In Search of a Utopian Vision: A Maltese Application Matthew Tanti Department of Architecture and Urban Design Faculty of the Built Environment University of Malta June 2010 Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Architecture and Civil Engineering.Abstract The notion of utopia has always fluctuated between different times and individuals. At times, utopian visions might feel dangerously tangible, however most of the time they are considered as a simple elusive fantasy. In trying to realise such utopian dreams, history has taught us that man only managed to create the realisation of hell. How could envisioning achieving a perfect world only bring destruction? What are these urges in creating and imagining such perfect worlds void from everyday harsh realities? The last century was probably one of the strongest eras in utopian thinking; the industrial revolution sparked off great hope in humanity to solve problems and inequalities with the help of reason and technology, while it simultaneously left us with a bitter taste of war and destruction produced by the same technology which gave us this hope. It seems that like other visionaries, architects could not hold back in trying to come up with visions to make this world a better place, often projecting a negative visualisation when too much is expected from a singular blueprint. The same century which initially promoted such utopian ideals, later proclaimed its death with undisputed acceptance. What is the role of architecture in a post utopian era; a time when the feeling of the End of History and the End of Ideology is accepted by the majority? What are the implications of accepting such a statement and not believing in an alternative world which is much better than the present? Living in a time when practicality and production fuelled by capitalism are our main concerns, what is happening to ideological thoughts in controlling the quality of the urban environment? What is the significance of the concept of utopian urbanism in the present day? How can the elitist profession of the architect achieve or come closer to an urban utopia for all, when the word ‘elitist’ itself sounds like a paradox in the context of a democratic society?Declaration of Authenticity |, Matthew Tanti, hereby declare that this dissertation is entirely my work, Matthew TantiTo my familyAcknowledgments This dissertation would not have been completed without the help and assistance of many people, either through the relevant material and references they provided, or through the sharing of their ideas and knowledge. | am extremely grateful for their help and interest in dedicating their time to discuss this dissertation with me. Firstly, | would like to thank Professor Denis De-Lucca and the academic staff at the Faculty of The Built Environment. In particular, | would like to thank my tutor Dr Paul Gauci, for directing me. His guidance, dedication and his invaluable comments during the whole process, made it possible for me to write this dissertation. | deeply appreciate his effort in helping me relate more strongly to the Maltese context and not drift away in the vague and abstract notion of utopia, with which | greatly struggled. | would also like to extend my thanks to Perit Lino Bianco who always showed great interest in the topic and managed to dedicate some of his time to discuss the content of this writing, I would like to show my sincere gratitude to Perit Peter Brincat, Perit Antoine J. Zammit, Architect Jens Bruenslow, Perit Conrad Buhagiar, Professor Oliver Friggieri and last but not least Perit Raphael Axiak. All these people dedicated their time to challenge and question my ideas while giving me great suggestions on how | could improve my discussion. However, this dissertation would not have been possible without the help and moral support of my parents, my sister Cathleen, my thesis colleagues, and my friends (especially Clayton, Simon and Elisa). They were always available to read and discuss my ideas and help me put my thoughts in perspective | should however state that any shortcomings in this dissertation are my responsibility.Table of Contents 1. Setting LA. WhYP oa 1.2. What? 1.3. How? 2. The Idea of the Ideal 2.1. The Perfect/ Elusive place. 7 2.2, Reality/Fantasy - Topia/ U-Topia... 2.3, Heaven/Hell - Eutopia/Dystopia.. 2.4, Making Utopia Useful - Marcuse’s six categories of utopia .. 24.1, Utopia of Fantasy. 