Article ID: CBB620667345

Atomville: Architects, Planners, and How to Survive the Bomb (2023)

unapi

Molella, Arthur P. (Author)
Kargon, Robert Hugh (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 64
Issue: 3
Pages: 823-844
Publication date: 2023
Language: English


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.

...More
Citation URI
data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB620667345

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Similar Citations

Book Balazs Hargittai; István Hargittai; (2015)
Wisdom of the Martians of Science: In Their Own Words with Commentaries (/p/isis/citation/CBB739484002/) unapi

Book Krugler, David F.; (2006)
This Is Only a Test: How Washington, D.C, Prepared for Nuclear War (/p/isis/citation/CBB000760707/) unapi

Chapter Carla Konta; (2020)
Lo scienziato jugoslavo Ivan Supek tra attivismo antinucleare e collaborazione transnazionale (/p/isis/citation/CBB197493864/) unapi

Chapter Angelo Baracca; (2009)
Scienza e guerra: fisica fondamentale, ricerca e realizzazione di nuove armi nucleari (/p/isis/citation/CBB450782713/) unapi

Book Williams, Hill; (2011)
Made in Hanford: The Bomb That Changed the World (/p/isis/citation/CBB001211601/) unapi

Chapter Sylvest, Casper; Rosanna Farbøl; Marie Cronqvist; (2021)
Conclusion: Civil Defence Futures (Re)imagined (/p/isis/citation/CBB802407284/) unapi

Book Krzysztof Dabrowski; (2021)
Tsar Bomba: Live Testing of Soviet Nuclear Bombs, 1949-1962 (/p/isis/citation/CBB731548652/) unapi

Article Iben Bjoernsson; (2023)
Negotiating Armageddon: civil defence in NATO and Denmark 1949-59 (/p/isis/citation/CBB327362061/) unapi

Book Grant, Matthew; (2010)
After the Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Britain, 1945--68 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001031287/) unapi

Article Aylen, Jonathan; (2015)
First Waltz: Development and Deployment of Blue Danube, Britain's Post-War Atomic Bomb (/p/isis/citation/CBB001550620/) unapi

Book Robert A. Jacobs; (2022)
Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (/p/isis/citation/CBB596228330/) unapi

Book Irene Cheng; (2023)
The Shape of Utopia: The Architecture of Radical Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (/p/isis/citation/CBB443487447/) unapi

Book David Morton; (2019)
Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique (/p/isis/citation/CBB769475160/) unapi

Article Berger Ziauddin; Marti, Sibylle; (2020)
Life after the Bomb: Nuclear Fear, Science, and Security Politics in Switzerland in the 1980s (/p/isis/citation/CBB587905950/) unapi

Book Monteyne, David; (2011)
Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War (/p/isis/citation/CBB001212463/) unapi

Book Lindsey A. Freeman; (2015)
Longing for the Bomb: Oak Ridge and Atomic Nostalgia (/p/isis/citation/CBB847718338/) unapi

Authors & Contributors
Jacobs, Robert Alan
Aylen, Jonathan
Baracca, Angelo
Grant, Matthew
Hargittai, Balazs
Hargittai, István
Journals
Cold War History
International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology
Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research
Publishers
Palgrave Macmillan
University of Minnesota Press
University of Kansas
Guaraldi
Ohio University Press
Palgrave
Concepts
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Cold War
Science and war; science and the military
Civil defense
Atomic bomb
Hydrogen bomb
People
Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Supek, Ivan
Szilard, Leo
Teller, Edward
Von Neumann, John
Kármán, Theodor von
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Croatia
Denmark
Europe
Institutions
United States Air Force (USAF)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment