Wrong with This Approach, Comrades? (Bee Flowers).

Functionality Rather than Good Intentions in Design (Michelle Addington).

Biomimicry versus Humanism (Joe Kaplinsky).

Our Overdeveloped Sense of Vulnerability (Frank Furedi).

Eero Saarinen and the Manufacturing Model (Jayne Merkel).

Think Big for the Developing World (Ceri Dingle + Viv Regan).

Appreciating Cumbernauld (Gordon Murray).

Cedric Price: From the Brain Drain to the Knowledge Economy (Stanley Mathews).

Waltropolis: City in a Box theboxtank (Emily Andersen, Geoff DeOld + Corey Hoelker).

Interchange Now (Robert Stewart).

Hollywood s Noir Detours: Unease in the Mental Megalopolis (Graham Barnfield)

Building Profile: McLaren Technology Centre (Jeremy Melvin).

Practice Profile: McGauran Giannini (Soon Architects Shelley Penn).

McLean s Nuggets (Will McLean).

Home Run: Evelyn Road, Silvertown, Niall McLaughlin Architects (Bruce Stewart).

Interior Eye: Springtecture B (Masaaki Takahashi).

Ian Abley, RIBA, is a practicing architect and founder of Audacity. Audacity is a campaigning company that advocates developing the man–made environment, using manufacturing on the grandest of architectural scales. It organizes authoritative international research, large conferences, and a provocative website – www.audacity.org Abley is also co–author with James Woudhuysen of Why is construction so backward?.

Jonathan Schwinge was a scholarship student at the Architectural Association. His fourth–year diploma project Airlander was exhibited at Imagination s Ford Journey Zone in the Greenwich Millennium Dome. His final–year project Lost–Exchange won the Grand Prize and Category Prize for the Bentley Systems Student Design Competition, USA 2000. Jonathan currently works at Allies and Morrison architects. Jonathan is working with Ian to turn www.audacity.org into a commercial website a portal for architectural ideas.

"[Abley′s] enthusiasm for the idea of the megastructure...is compelling" ( Prospect Magazine, April 2006)

"...compelling...plots an intelligent course..." (Prospect Architecture Scotland, April 2006)