24.2, Critical Utopia 2.4.3, Utopia of Physical Form. sunsosnsnen 2.4.4, Utopia of Abundance 13 2.4.5. Utopia of Human Development 24.6. Utopia of Strategic Practice.. 3. A Utopia of Physical Form — the Blueprint 3.1, Utopia and the City. o 3.2. The Physical Utopia and Control. 3.3, Architecture of Power .. 3.4. Architecture's Dirty Little Secret. 3.5, Utopia as a Project... 4, The Insensitive Blueprint 4.1, The Death of The Blueprint. 4.2. Abstraction Towards a Humane Utopia cite ss 42 4.3. The Schematic and The Real.Table of Contents 5. Post “End of Utopia” Sit, This ho UNO neem oeernnernmanemasconammamanrammncamneaEO! 5.2. Pseudo Green Utopias sa 5.3. Paper Cities: Urban Utopias. H “ oo 58 5.4, In Defense of The Visi - ws st 64 6. Shortcut, 6.1. Isolation as a Shortcut. 6.2. A Disneyfied Malta... 6.3. The Developers’ Utopic 6.4. A Concerned Public... 7. What if?...Constructive Contradictions, 7.1, The Muck and The Lotus... 7.2. A Utopia which feeds off the Muck. 7.3. A Positive Initiative For Pluralism: Eco-Gozo.... a3 7.4. Towards a Pluralistic Urbanism .snnmuininnininninnennnnnnnnnannnnrnnernnnd2 7.4.1. Administration. 7.4.2, Forward Planning... 7.4.3. Development Control. 7.5. Concluding Note. viTable of Figures Figure 1 Doxiatis' chart, plotting utopian visions with reality and quality as the main parameters. (Doxiadis, C. A, 1966, ?.24)... Figure 2 Shepard Fairey's poster for Obama's campaign showing optimism anda call for hope, in juxtaposition with a more recent image circulating on the internet showing doubt and cynicism of his 4 ‘administration (www.zazzle.com)..n. se 17 Figure 3 Screenshots from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1827) 20 Figure 4 Screenshot from Michael Radford's interpretation of George Orwell's 1984 (1984), 20 Figure 5 Screenshots from Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville : A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution. (1965).. 20 Figure 6 Piero della Francesca’ Ideal ity (c. 1470), (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, aly). 23 Figure 7 Etching from Alphonse Del Bene's Civitas Veri sive Morum (The City of Truth; or, Ethics) (2609) (www.spamula.net) . 24 Figure 8 The sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid, Giza plateau, Cairo, Egypt (www.flickr.com Iphotos/mw|_sd_ca/3526047072/).. ae sinner 9S Figure 9 plan of Flarete's Ideal city of Sforinda(ca 1457) (Koso, 3992).. ingame OO Figure 10 Perspective view of Chaux, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 1741 ( (Spiller, 2006, p. 15)..uncnee27 Figure 11 Albert Speer’s Design for the Grosse Halle in Hitler's Germania Project 1940....n:nion 30 Figure 12 German Pavilion Project, Sketch of central portion of Facade 31 Figure 13: German Pavilion Project, Sketch of central portion of Facade... 31 Figure 14 Jefferson Memorial designed by John Russell Pope (1939). 32 Figure 15 Tatlin's monument to the Third International, ..nicsnn is 38 Figure 16 ivan Leonidoy, design forthe Lenin institute, 1927, maquette. (Sadler 1998, p.126)....35 Figure 17 Sant Elia's Citta Nuova (1914) in juxtaposition with Richard Rogers’ Lloyd's Building in London. 35, Figure 18 Le Corbusier, Voisin Plan for Pars, 1925, (Pinder, 2005 p96). 36 Figure 19 Le Corbusier, A Contemporary City for Tree Milion People, 1922 (Pinder 2005 p.99)...37 Figure 20 Pruitt Igeo Arial view (Democratic Architecture: practical Solutions to Today's Housing Crisis, Donald MacDonald 1996 p.54). 38 Figure 21 Screenshots of a footage showing the demolition of the Pruitt-Igeo (Hughes R. , 1980)... 40 Figure 22 Screenshot of a footage showing the vandalism on the... seo AO Figure 23 Arial shot of the city of Brasilia, showing its photogenic characteristics while neglecting the sense of place in everyday life. (Wachtmeister, 2007) 41 Figure 24 Ebenezer Howard, The Three Magnets, (Howard, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform 1898) in juxtaposition with the Maltese New Town of Santa Lucia (Google 2010) showing the flexibility of the theory in adjusting to a specifi locality, while keeping its main characteristics.....43 Figure 25 Guy Debord, The Naked City, 1957 ( Pinder 2005 p.154).. senennnnane Figure 26 Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon 1963 Source: Spiller, 2007, .47 46 Figure 27 Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon, 1963. (Pinder 2005 p.217)..ucns z 46 Figure 28 Nieuwenhuys, Mobile ladderlabyrint, 1967 ( Pinder, 2005, p.207) a7 Figure 29 Spatial City, Yona Friedman 1958-60 (www. moma.org/collection) sea ® Figure 30 lI Monumento Continuo Paise d’o ‘sole, Superstudio, 1969... 49 Figure 34 Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Reception Area, 1972, Source: (www.moma.org/collection).. 49,Figure 32 Instant City Airship, Ron Herron, Archigram 1968. 51 Figure 33 Walking City, Ron Herron, Archigram, 1964 51 Figure 34 The Dragonfly by Vincent Callebaut. (www vincent.callebaut or). 54 Figure 35 Crystal Island, Moscow, Designed by Sir Norman Foster, accommodating 30000 residents. (www fosterandpartners.com) .. : eT seemrSS Figure 36 Project Triangle, Porte de Versailles Paris, France by Herzog and De Meuron (2006) Due to. ‘completion in 2014. (www.worldarchitecturenews.com).. 56 Figure 37 The Superstar by MAD Architects. (www.-mad.com).. 56 Figure 38 Council has drawn an environmentally friendly ino-ciy, reliant on ts solar powered fils, wind turbines and spikes to eat up the grey pollutes cities and digest them to form a fresh, colourful landscape. Andy Council, illustrator, Bristol. nnn 59) Figure 39 Mariscal draws a metropolis from his imagination, where new transport connections are high-level walkways enable people to experience the city at different levels, Javier Mariscal, ilustrator:... 60 Figure a0 Soak City eisages' future udarwater Lavon as'a result of global warming. Pater Cook RA and Gavin Robotham 61 Figure 41 Laurie Chetwood's drawing isa comment on how buildings in London are unresponsive to environmental change. 62 Figure 42, Williams creates a representation of the increasing inequality between the rich and the poor. “Six hundred million people live in poverty in urban areas and the widening disparity between rich and poor is reflected in our built environment.’.. 63 Figure 43 Section cut through Habitat 67 sev . . 65 Figure 44 Photograph of Habitat 67. ( www.flick.com) 6 Figure 45 Habitat 67's modular system. (www.cac.megil.ca) 65, Figure 46 Cedric Price's vislons forthe Fun Plce in juxtaposition with Renzo Piano's materialised Georges Pompiduo centre in Paris. (Spiller, 2006, p. 50) and (www. flickr.com/photos/vgane/1167724870/) Figure 47 The Kunsthous Gratz, Austria, (www.kultursteiermark at/ems/dokumente) Figure 48 Abstraction ofthe World Wide Web and its exponential increase ininterconnectivty of 66 67 ‘cyber spaces. ( www.twitdom.com/tweetwheel/) so 68 Figure 49 Villlemard (1910), Visions de I'8n 2000... serene 69 Figure 51 The Droppers! community kitchen complex (www. deapeltydoe com)... nm Figure 50 Photograph of Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti project n Figure 52 Screenshots of a footage showing a large number of Maltese rushing in a department store advertising special offers, 2009 ( www.youtube.com) 2 Figure 53 author's own photo... 73 Figure $4 Portomaso marina as an example of@ Maltese utopian pocket, where its sense of harmony is based on strict control o _ soon 7B Figure 55 The Knights of St. John's fortified military Utopia in juxtaposition with present developers’ ‘mini utopias of egoistic capital accumulation (Author's own photo) 74 Figure 56 A typical suburban street in Naxxar showing a clear division between public and private and the neglect of the public realm. (Author's own photo) 75 Figure 57 Between private property and road engineering, a group of friendly locals resort to a huge roundabout to play Boéti, Rabat, 2010 (Author's own photo) 76 Figure 58 Apartment blocks tacking over the hierarchy of the skyline in Rabat (Author's own photo) 77Figure 59 Air view of Zurrieg 2010 showing urban sprawl, 41 years after Richardson's article.was written, (www.googleearth.com). 0 7B Figure 60 Peter Richardson's 1969 article about the destruction of village cores Air view of Zurtieg's (back then) proposed bypass. (AJ, Malta Past Preseent and Future, July 1969 p.63)e1u..0n 78 Figure 61 Advertisement focusing onthe views outside the development while the elevations facing the public street are rendered smaller and in isolation from the context in that locality. ( Author's own photo)... 79 Figure 62 Athough the siti clearly beyond the limit of development boundary according to the Rabat local plan of July 2006, a newly built apartment block still rose beyond respectable heights, neglecting the concerned comments of the locals, outskirts of Rabat. (Author's own photo, 2010).... 