Re-scaling the environment : new landscapes of design, 1960-1980

From 1960-1980, both eastern and western Europe experienced a construction boom of new dimensions.

Cybernetics, the science of planning, and sociology, as well as the new possibilities offered by technology and production, paved the way to large-scale processes and systems in architecture and urban design, which favored technocratic and utopian concepts.

Increasingly, architects and planners saw themselves as designers of comprehensive infrastructure and mega-structures in a technology-focused world. The authors assesses these developments on the back of a knowledge transfer between East and West.

It confirms a change in attitude that can still be felt today - recession, social changes, and environmental problems led to criticism of the then contemporary concepts of modernity.