MEGA

STRUCTURES

1

The International Space Station, Offshore Platforms,

Megabridges, Skyscrapers, Superexcavators.

How does the International Space Station work

The largest oil rig of the world

The Claw, a new underwater lift device

The 5 largest offshore platforms of the world

Dockwise Vyborg, Russia

Boskalis: 

Aasta Hansteen topside transport and installation 

The Statfjord field in the North Sea

Millau Viaduct: tallest bridge in the world, 

Millau-Creissels, Aveyron, France

Source: Wikipedia.

Millau Viaduct: tallest bridge in the world

Source: Wikipedia.

Goliat FPSO arrival, Norway

China bridge project boost for Bangladesh

The rise and rise of New York's billionaire's row:

The B1M

Goliat FPSO officially opened

Offisiell åpning Goliat

Schaufelradbagger 258, Tagebau Garzweiler!

Bucket-wheel excavator close up! Daylight

National Geographic Megastructures:

Super copters, ultimate structures

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Niegel Hawkes: "Structures: The way things are built", Marshall Edition Developments Limited, 1990.

• Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter: "Megastructure Reloaded: Architecture and urban design of Sixties reflected ", Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008.

• Philip Wilkinson: "Phantom Architecture: The fantastical structures the world's great architects really wanted to built", Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2017.

A skyscraper one mile high, a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan, a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant: 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 took materials to the limits, explored challenging new ideas, defied conventions, and pointed the way towards the future. Some of them are architectural masterpieces, some simply 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 as architectural calling cards, experimental designs that stretch technology, visions for the future of the city, and articles of architectural faith. Structures like Buckminster 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 like Etienne-Louis Boullée’s enormous spherical monument to Isaac Newton; some, such as the city plans of Le Corbusier, seem to want to teach us how to live; some, like El Lissitsky’s ‘horizontal skyscrapers’ and Gaudí’s curvaceous New York hotel, turn architectural convention upside-down; some, such as Archigram’s Walking City and Plug-in City, are bizarre and inspiring by turns. All are captured in this magnificently illustrated book.