80 Figure 63 Courtesy of Maurice Tanti Burlo’ 81 Figure 64 Courtesy of Maurice Tanti Burlo' (Nalizperla 81 Figure 65 Public protest in Bahia after MEPA released the permit fr a development in an ODZ, une 2009. (Author's own Photo). ae OD Figure 66 Public protest walking to the valley in Bahra (June 2008, Author's own Photo)\, 23 Figure 67 Screen shot from a digital petition requesting a referendum about the project, (www-stopprojectpiano.com) ssn 84 Figure 68 Flimkien ghal Arbjent Ahjar website ww faaore. mt). 24 Figure 69 The same development in the advertisement showing the public side of the project (Outskirts of Mtarfa, (Author's own photo, 2010) 2... 84 Figure 70 (Ingels, 2009, pp. 304-305)... . i 3 89 Figure 71 81G's Design Process of transforming the public's desires to architecture (Ingels 2008, pg 304-308). 90 Figure 72 Rendering showing an accepted proposal fora 12 storey development containing 1S0 apartments in the heart of Marsalforn.(25th February 2010, www-timesofmalta.com) nnn 90 Figure 73 Poster showing a lack of faith in MEPA, Bahrija Protest. (Author's own phOtO) reine 90 Figure 74 Present decision making processes, showing the gap between MEPA and the public. (Author's own illustration)... 90 Figure 75 llustration suggesting a link between MEPA and the localities (Author's own illustration) . 90Chapter1 Setting 1.1 Why? During my student days when trying to learn what good architecture entails, | was always faced with an apparent contradiction between the architectural languages that | was exposed to at University and what | actually see in everyday life, During my five year course, | was Constantly reminded of the problems Malta is facing when it comes to architecture and spatial planning. | was also continuously aware of how beautiful, Malta's environment was before the construction booms that Malta has been through since the 1960s, As a result of this, most of the citizens have lost hope in the morality of architects when they see the destruction caused by uncontrolled development in the name of architecture. The combination of lack of experience, together with an optimistic drive to change the status quo may lead one to fall into the dangerous trap of daydreaming. Living in a time when’ technically, everything is possible, makes it easy to fantasise: yet many attempts to change things, end up being futile individualistic dreams, where the complexities of society are neglected and thus one’s visions fall into the category of being naively utopian. Utopian thinking in architecture has been very evident throughout the history of this activity. On the one hand, such thinking is essential for the innovative architect, while on the other it has also gained a notorious reputation for oversimplifying reality to a singular blueprint, which in turn can be dangerous when considered as a viable end state. 1.2 What? This dissertation focuses on the evolution of utopia in architecture and its common tendency to be equated with totality or fantasy. It further discusses the issue of the polities of space in such utopian ideologies and considers the distinction between a ingular easily attained vision and a pluralistic one where compromises are made and contradictions accepted. It asks how this concept can still be applied in contemporary times when the term ‘utopia’ might still be seen as useless or even dangerous, The dissertation is concluded in a discussion about the idea of a pluralistic utopia of process with reference to the Maltese context where the responsibility of shaping the environment is spread out in a more democratic way. 101.3 How? In the light of the objectives outlined in the previous section, the dissertation starts in Chapter 2 (The idea of the ideal) by outlining the main misconception and definitional problem of the term. David Harvey's and Peter Marcuse’s definition and categorisation of the term have been used in order to simplify and adapt the concept of utopia to the context of architecture and urban planning, I Form ~ the Blueprint) discusses on the idea of Utopia in physical form. The issue of power and control is emphasised in both politics and architecture showing how past singular visions in the form of ideal cities have been materialized with the help of power and authority. The chapter also highlights the idea of the architect as an elitist in becoming a social engineer where a strict geometric blueprint could fix society's malaises. Chapter 4 (The Insensitive Blueprint) Focuses on the inability of the blueprint to solve social problems and the way architects and planners have tried to move away from the Focus is made