"Learning from utopia: contemporary architecture

and the quest for political and social relevance."

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Picon, Antoine. 2013. Learning from utopia: contemporary architecture and the quest for political
and social relevance. Journal of Architectural Education 67, no.1: 17-23.

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10.1080/10464883.2013.767120

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LEARNING FROM UTOPIA

CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

AND THE QUEST FOR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RELEVANCE

THE RETURN OF UTOPIA

A few years ago, the subject of utopia and its relation to architecture was solely of

historical interest. The utopian character of modern architecture has often been

denounced, and is held responsible for the mistakes of modern urbanism. Modern

architects, it was said, had jeopardized the quality of life in their attempts to change

society. In his 1973 essay, Architecture and Utopia, the Italian historian Manfredo Tafuri

was even more severe. 1 He believed the utopian streak of modern architecture was

based on the fundamental delusion that Capitalism needed architectural and urban

order to function in an efficient manner.

In order to counter this, Rem Koolhaas and his followers tried to connect architecture

with the real trends of the times, beginning with the accelerated circulation of people,

goods and money, as well as sprawling urbanization. In order to cope with the prevailing

conditions of the "generic city", architecture had to abandon its pretensions to change

the world in a demiurgic manner. 2 It had to become realistic, in tune with what was

really happening in the world, rather than pursuing the old pipe dreams of modernity.

1
Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia. Design and Capitalist Development (Bari: 1973, English
translation Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1976).
2
Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City,” in S, M, L, XL (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996).
For Koolhaas, this meant the study of urban areas such as Lagos, which present great

problems for mainstream modern architecture and urban planning. 3

However, there have recently been some changes. Utopia is returning to favor, such

that it is being mentioned again at architectural exhibitions, and in books and lectures. 4

Considerable interest has developed in post-war utopian and counter-utopian

movements. The megastructural projects of the 1950s, the Archigram legacy and the

provocations of early 1970 Radical architecture movements, are being scrutinized in

detail, not only by theorists and historians, but also by a growing number of

practitioners. 5 These movements have created an agenda that we still share today. The

early megastructures and other radical provocations offered the possibility of redefining

design objectives and methods, by taking into account new technologies emerging at

the time; electronics, computers and new media were playing a more prominent role. 6

And because architectural discourse and practice are usually about endorsing the

present state of things instead of proposing alternative futures, there is a growing

dissatisfaction with the estrangement of architecture from political and social concerns.

Megastructural and radical architecture interest us today for their capacity to imagine a

different future. Conversely, the influence radical architecture has exerted on designers

such as Koolhaas or Tschumi tend to demonstrate that utopia is not necessarily a sterile

concept, that it can steer architecture and provoke its renewal. 7

3
Rem Koolhaas and al., Mutations (Barcelona, Bordeaux: Arc en Rêve, 2001).
4
Let us mention for instance the exhibition "Utopia's Ghost: Postmodernism Reconsidered" organized in
February-May 2008 by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, or Felicity Scott's book Architecture or
Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2007).
5
On Archigram and Radical architecture, see for instance Archigram (Paris: Editions du Centre Georges
Pompidou, 1994); Dominique Rouillard, Superarchitecture: Le Futur de l'Architecture 1950-1970 (Paris:
Editions de La Villette, 2004).
6
The English historian of architecture Reyner Banham had already foreseen this dimension in his
pioneering book Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames and Hudson,
1976).
7
On the influence of Radical architecture on Koolhaas or Tschumi, see for instance Dominique Rouillard,
"Radical" Architettura", in Tschumi une Architecture en Projet: Le Fresnoy (Paris: Editions du Centre
Georges Pompidou, 1993), p. 89-112.
Thus we clearly have something to learn from the utopian tradition, but we must avoid

the temptation to idealize it, after having discarded it for so long. Despite its ambition to

transcend the flow of historical conditions, utopia is actually deeply historical; its status

and content have changed throughout history, and its connection to architecture is thus

more complex and ambiguous than usually assumed. Before returning to the present

and to what we may have to learn from utopia, I would like to comment on the historical

transformation of the utopian discourse and the various kinds of relations it has had with

architecture.

