Gravity at Play: The Emergence of Architectural <i>Ilinx</i> and the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair

ABSTRACT In the late 1950s, a widespread drive to defy gravity pervaded architectural culture. Bold and seemingly weightless structures gave spatial form to a moment poised on a knife-edge. Cold War tensions, the space race, nuclear anxiety, economic recession and decolonisation fostered a global instability reflected in cultural concerns with balance and its disruption: vertigo. At this historical juncture, gravity became a vital theme of research and expression. Drawing on Roger Caillois’s sociology of play, this essay posits that a distinct phenomenon emerged from this context: what might be called architectural ilinx . While the pursuit of weightlessness had animated the Modern Movement from its inception, the 1950s saw this ideal assume increasingly disembodied forms that appeared to defy gravity outright. By the decade’s end, architects embraced vertigo’s thrill ( ilinx ) as a design principle, producing a new realm of spatial play. That juncture was characterised by an underlying tension between exhilaration and anxiety, which culminated in the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958, a watershed event showcasing designs that tested the boundaries of structural stability through forms suspended in space. Expo 58 marked a broader shift toward a built environment untethered from the ground. However, many critics were troubled by its ‘acrobatic exhibitionism’, warning against a drift towards structural experimentation for its own sake; and indeed, among other things, the proliferation of gravity-defying architecture seems to have been one of the forebears of what we now know as the ‘experience economy’. Situating the emergence of architectural ilinx within its cultural and historical context, the essay offers a critical reading of a phenomenon that continues to hold relevance.