For every Empire State Building or Space Needle, there are a hundred equally striking or ambitious projects that never came to fruition. “Never Built: Los Angeles,” a Kickstarter-funded exhibit for the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, hopes to collect projects like the “Tower of Civilization,” a building that would have been the tallest in the world (in 1939) and boasted a three-mile walkway to the top. In a Wired interview, curators Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin discuss how they’ve selected both practical projects and “impossible dreams,” what can stop the jump from blueprint to reality, and how Los Angeles’ peculiar culture of mega-architecture has changed over the years. “Los Angeles needs to be a city of dreams in order to thrive,” says Lubell.
Remembering the best architecture never built in Los Angeles
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
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