THE HISTORY OF UTOPIA AND ITS RELATION TO ARCHITECTURE

Until recently, utopia was often treated paradoxically as a genre that had been created

during the Renaissance, while remaining at the same time mysteriously untouched by

the flow of history. Recent research breaks this mould, by not only paying attention to

the context in which utopia is discussed, but also by considering it as revealing a certain

state of affairs, rather than as an alternative to the existing order of things. 8

There is also a new interest in activities involved in the name of utopia; many are

established social movements corresponding to specific practices, for instance the

nineteenth-century utopias such as Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism or Owenism. These

movements embraced not only the publication of journals but also the foundation and

management of utopian communities. I would now like to identify some of the major

8
See Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Le Réel de l'Utopie: Essai sur le Politique au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Albin Michel,
1998); Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Thomas Bouchet, Antoine Picon (eds.), Dictionnaire des Utopies (Paris:
Larousse, 2002).
turning points, and to underline at each stage the relationship established between

utopia and architectural and urban concerns.

The word utopia was coined in 1516 by Thomas More from the Greek ou and topos,

referring to the negation and to the place; utopia was literally nowhere. It was an island

far away, on which an ideal society had developed, a perspective which owed a lot to

the discovery of the New World, a giant remote island where strange societies could be

found. 9 The view prevailed until the eighteenth century. It was imagined that a traveler

had visited this island, perhaps by accident, following a shipwreck for instance. Because

utopian texts were usually written in the present tense, utopia was thought of as existing

in the present, although in an unknown location.

Utopia’s most decisive feature was probably its criticism of the existing social order;

however, it was not synonymous with social reform. It was therefore not expected to

have any immediate social effects, but rather to act as a lens through which to view the

arbitrariness of the social order, which bordered on the absurd. Swift's account of

Gulliver's travels is a good example, the various countries Gulliver visits being in one

way or another evocative of utopias.

Utopia was less critical in dealing with architectural and urban issues; many utopian

texts, beginning with More's, described ideal cities very close to those of which

architects and engineers dreamt. There were several reasons for this more positive tone

towards architectural and urban improvement. In order to be believable, utopia needed

to describe concrete features, such as buildings and streets. From its start, utopian

9
See on that theme Lyman Tower Sargent, Roland Schaer (eds.), Utopie: La Quête de la Société Idéale
en Occident (Paris: Fayard, 2000).
concepts fed upon the architectural and urban production of its time, upon the projects

of ideal cities of architects and engineers. 10

There was an expectation that beyond the critical stance usually adopted by utopians,

there lay the possibility of some real social and political progress. Architecture and

urban design thus offered a path towards concrete reform. Despite its critical attitude,

utopia was even then about hope. But at the end of the eighteenth century, the status of

utopia began to change dramatically; having remained most of the time a concept

lacking any clear and immediate prospect of application, it now became increasingly

associated with social and political transformation. It became a message capable of

universal application, intended to reign everywhere in the future. This transformation is

already noticeable in the writings of the late eighteenth-century philosopher Condorcet,

whose Esquisse d'un Tableau des Progrès de l'Esprit Humain paved the way for various

nineteenth-century utopian thinkers. 11 The importance of Condorcet's essay should not

be underestimated; Karl Marx was one of many influenced by it.

