megastructuren.
/ˈmɛɡəˌstrʌktʃə/, U.S. /ˈmɛɡəˌstrək(t)ʃər/ A massively large construction or complex, esp. one consisting of many buildings.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > a building > [noun] > buildings > large complex of
military-industrial complex1931
megastructure1965
1965 Life 24 Dec. 146 Other planners foresee skeletal Megastructures of enormous, light-weight ‘space frames’—grid-works towering high in the air.
1967 Listener 6 July 12/2 Those temporary heavens of exhibition and transport—the Victorian megastructures—..have acquired a permanence in people's minds out of all proportion to the functions they originally housed.
1973 Observer 2 Dec. (Colour Suppl.) 33/3 An early attempt to blend housing, commerce and townscape in one huge building—the lumpish description, ‘urban megastructure’, has been much used.
1989 Accountancy June 89/1 The Galleries—the planned replacement for the 1960s-built Bull Ring—is ‘one enormous megastructure dropping out of the sky onto the city centre’.
Derivatives
ˌmegaˈstructural adj.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > a building > [adjective] > large complex of buildings
megastructural1967
1967 Listener 20 July 73/3 The megastructural schemes by Corbusier's followers in Japan.
1996 Independent 11 Mar. ii. 5/2 The new forms were not reserved for those hanging out in chic and Sloaney art galleries, but for those about to be settled in brave new megastructural housing estates from Telford to Thamesmead.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1965