This book is made up of three sections. In the first part the author seems to talk about and hover around many ideas, but at no time did I feel like we actually got into any of them in any great or satisfying detail. There was a vagueness an aimlessness about this structure that didn’t quite fit right.
We get lengthy descriptions, detailed backgrounds and many quotes from the plots of dubious disaster movies and dystopic/futuristic novels, with particular repeated emphasis on J.G. Ballard, William Gibson and “Blade Runner”. Some of these descriptions are interesting, but after a while this almost exhaustive list really does start to read like a student’s dissertation on the futuristic ecological disaster genre.
To be honest I am not really sure what the author was trying to do with this book and I am pretty certain that he wasn’t too sure himself. It isn’t awful and he can write, but the structure is all over the place and someone really should have marshalled it better.
It definitely picks up a little come the second section. The Shard being described as “autistic architecture” by one commentator did make me laugh. I was also intrigued by the concepts of “green washing” which consists of companies making a big song and dance about some minor concessions towards the environment, but it is really still just another standard blight on the environment. And the idea of “Salvagepunk” where the ruins of the past are being refashioned into the (often overpriced) treasures of the future was also compelling.
Overall this was a peculiar beast, I enjoyed many elements of it but too often I found it too vague, rambling and speculative to get to whatever point he was trying to get across.
This was an interesting expose of architectural cisions of the future and their bases. It wouldve done well to massively reduce the number of words dedicated to discussing the motivations of fictional characters, and focus on the details of the obstacles between these visions and reality. i particularly enjoyed the ending focusing on how architectures future is a negotiation of form that eclipses the traditional top-down development cycle