Thus with the disciples of Saint-Simon and Fourier in France, and of Owen in England,

utopia further evolved; having been chiefly a literary genre, it now became synonymous

with social movements and experiments. In the early 1830s, Saint-Simonianism

attracted the bourgeoisie and the workers. 12 Fourierism met with similar success a

decade later in both France and in the United States. 13 This popularity must be taken

into account when dealing with French utopian thinkers of the first half of the nineteenth

10
Cf. Ruth Eaton, Cités Idéales. L'Utopisme et l'Environnement (non) Bâti (Antwerp: Bibliothèque des
amis du fonds Mercator, 2001); Lorette Coen, A la Recherche de la Cité Idéale (Arc et Senans: Institut
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 2000).
11
On Concorcet, see Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1975).
12
Cf. Jacques Rancière La Nuit des Prolétaires. Archives du Rêve Ouvrier (Paris: Fayard, 1981); Antoine
Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire et Utopie (Paris, Belin, 2002).
13
On the impact of Fourierism in America, see Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative. Fourierism in
Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1991).
century. By this time, utopia was firmly established as a political and social movement,

whose influence extended far beyond the initial impact of its founding fathers. Now, its

relationship to architectural and urban thought changed profoundly; the project to

change society gained a spatial dimension, and utopian thinkers began to grapple with

architectural and urban issues. The major novelty was the criticism of existing

architectural and urban conditions. Owen, Fourier and their disciples insisted especially

on the rejection of city slums and industrial suburbs; they dreamt of a new architecture

for an age of harmony that would be a complete departure from existing conditions.

However, by becoming universal in its ambition, utopia was threatened even more than

before; the call for an urban architectural program of transformation implied a risk of

becoming abstract and lacing credibility. This explains the central role played by the

architecture of the Phalanstery in the Fourierist movement.

The relationship between architecture and utopia had now become symmetrical; not

only did utopia borrow from architecture, but architecture itself was increasingly

influenced by utopian perspectives. One reason for this was that nineteenth-century

architecture began to lose its own sense of direction, confronted as it was by a rapidly

changing society and new programs that challenged its traditional knowledge? 14 Thus

utopia naturally led the quest for an organic architectural and urban expression that

would fulfill both the material and spiritual requirements of the industrial age. The chart

of the successive styles of architecture published by architectural theorist and journalist

César Daly in La Semaine des Constructeurs neatly illustrates the influence of utopia

upon architecture. Indeed, after listing the major styles of the past, from the Egyptian to

14
This is the title of the influential essay of German theorist and architect Heinrich Hübsch. Cf. Wolfgang
Herrmann (ed.), In what Style Should We Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style (Los
Angeles: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992).
the Renaissance, the chart ends with a series of question marks regarding the

architecture of the future. 15

For some utopian thinkers as well as architectural theorists, the key to such an organic

state lay in the past, particularly the Middle Ages, although for Viollet-le-Duc, Gothic

was the preferred prototype. 16 The mediaeval age was also fundamental for the utopian

thinker and designer William Morris, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement who

suggested the possibility of England returning to a pre-mechanized state in his 1889

New from Nowhere. 17 Although the Gothic influence was abandoned, twentieth-century

architecture and utopia remained permeated by the nostalgia of a lost state of

equilibrium and innocence, which explains the enduring fascination exerted by primitive

or nomadic conditions on so many utopian figures as well as designers.

In the twentieth century, utopian concepts reached several defining stages. The most

important was the merger between utopian perspectives and mainstream political and

economical agendas. The advent of communism promised to many a golden age;

others bet on fascist regimes, while some regarded capitalism as a realized utopia.

Connections were established between these utopian perspectives and the new

practice of large-scale planning. Territorial concerns were already present, but planning

as such first appeared on the eve of the twentieth century. As Tafuri rightly pointed out,

planning was the essential link between architecture and utopia throughout the

15
César Daly, "Tableau de l'Evolution des Styles d'Architecture en Regard de l'Evolution des Civilisations
Correspondantes", in La Semaine des Constructeurs, Saturday 20 July 1889. On Daly's theory, see Marc
Saboya, Presse et Architecture au XIXe siècle: César Daly et la Revue Générale de l'Architecture et des
Travaux Publics (Paris: Picard, 1991).
16
See for instance Martin Bressani, “Science, histoire et archéologie: Sources et généalogie de la pensée
organiciste de Viollet-le-Duc". Ph. D. dissertation (Paris: Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1997).
17
Cf. Paul Meier, La Pensée Utopique de William Morris (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1972).
twentieth century. The proposals of Le Corbusier were made utopian through planning,

as were so many others, such as Ludwig Hilbersheimer post-war dispersion schemes. 18

