Atlas of Never Built Architecture by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin
Having conquered both Los Angeles and New
York, the “Never Built” team takes on the rest of the country and the world
chronicling what might have been. Covering every region except the Poles, the
authors scoured the world for public projects that “were on the cusp of
realization.” From the early 20th century (Irving Gill’s 1912 Laughlin Park
Casas Grandes in Los Angeles) to more recent times (Studio Precht’s 2018 Tel
Aviv Arcades), the projects cover the full range of typologies: civic, corporate,
sports, transportation, worship, education, multi-tenant residential, and even
memorials and bridges. The authors credit “hoarders, prescient collectors [and]
alert librarians” for maintaining and discovering copious documents. Of the
5,000 contenders reviewed, 350 specimens grace these pages with detailed plans,
luminous renderings, inspirational sketches, and the occasional model. It’s an
oversized tome, and the physical property of the pages—heavy matt stock
connoting drawing paper—corresponds with the authors rhapsodizing about
non-computer generated images, stating that “architecture was built out of the
forms and images flowing from hand to paper.” Even on this type of paper, the
computer renderings from more recent projects glow with hand-painted elegance. Succinct
and informative text gives brief history of project, architectural description,
and reason (or supposition) why it never got built. Though there are
head-scratchers that left me wondering how they got so far, there were very few
projects I wouldn’t have wanted to see realized. Most of the usual
architectural suspects are represented, yet discovering lesser-known architects
with beautifully cogent and innovative concepts was one of the authors’ great
pleasures, and so it is ours as well.
