Imagine a Paris skyline graced by a colossal egg, a floating hotel casting shadows over MachuPicchu, an hourglass-shaped tower piercing the New York sky, or an opulent pleasure island in Baghdad. These fantastical visions represent an alternate architectural history, where creativity met the unyielding constraints of cost, practicality, and, occasionally, sheer eccentricity. These dreams, however, never materialized. Instead, they linger in the pages of architectural lore, memorialized in Atlas of Never Built Architecture, a new compendium of the world's most extraordinary unfulfilled designs.
The OeufdePompidou
In 1969, Paris was poised to receive an art center unlike any other. Instead of the industrial pipework of the Pompidou Centre, the French capital might have seen AndréBruyère's giant ovoid tower ascend 100 meters above its streets. Bruyère's design, a shimmering blend of alabaster, glass, and concrete, sought to challenge the rigidity of urban architecture with curvaceous, organic forms. The structure, held aloft by three robust legs and pierced by a monorail, symbolized a departure from linearity. "Time," Bruyère proclaimed, "instead of being linear, like the straight streets and vertical skyscrapers, will become oval, in tune with the egg." His vision of the Pompidou, a hallowed "Oeuf," was ultimately deemed too radical, and Paris got its high-tech hymn to plumbing instead.
(Photo: The Guardian / Bruyère Fund)
Bruyère'sunbuilt "egg" is just one of the many designs that Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin chronicled in their expansive volume. Their work delves into an array of ambitious projects halted by political upheavals, economic crises, and natural disasters. These include everything from grand parliaments in African capitals to Philip Johnson's neo-brutalist fantasy for London's South Bank, which would have reimagined the Palace of Westminster as a modernist fortress.
(Photo: The Guardian / Nicolas Schoffer)
Frank Lloyd Wright's Edena
Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for Baghdad in 1957 stands out as one of the most opulent unfulfilled projects. Invited by King Faisal II to design an opera house, Wright was inspired by a thin island in the Tigris River, where he envisaged "Edena," a comprehensive cultural complex. This utopian vision included an opera house, civic auditorium, planetarium, museums, a grand bazaar, and tiered highways. His curvilinear designs echoed Baghdad's historic "Round City." However, this grand project was halted by the 1958 coup that resulted in the king's assassination, and Wright's death the following year closed the chapter on this Middle Eastern Eden.
Some of the most striking unbuilt designs in the book include Nicolas Schöffer's Tour LumièreCybernétique, a towering multimedia beacon envisioned as an interactive monument in Paris. Equipped with loudspeakers, lights, smoke signals, moving rods, and over 5,000 projectors, Schöffer's tower was meant to democratize information in an era when communication was tightly controlled. Although it was never built, its principles live in today's smart cities, where data harvesting is an omnipresent reality.
(Photo: The Guardian / Ned Paynter)
IM Pei's Hyperboloid
Towers, the most ambitious architectural ventures, frequently appear in this collection of unbuilt wonders. Take IM Pei's 1954 proposal for New York's Grand Central Terminal. Pei's Hyperboloid, a 109-story circular skyscraper, would have overshadowed the neoclassical terminal. The project was abandoned following the suicide of its commissioner, Robert Young, and the backlash it sparked helped to spur the modern preservation movement, granting landmark status to the terminal in 1967.
The Indiana Tower
Not all unbuilt projects evoke wistful longing. CésarPelli's 1981 proposal for an obelisk in Indianapolis met with local derision. The Indiana Tower, envisioned as a 228-meter-high structure with a spiraling walkway, was criticized for resembling a corncob or an oil derrick. Locals felt it would reinforce rural stereotypes rather than elevate the city's profile. Consultants bluntly pointed out that, unlike Seattle with its stunning vistas, the flat Indiana landscape offered little incentive for visitors to ascend such a structure.
Italian architect Carlo Scarpa perhaps best summarized the mixed blessing of unbuilt architecture. Reflecting on his unfulfilled plans for Vicenza's Civic Theatre, Scarpa noted, "It is better to do nothing. That way everyone will be happy." His sentiment captures the paradox of these grand designs: they stir the imagination precisely because they remain perfect, untouched by the compromises and criticisms that come with actual construction.
The Atlas of Never Built Architecture not only celebrates these unfulfilled dreams but also serves as a testament to architects' boundless creativity and ambition. Even though these projects have never been brought to reality, they continue to inspire us to think of the possibilities and have the sense of how turning vision into reality contributes to beautiful built environments. The prism through which we can see that architecture is not just a mean construction of buildings but also a way to foster the visions that help go beyond the boundaries of what's tried and tested.
