Baghdad Could Have Been a Mega-City by Frank Lloyd Wright
From Curbed:
Like most devotees of modernism, the last king of Iraq labored under
the myth that vast architectural mega-projects had the alchemic power to
transform any defunct city into an affluent, buzzing metropolis of the
future. Spurred on by an influx of oil money and the temptation of a
looming Olympic bid, in the 1950s, King Faisal II enlisted a coterie of
architectural heavyweights—Frank Lloyd Wight, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Josep Lluís Sert, and Alvar and Aino Aalto—to reimagine Baghdad as a bustling, cosmopolitan city.
King Faisal's monumental plans were certainly of a type: Corbusier presented his totalizing plans for Algiers in 1933, the failed fascist plans for Mussolini's Addis Ababa
were drawn up in 1936, the fraught city of Chandigarth, India rose in
1951, and the entire city of Brasila was built from scratch between 1956
and 1961. Pieces of this dream for Baghdad managed to outlive Faisal
II—who was assassinated in 1958, at age 23— through two decades of
uneven construction, heavy edits, and many concessions. Sert's embassy
was built and quickly abandoned, Corbusier's stadium was shelved
(only to be built by Saddam Hussein years later), Aalto's museum was
dismissed entirely, and only 15 of Gropius' 137 commissions reached
completion under the new regime. Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt plan,
which was the keystone of King Faisal's new city, paints a picture of a
very different Baghdad.
· Frank Lloyd Wright, Baghdad master plan, 1956-1958.
When Faisal II asked Frank Lloyd Wright, age 90, to draw up a master plan for Baghdad, Lloyd Wright wrote back that, "to me this opportunity to assist Persia is like a story to a boy fascinated by the Arbian Night Entertainment as I was." His master plan for Baghdad one of his very last commissions....
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