Points and lines, nodes and rods: megastructure, graph realism, and Yona Friedman’s scientific architecture

Abstract

In June 1966 Hungarian-born French architect Yona Friedman travelled to the port town of Folkestone on the English Channel to join the International Dialogue of Experimental Architecture (IDEA). The event was a large two-day symposium on radical experiments in architecture and urbanism organised by the British architectural collective Archigram. A leading figure in experimental international groups of architects and artists crafting techno-futuristic visions of three-dimensionally expanding cities, Friedman seemed to be an essential participant in an event advertised as a convocation of ‘all Europe’s creative nuts’.