The city and the megastructure

Abstract

Are megastructures a form of sustainable development and do they hold any promise as a mode of urban development? It is believed that Fumihiko Maki invented the term in 1960s to describe large projects, even though his own schemes never reached the scale of a megastructure (Bognar, 1996). The nature of a megastructure, however, has not been clearly articulated. ‘Megastructures were large buildings of a particular kind, though what kind remains difficult to define with neat verbal precision’ (Banham, 1976, p. 7). Maki (1964) suggested a megastructure is a ' . . . large frame in which all the functions of the city or part of the city are housed’. He compares megastructures to Italian hill town..