The gradual discovery of what the brave new worlds of communism and capitalism had

in stock for man and society caused a strongly negative contra-utopian perspective in

the twentieth century. These worlds exerted an especially strong appeal on Radical

architecture in the early 1970s. Even more than utopian, Radical architecture can be

dubbed as counter-utopian, with projects like Archizoom's No-Stop City, where the

urban fabric transforms into a continuous strip saturated with mass consumption

symbols. The lack of relationship to the exterior makes it comparable to a prison. 19

CONVERGENT AGENDAS

Although both utopia and architecture changed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, their relationship remained defined by several constant preoccupations. It is

probably more accurate to speak of a convergence between utopia and modern and

contemporary architecture, than to construe their relationship as simply osmotic. The

most fundamental convergence was linked to the ambition of reconciling nature and

technology, or individual and collective life, at a time when these seemed to be drifting

apart. Another was the desire to transform the earth into the "house of man", as the

Saint-Simonian utopian movement expressed it. 20 Both utopia and architecture tried to

fully equip and manage the earth, even if this implied preserving large territories as

18
Ludwig Hilbersheimer, The Nature of Cities: Origin, Growth, and Decline. Pattern and Form. Planning
Problems (Chicago, Paul Theobald, 1955).
19
On this project, see Dominique Rouillard, op. cit.
20
The expression was coined by the Saint-Simonian engineer and philosopher Jean Reynaud. See Jean
Reynaud, Prédication sur la Constitution de la Propriété (Paris: impr. Everat, 1831), p. 23.
natural reserves. This ambition reached one of its climaxes with Buckminster Fuller's

reflections on the possibility of inhabiting the entire earth, including the poles. 21

The growing gap between the natural and industrial worlds preoccupied both utopia and

architecture. Even at the height of technology, utopia presented itself as the filler in this

gap, and thus a ‘return to the past’, or at least to some of its fundamental values, was

tempting. Morris was not the only utopian to envisage such a return; the pastoral has

always been a feature of utopian discourses. Even now, our digital society revels in

evoking a green and almost pastoral future made possible by the substitution of

electronic exchanges to physical circulation, a theme present in William Mitchell’s

influential essay, City of Bits. 22

Architecture has also repeatedly tried to overcome the gap between nature and the

industrial world. The symbolic importance of the terrace roof, is that it is supposed to put

man in direct relation with the elements, light, air, wind and plants. Terracing, decking,

conservatories and suspended gardens were also put forward. 23 In the megastructural

movement of the 1950s and 1960s, individuals were supposed to roam freely,

experiencing natural elements, like birds on a tree. The Pompidou Centre in Paris, with

its ascending promenade, is an example. 24

21
Cf. Joachim Krausse, Claude Lichtenstein (ed.), Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller, The Art of
Design Science (Baden: Lars Müller, 1999).
22
William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1995).
23
Cf. Antoine Picon, "L'Invention du Toit-Terrasse: Imaginaire Architectural, Usages et Techniques", in
François Leclerc, Philippe Simon (eds.), De Toits en Toits Les Toits de Paris (Paris: Les éditions du
Pavillon de l'Arsenal, Hazan, 1994), p. 35-44.
24
On the Centre Pompidou's ambition, see Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Du Plateau Beaubourg au
Centre Pompidou, a conversation with Antoine Picon (Paris, Editions du Centre Georges Pompidou,
1987).
The convergence took other forms, e.g. references to tents and huts; the tent has

become a useful concept for architects and engineers involved in light structures, which

in turn relate to the longing for reconciliation between nature and technology. 25 The

longing for a nomadic form of life is a feature of the work of Jean Prouvé and

Buckminster Fuller. Ironically, although these designers dreamt of mobile, often

ephemeral forms of dwelling, they were also involved in large-scale constructions.

