{"title":"Atomville: Architects, Planners, and How to Survive the Bomb.","authors":"Arthur Molella, Robert Kargon","doi":"10.1353/tech.2023.a903974","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the post-Hiroshima era, atomic cities-designed to survive a nuclear attack-remain in the science fiction realm. Yet Hungarian émigré Paul Laszlo, a successful architect in Southern California suburbia, had a utopian vision for a futuristic, paradoxically luxurious atomic city he called \"Atomville,\" never built but nonetheless seriously proposed. Laszlo was one of the very few architects known to venture into atomic survival on this scale. This article focuses on why the architectural profession for the most part ignored the issues raised by the atomic bomb, and on Laszlo's role as an outlier. It also deals with the genesis of Atomville and its place among the many unrealized ideas put forward in the 1940s and 1950s for urban survival, including underground buildings, urban dispersal, linear cities, and cluster cities.</p>","PeriodicalId":775,"journal":{"name":"Shock Waves","volume":"9 2","pages":"823-844"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Shock Waves","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2023.a903974","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MECHANICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the post-Hiroshima era, atomic cities-designed to survive a nuclear attack-remain in the science fiction realm. Yet Hungarian émigré Paul Laszlo, a successful architect in Southern California suburbia, had a utopian vision for a futuristic, paradoxically luxurious atomic city he called "Atomville," never built but nonetheless seriously proposed. Laszlo was one of the very few architects known to venture into atomic survival on this scale. This article focuses on why the architectural profession for the most part ignored the issues raised by the atomic bomb, and on Laszlo's role as an outlier. It also deals with the genesis of Atomville and its place among the many unrealized ideas put forward in the 1940s and 1950s for urban survival, including underground buildings, urban dispersal, linear cities, and cluster cities.
期刊介绍:
Shock Waves provides a forum for presenting and discussing new results in all fields where shock and detonation phenomena play a role. The journal addresses physicists, engineers and applied mathematicians working on theoretical, experimental or numerical issues, including diagnostics and flow visualization.
The research fields considered include, but are not limited to, aero- and gas dynamics, acoustics, physical chemistry, condensed matter and plasmas, with applications encompassing materials sciences, space sciences, geosciences, life sciences and medicine.
Of particular interest are contributions which provide insights into fundamental aspects of the techniques that are relevant to more than one specific research community.
The journal publishes scholarly research papers, invited review articles and short notes, as well as comments on papers already published in this journal. Occasionally concise meeting reports of interest to the Shock Waves community are published.