Celebrating the Marvellous: Surrealism in Architecture

This latest edition of Architectural Design (AD) discusses how we are entering a new era of architecture that is technologically enhanced, virtual and synthetic.

Contemporary architects operate in a creative environment that is both real and digital; mixed, augmented and hybridised. This world consists of ecstasies, fears, fetishisms and phantoms, processes and spatiality that can best be described as Surrealist.

Surrealism has been a significant cultural force in modern architecture. Founded by poet André Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic, intellectual and literary movement, architects such as Le Corbusier, Diller + Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi and John Hejduk realised its evocative powers to propel them to ’starchitect’ status.

Architects are now reviving the power of Surrealism to inspire and explore the ramifications of advanced technology. Architects’ studios in practices and schools are becoming places where nothing is forbidden. Architectural languages and theories are ’mashed’ together, approaches are permissively appropriated, and styles are not mutually exclusive. Projects are polemic, postmodern and surreally media savvy. Today’s architects must compose space that operates across the spatial spectrum. Surrealism, with its multiple readings of the city, its collage semiotics, its extruded forms and artificial landscapes, is an ideal source for contemporary architectural inspiration.

Containing contributions from Bryan Cantley, Nic Clear, James Eagle, Natalie Gall, Mark Morris, Dagmar Motycka Weston, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Shaun Murray, Anthony Vidler, and Elizabeth Anne Williams, this edition of AD also features architects including Nigel Coates, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Perry Kulper, and Mark West.

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Celebrating the Marvellous is available wherever books and ebooks are sold. 

About the guest-editor:

Neil Spiller is Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Greenwich, London. Prior to this he was Vice-Dean at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL). He has an international reputation as an architect, designer, artist, teacher, writer and polemicist.