Phantom Architecture
By Philip Wilkinson

60 fantastical structures described and illustrated in this colourful and highly entertaining book.'and The Sunday Times'If you can't think of a present for the armchair architect in your life - well, problem solved'and The Daily Telegraph'These ghostly architectural echoes entrance the reader.'and The Field This is a lavishly illustrated book of wonder for the dreamer in your life'and The MetroA skyscraper one mile high, a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan, a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant:and some of the most exciting buildings in the history of architecture are the ones that never got built.These are the projects in which architects tookand materials to the limits,and explored challenging new ideas,and defied conventions, andand pointed the way towards the future. Some of them areand architectural masterpieces, some simplyand delightful flights of fancy. It was not usually poor design that stymied them - politics, inadequate funding, or a client who chose a safe' option rather than a daring vision were all things that could stop a project leaving the drawing board.These unbuilt buildings include the grand projects that acted asand architectural calling cards,and experimental designs that stretch technology,and visions for the futureand of the city, andand articles of architectural faith. Structures likeBuckminster Fuller's dome over New York or Frank Lloyd Wright's mile-high tower can seem impossibly daring. But they also point to buildings that came decades later, to the Eden Project and the Shard.Some of those unbuilt wonders are buildings of great beauty and individual form likeand Etienne-Louis Boullee's enormous spherical monumentand toand Isaac Newton; some, such as the city plans ofand Le Corbusier, seem to want to teach us how to live; some, likeand El Lissitsky's horizontal skyscrapers'and andand Gaudí's curvaceous New York hotel, turn architectural convention upside-down; some, such asand Archigram's Walking Cityand andand Plug-in City, are bizarre and inspiring by turns. All are captured in thisand magnificently illustratedand book.