The reconciliation between the individual and the collective was another essential

objective shared both by utopia and architecture, particularly when the industrial age

brought growing conflicts; political and social unrest and the increasingly individualistic

character of social life threatened the fabric of society.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many architectural theorists and

practitioners embraced utopian thinking, e.g. Ruskin’s theory of ornament. For Ruskin,

Gothic ornament in particular was supposed to bear the imprint of individual impulse

while relating to collective inspiration. 26 The Ruskinian architects Deane and Woodward

imposed elaborate decoration on their Oxford University Museum; the relation between

the cast and wrought iron structure with its elaborate decor and the hand carved stone

sculptures was supposed to express a new equilibrium between collective means of

production and individual creative impulse. 27

The fascination with the ocean liner represented the same concern for the expression of

a true collective spirit. In the industrial age, the liner appeared to authorize individual

life, while submitting it to a common destiny, a concept mentioned as early as the 1840s

by the utopian writer Victor Considérant, the main disciple and inheritor of Fourier. He

25
See for instance Horst Berger, Light Structures, Structures of Light (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996).
26
Michael W. Brooks, John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989).
27
Eve Blau, Ruskinian Gothic: The Architecture of Deane and Woodward, 1845-1861 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1982).
considered liners to be prototypes of the collective living of the future, and was thus

clearly a model for the Phalanstery collective dwelling. 28 This emblematic character of

the liner probably explains why the sinking of the Titanic so gripped the imagination of

the public, but despite this catastrophe, the liner remained a source of inspiration for

modern architecture. Its cabins inspired the German concept of the existence minimum.

With his Unités d'Habitation, Le Corbusier was among those who admitted the influence

of the liner as a model. 29

Beyond the attempt to reconcile nature with technology, or the individual and the

collective, another common property of utopia and architecture was their paradoxical

attitude towards time and the direction of history. On the one hand, they presented

themselves as the logical outcome of history and the prevailing historical conditions. On

the other, they both aimed at identifying principles that could resist the erosion of time.

Their attitude towards time was characterized by a simultaneous quest for both

historical relevance and for permanence, an ambiguity which remained fundamental to

architectural modernity; for instance, were the five points of Le Corbusier supposed to

be the pure products of their time?

Like utopia, modern architecture often announced implicitly or explicitly the end of

history in the very name of history. Despite their harsh criticism of former modernist

utopian attitudes, the counter-utopian Radicals of the 1970s were no better; what did

their spectacular projects announce, if not the ultimate end of history under the

dissolving power of global Capitalism? In such a context, the necessity of architectural

form itself, as an historical product, was often challenged.

28
Victor Considérant, Description du Phalanstère et Considération Sociales sur l'Architectonique (Paris:
1848, new edition Paris: G. Durier, 1979).
29
This is especially clear with the Unité d'Habitation of Marseilles. See Jacques Sbriglio, L'Unité
d'Habitation de Marseille (Marseilles: Parenthèses, 1992).
UTOPIA REALIZED

How should this complex history of interactions, exchanges and convergence between

utopia and architecture be assessed? I will argue that it is far from being globally

negative, as historians and critics such as Manfredo Tafuri have generally put it. I will

begin by addressing the commonly acknowledged shortcomings of the utopian

perspective in architecture. The most common criticism is of the failure of the demiurgic

ambition of modern architecture, and the sometimes inhuman ambiance it has

generated. I believe this is a superficial approach to the problem; the real flaw is an

excessive desire for reconciliation, as if the world could be pacified once and for all. It is

a dangerous temptation for architecture to believe that it has the key to ending conflict

rather than revealing its true nature. Similarly, the ambition of terminating history in the

name of history is another major flaw, which has often prevented modern architecture

and urbanism from adapting to changing conditions, despite claims to the contrary.

