Frank Lloyd Wright visited Baghdad, Iraq in 1957, at the age of 89, at the request of King Faisal II alongside other prominent architects such as Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, and Walter Gropuis. Afterwards, Wright drew up urban planning blueprints for Baghdad in the hopes that his vision would come to fruition. Faisal was assissinated, though, and the plans fell into the dustbin of history.

via Ubiwar

Tim Stevens writes a fascinating entry at his personal blog, Ubiwar, about this history and provides sketches of Wright’s ‘Plan for Greater Baghdad,’ summarizing it in this way:

Lloyd Wright’s “Plan for Greater Baghdad” was drawn up over the course of several months following his visit, and his romantic vision drew heavily on the myth and memory of Harun Al-Rashid, the 8th century caliph under whom Baghdad rose to pre-eminence as the regional cultural and political capital in the Islamic period. That Baghdad was destroyed in 1258 by the Mongols, but has remained alive in the Arab memory ever since.

This got us to wondering if there’s a way to test run Wright’s blueprints - and in fact, other rejected and forgotten blueprints for cities big and small - in Second Life. I mean, if this doesn’t remind you of a Lightwaves sculpture I don’t know what would:

Or maybe Scope can throw up something like this over on the Cleaver, er, Princeton sims:

Certainly this is the model Keystone and others are taking - using SL as a test bed for design and prototyping. And to that end - if you can, in an hour or so there’s a panel at SL5B that’s worth attending:

Urbanism, Architecture, Planning: How Second Life Can Help Build the Urban Landscape of the First Life–and Vice Versa
July 1, 12:00 p.m. PT

SLURL