Inspired by Manfredo Tafuri's 1973 conclusion that architecture must abandon utopia, the 2014 Architecture and Dystopia conference in Florenz, Italy investigated whether architectural dystopia's brazen displays of technology and structures of overwhelming scale are isolated cases or part of a wider landscape of anti-rational projects. Nine papers from that conference consider such topics as negative thinking as a design method, Tafuri and the death of architecture, architecture on paper: Cedric Price and the scientific aesthetic of diagrams, leisure in a time of utopia, and reality as dystopia: urban contemporary visions. Annotation 2020 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
