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Architecture and Utopia in the 21st-Century

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10464883.2013.771021

1531-314X

Christina Contandriopoulos,

Medieval Architecture and Archaeology

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See Manfredo Tafuri, "The International Concept of Utopia," in Modern Architecture, ed. Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, trans. Robert Erich Wolf (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 383–410; Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development [1973], English translation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976); Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977); Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Reinhold Martin, Utopia's Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 2. Rem Koolhaas, "Utopia Station," in Content, ed. Rem Koolhaas and Brendan McGetrick (Cologne: Taschen, 2003), 393. 3. This expression was used by Antoine Picon in 2008. It was the subtitle of a talk he gave at Ghent University and reprinted here in the Opinion section as "Utopia: Architecture and the Quest for Political and Social Relevance." 4. Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Stephen Bann and Krishan Kumar, eds., Utopias and the Millennium (London: Reaktion Books, 1993); Roland Schaer, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower, eds., Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Tom Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000); David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2005). 5. For an overview of this context, see the preface to the 2010 edition of Levitas, Concept of Utopia (note 4), as well as David Pinder, "In Defence of Utopian Urbanism: Imagining Cities after the 'End of Utopia,'" in Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 84, no. 3/4 (2002): 229–241. 6. The expression is from Levitas, Concept of Utopia (note 4), chap. 8: "Future Perfect: Re-Theorizing Utopia," 179. 7. Indeed, the "End of Utopia" argued by Russel Jacoby was also accompanied by the "End of Theory" argued in architecture by Sylvia Lavin and more dramatically the "End of History" by Francis Fukuyama, to name only a few. Stephen Bann has remarked on the larger phenomenon: "The end of utopia is a concept that seems to suit our contemporaneity." See Bann and Kumar, Utopias and the Millennium (note 4), 1; Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy (New York: Free Press, 1992); Malcolm Bull, ed., Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Underlying the absurdity of this looping tendency, Hays and Kennedy titled a recent editorial "After All, or the End of 'The End of'," in Assemblage, no. 41 (April, 2000): 6–7. 8. For an overview of the context of this competition, see the last chapter of Felicity Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007). 9. See Suzanne Stephens, Imagining Ground Zero: Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site (New York: Rizzoli), 2004. 10. See Felicity Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia (note 8), 249; Herbert Muschamps, "Visions for Ground Zero: An Appraisal; The Latest Round of Designs Rediscover and Celebrate the Vertical Life," New York Times, December 19, 2002, 10. 11. The influence of radical architecture on the work of Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas has already been documented but for these architects the relationship is more of a continuity than a "revival" as they were both in direct contact with protagonists of the radical movements (see Dominique Rouillard, "'Radical' Architettura," in Une Architecture en Projet: Le Fresnoy, ed. Bernard Tschumi (Paris: Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1993), 89–112; Louis Martin, "Transpositions: On the Intellectual Origins of Tschumi's Architectural Theory," in Assemblage no. 41 (2010): 22–35; Bart Lootsma, "Koolhaas und die Niederlandische Kultur der 60er," Bauwelt 97, no. 45 (November 24, 2006): 6–13. From the year 2000 on the situation is different: it consists of a clear revival, since there is a generational gap between the 1950s–1970s and the new generation of architects like MVRDV, Diller et Scofidio, Foreign Office, Bjarke Ingels, MadeIn, MAD, Rham, Roche, Office, etc. 12. These shows were accompanied by the publication of comprehensive catalogues and webpages. The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002); Architectures Expérimentales, 1950–2000: Collection du FRAC Centre (Orléans: FRAC Centre, HYX, 2003); Team 10: 1953–81, In Search of a Utopia of the Present, ed. Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel (Rotterdam: NAi, c. 2005); Sabrina van der Ley, Markus Richter, and Ehemalige Staatliche Münz, Megastructure Reloaded: Visionäre Stadtentwürfe der Sechzigerjahre Reflektiert von Zeitgenössischen Künstlern [Visionary Architecture and Urban Design of the Sixties Reflected by Contemporary Artists] (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008); Allesandra Ponte, Laurent Stalder, and Thomas Weaver, God & Co: François Dallegret: Beyond the Bubble (London: Architectural Association, 2011); Rem Koolhaas, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks, ed. Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Kayoko Ota, with James Westcott (Köln: AMO; London: Taschen, 2011). 13. In chronological order, starting in the late 90s: Theory of the Dérive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, ed. Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 1996); Marc Dessauce, The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in '68 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, c. 1999); Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000); Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the (Un)Built Environment (London: Thames & Hudson, c. 2001); Philip E. Wegner, Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); David Pinder, "In Defence of Utopia Urbanism" (note 5); David Pinder, Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); Urbanisme, special number on "Utopies," No. 336 (May–June, 2004); Dominique Rouillard, Superarchitecture: Le Futur de l'Architecture, 1950–1970 (Paris: Éditions de la Villette, 2004); Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005); Martin van Schaik and Otakar Mácel, Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations, 1956–1976 (Munich: Prestel, 2005); Simon Ford, The Situationist International: A User's Guide (London: Black Dog, 2005); Nathaniel Coleman, Utopias and Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2005); Felicity Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia (note 10); Antoine Picon, "Learning from Utopia: Contemporary Architecture and the Quest for Political and Social Relevance," Sartoniana 21 (2008): 169-188 (aslo reprinted in this issue of JAE in the Opinion Section); Robert H. Kargon and Arthur P. Molella, Invented Edens: Techno-cities of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008); Malcolm Miles, Urban Utopias: The Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements (London: Routledge, 2008); Iwan Baan, Brasilia-Chandigarh: Living with Modernity, ed. Lars Müller, with texts by Cees Nooteboom and Martino Stierli (Baden: Lars Müller, 2010); Inderbir Riar and Mark Lyon, "Ideal Plans and Planning for Ideas," A.A Files, no. 63 (2011): 74–86; Reinhold Martin, Utopia's Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 14. Koolhaas, Rem, op. cit. (note 2). 15. Most of these projects are hard to qualify as utopias when analysed individually. However, when these projects are grouped, their links with utopia begin to emerge. As was the case for utopian waves of the past, it is usually after a show or a book where projects are grouped and organized by themes that we can start seeing them as a wave. 16. This problem is raised by many critics including Pinder, Coleman, Rouillard, and others. 17. Nikolas Rose, "The Death of the Social? Refiguring the Territory of Government," Economy and Society 25, no. 3 (1996): 327–56.; Levitas, Concept of Utopia (note 4), 202. 18. Bourriaud, Nicolas, "L'ère des micro-utopies" in Le Magazine Litteraire, May 2000, n°387, pp. 61-63; and Relational aesthetics (translated by Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods; with the participation of Mathieu Copeland), Dijon, Les Presses du réel, 2002.