on the CIAM and the idea of utopia in the form of a bluepr Situationists in order to make this distinction between utopia as a blueprint and utopia as. flexible framework, showing this evolution during the last century. Chapter 5 (Post “End of Utopia”) Contains a discussion on the feeling that we are living in a ‘post uto for singular futuristic visions to take form in the name of utopianism. Also included is, a in’ era, while also highlighting environmentalism as being the new spark visit to an exhibition in London with utopia as the main theme, indicating how the concept might be easily conceptualised in present Chapter6 (Shortcut) contains an analysis of the present day shortcuts in achieving one’s own personal utopia by isolation and the way this is affecting the Maltese environment. Patrick Geddes’ idea to think globally and act locally was applied by placing these global theories in juxtaposition with the Maltese context. Interviews with locals having ‘bad neighbours’ and photographic studies show a public which is concerned for their built and unbuilt heritage nChapter 7 (What if?...Constructive Contradictions) is the final chapter and discusses on the idea of utopianism to be a democratic process where pluralism and contradictions are embraced in order to solve problems rather than by creating isolation from the problem. In studying the Maltese scene, the Maltese planning system was ussed in accordance with the Policy and Design Guidance of 2007 and the Development Planning Act of 1992. An interview with Perit Raphael Axiak regarding the present system was also setup to discuss the way in which the system could improve its democratic processes tations: There was also the intention to use The Eco Gozo Vision Document which had to be available to the public before the end of 2009. Due to unexplained reasons it was not published which made it inaccessible to use. This document was to be the first step in the combination of a series of visions to form a pluralistic vision of what should be done. In the last chapter, | was also limited with the amount of detail | could write on Maltese exemplars so as not to pinpoint to any individuals or personal issues, but consider the studies as a few examples from the many. 2at Chapter2 The idea of the ideal The perfect/ elusive place — Utopia—hypothetical [let me add: sometimes actually effected] community, society, or world reflecting a more perfect, alternative way of life. (Roemer, 1976, p. X) Utopias can be good (humanist) or bad (neo-liberal), achievable (the city of plenty) or jevable (th fantasies) strategic (utopias of process) or illusory (architect (Marcuse.?, 2009, p. 1) Despite the fact that the word utopia did not exist until Thomas More's book Utopia ‘was published in 1516, the desire to picture a perfect society dates back to ancient Greece and the Old Testament. Plato's The Republic written in 320BC is one of the first utopian writings, showing a depiction of a forward-looking thought. Plato describes the ideal Polis, as a place based on justice and human virtue organised politically and socially in a way which allows citizens to live in peace and respect not only with themselves and their fellow citizens, but also with the universal laws and truths of the Kosmos, Plato's ideal Polis had to be an enlightened one, governed by a philosopher king who was meant to protect and preserve these universal truths for the sake of the common good. (Windsor Liscombe, 2006) Countless visions of a perfect place were envisioned throughout history, dreams and hopes of a place which managed to solve the everyday harsh and complex realities. Even though Plato pictured this perfect society with great belief, he was certain of the challenges one had to face in order to make this vision credible. In fact, he wrote again and again “how the philosopher, seeking the illumination of the sun, must descend back into the darkness of the cave and wrestle with those of us who reject his supposed enlightenment” (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003, p. 2) , greeting him with skepticism. Similar to Plato's times, utopianism is still looked upon with suspicion. Pinder (2005) argues that the concept of utopia has become fundamentally problematic. Part of the problem with the concept of utopia lies in its traditional definitions which have often fixed it around notions of an ideal state or blueprint for a perfect future. Against this it is imperative to reconceptualise