These criticisms, of architecture as excessively foundational, parallel those of Peter

Eisenmann. Must we engage in some kind of deconstruction to cure architecture from

its utopia-related problems, its demiurgic ambition and its tendency not to acknowledge

human history? I think not, for at least one reason. What is attributed to utopia often

belongs to its double, ideology. As philosophers such as Karl Mannheim and Paul

Ricoeur have shown, utopia and ideology are simultaneously both opposed and

strangely connected one to another. 30 Both are about society and the projects that can

be formed in relation to it. But whereas utopia is about social change and the possibility

of a radically different future, ideology tries to stabilize the dominant features of the

present. This does not mean that utopia does not care about the present; in Principle

30
Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (Bonn: 1929, English translation New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1985);
Paul Ricoeur, L'Idéologie et l'Utopie (New-York: 1986, French translation Paris: Le Seuil, 1997).
Hope, Ernst Bloch stated that utopia is always about the present. 31 But it chooses in the

present the seeds for the expression of radical difference, rather than encouraging the

continuation of existing societal norms.

As a deeply social art, architecture is about both the stabilization of existing social uses

and their possible mutation. It thus always relates to both ideology and utopia; its

foundational character and its presence are probably even more ideological than

utopian. The utopian dimension in architecture always has a somewhat disturbing

character, which challenges the received categories of monumentality and permanence,

even if the aim is to redefine them. In other words, I am not sure that the

deconstructionist cure really addresses the question raised by the enduring relation

between architecture and utopia.

I now return to the most common criticism of the utopian dimension in architecture,

namely the assumption that it ultimately always failed; in fact, I believe that the main

goals of utopian architecture have been achieved. One of these was to fully inhabit the

earth, to equip and manage it as the "house of man". As philosopher Peter Sloterdijk

puts it, the result has exceeded the expectation, for the earth has truly become a

house. 32 In other words, the world no longer surrounds architecture, it is rather that

architecture encloses the world.

As Sloterdijk rightly points out, this situation was already anticipated by the gathering of

many nationalities in a single building, the Crystal Palace. We now have to regard our

technology as a giant structure sheltering the world, as a glass house shelters all kinds

of trees and plants. Buckminster Fuller was prompted to compare earth to a spaceship

31
Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Francfort: 1959, English translation Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
32
See among other writings his Spheres trilogy.
or to imagine giant domes on the geological scale. If these domes could enclose towns

the size of New York, they could also enclose nature and perhaps earth as a whole.

By the same token, the conflict between the natural and the artificial has become totally

blurred today. As the social scientist Bruno Latour puts it, we live in a techno-nature in

which the traditional distinction between the two domains no longer applies. 33 Genetic

modification is an example of this.

Similarly, we have also overcome the typical nineteenth- and early twentieth-century

concerns about reconciling the individual and the collective. Our consumer-driven,

digitally-equipped society functions through a series of short-circuits between the

individual and the collective, as Nicholas Negroponte demonstrated in his 1995 best-
34
seller The Digital Condition. Globalization is also based on these short-circuits, and is

often described as a crisis of the intermediary levels between these two orders of

reality.

Francis Fukuyama announced ‘the end of history’ in a famous essay of that title.35

Some advocates of digital culture held a similar belief in the capacity of the Internet to

put a definitive end to the traditional vicissitudes of history. The "realistic architecture"

advocated by Rem Koolhaas and his followers similarly envisaged an ever-intensifying

urban present, instead of a radically different future. Thus one might almost claim that

the utopian program of modernity has been largely realized, and, contrary to Tafuri’s

claims, this is perhaps the real reason for the demise of utopia some thirty years ago.

33
Bruno Latour, Politiques de la Nature (Paris: La Découverte, 2000).
34
Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1995).
35
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
But what does it mean to say that utopia is realized? Koolhas’ outlook suggests that this

has been, in reality, synonymous with its transformation into a new ideology. The

architectural star-system is an integral part of this ideology, embracing the unconditional

acceptance of globalization into the new forms of individualism made possible by digital

culture.

UTOPIA NOW

Let me be clear that I am not against the architectural star-system, globalization, and

digital culture, nor the transformation into icons of projects like the Guggenheim

Museum or the Seattle Library. But do we need perhaps to replace them in the

perspective of a different future? How can we otherwise restore hope? In the past year,

we have forgotten that architecture is also about the hope of a different and better

future, and this is its real political and social function. This hope cannot be found in

traditional formulas; the issue is no longer to design ideal cities or plans. The first lesson

of history is to try not to repeat itself; a new kind of utopian perspective is needed today.

Its starting point must be present day conditions, one of which is the blurring between

nature and technology. Sustainable development also has to start from this point; for

instance, in projects like the Fresh Kills Park, in New York, created on one of the world's

largest dumps, the designers have had to put vents for the gases still produced in the

underground as well as all kind of monitors. 36

The short-circuits between the individual and the collective, and also the local and the

global, raise a series of as yet unanswered questions, such as whether we should try to

recreate intermediary levels between these orders of reality, or consider that the

36
On the Fresh Kills project, see Praxis, n° 4, 2002.
immediate communication between the particular and the general is an unavoidable

fact. If sustainability is among the clearest paths to reconstruction of the utopian

dimension of architecture today, the question of the relationship between the individual

and the collective remains unclear.

Indeed, the true importance of the individual in a world that is unfolding before our eyes

remains unclear. Our age of paroxysmal individual expression, from iPod playlists to

blogs, is also one of increased anonymity, because of the sheer number of potential

authors. Should architecture participate in the individual screening that is going on from

consumer markets to security administrations, or should it rather play on the new

conditions created by modern communication media? The answer is far from clear.

Speaking of the individual, one cannot but be struck by the importance of faculties such

as sensory experience. Architecture has recently preferred abstract schemes; a return

to experiential dimensions may bring back richer sensory experiences. However, the

advent of the digital age implies that these sensory experiences differ greatly from

traditional ones.

A QUESTION OF MEDIATION

Ultimately, a new utopian concept may necessitate a different sort of relationship

between image and practice, which will determine architecture’s social impact. The

hope it inspires is linked to the perception of how images and projects relate to reality,

and how they can be realized. This in turn raises the question of mediation and media.

Key moments in the history of the interaction between architecture and utopia often

correspond with a redefinition of the relationship between image and practice. One such
instance came at the end of the eighteenth century, when Boullée produced

spectacular, innovative drawings at a time when architecture was being regarded as an

integral part of the public sphere, and was widely discussed.

The press became the dominant medium during the nineteenth-century. New journals,

e.g. the Saint-Simonian Le Globe and the Fourierist La Phalange appeared, and many

former members of the Saint-Simonian and Fourierist movement became founders of,

or contributors to, such journals. Similarly, one could argue that Archigram and Radical

architecture reflected the reorganization of the relations between image and practice

implied by the media of their time, from television to the first computers. Like Pop Art,

they participated in this reorganization.

The utopian dimension of architecture is inseparable from the question of how we

communicate architectural concepts to the public; digital media present the obvious

route, although this is more problematic than usually assumed. Take Toyo Ito's Sendai

Mediatheque, or Foreign Office Architect’s Yokohama Terminal; notwithstanding the

continuous chain of computer documents linking the initial concept to the finished

structure, the eventual realization differs markedly from the initial idea. Reinventing

utopia today might ultimately not only be about sustainability or contemporary

emergencies, as considered by Shigeru Ban; these issues are of course absolutely

imperative, but we need also improve the linking of digital imagery to reality. What

radically different future lies in such links? This may prove to be one of the questions

architecture has to address today.