utopia and utopianism in more open ways. (Pinder, 2005) Besides the common misconceptions of the notion of utopia, there is also a double meaning in the actual formulation of the word itself, further enhancing this tension between utopia and fantasy. When creating this term, Geddes argued that Thomas More might have used the combination of the Greek words U~ TOPIA which means NO 3= PLACE; and also EU ~ TOPIA which means GOOD ~ PLACE. (Doxiadis, 1966) In his analysis of ‘utopia’, Doxiadis observes that the term is very contradictory in itself as most of the time it is given both meanings simultaneously making it even more confusing. (Barnecut, 1999) Muschamp (2003) links this duality with the Buddhist concept called Kyochi Myogyo. This term refers to the idea of ‘two but not two’. He uses the face of a coin to show how two faces can seem to exist individually yet they depend ‘on one another for their existence. (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003) In trying to pinpoint what can be considered as utopia or eutopia, Doxiadis devised a chart with both eutopia and utopia on different axes. The chart shows where he considers certain places to be in relation to the quality of urban environment (on the y axis) against its improbability of being realised (on the x axis). Being an urban planner, Doxiadis also dedicated a graph to mark out where he thinks famous recent urban visions are located, with this same method, Although Doxiadis himself stated that this method is very subjective and far from accurate, it helps individuals relate with visions which have actually been carried out with others which have not, while having quality and reality as a scale. Howard: cneay@ EUTOPIA UTOPIA i Faa's epibic @ we t imps inGorbnin' ect texte a =a i a atte Good Face DYsTORA Bod Place DYSTORA Bud-Phacw ced TORA TOMA TORA U-TOPIA Plome ce’ oer ht 422 Reality/Fantasy — Topia/U-Topia The representatives of a given order will label utopian all conceptions of existence which from their point of view can in principle never be realised (Mannheim, 1979, p. 343) For the most part their instigators insisted that they were not utopian, at least where the t is used in the common colloquial way to mean ‘unrealisable’ or ‘impractical’ and as belonging to a distant future or to the realm of fantasy...Their concern with avoiding the description ‘utopian’ was in part due to the narrow standard definitions of that term. (Pinder, 2005, p. 7) Today, the term ‘utopia’ still manages to capture our imagination and takes us to this perfect place, far away from reality. The notion of utopia, however, still confuses people and its meaning is blurred, hovering somewhere in between imagination and fantasy. ‘One must ask then, what is the purpose of spending so much time and energy in coming up with visions which are too far from our present conditions? Debates typically pivot around whether it (the concept of utopia) enables or discourages social change and how it does so. Utopias might be seen as escapists or compensatory, distracting attention from the repressive state of existing social conditions, (Pinder, 2005, p. 5} There is a common tendency in assuming that reality and utopia are two separate entities competing against each other, incapable of understanding one another. In discussing the notions of utopia and reality, Supek explains how these two notions can leave one completely indifferent to the other if one sees utopia to be a “..vision of a very distant future or as a dream which transcends reality... if, we take utopia as a subject of the imagination and speculation without any connection with reality or even without any possibility of being involved in reality.” (Supek, 1972, p. 1) On the other hand, he also argues that “..the notions also leave one indifferent if we take reality as something firm and permanent, something which follows a certain inertia, deprived of all possibilities and efforts designed to make the impossible possible, and then to turn the possible into reality.” (Supek, 1972, p. 1) 15Rothstein (2003) writes about the equation between utopia and fantasy kingdoms, ‘and whet utopianism really stands for: These utopias, difficult to reach, difficult to believe in, and difficult to tell about, might seem to be unreachable fantasies or make-believe kingdoms. But the entire point of the Utopia genre is not to reveal perfectly unreachable worlds like Peter Pan’s Neverland, with its boyhood fantasies, or Tolkien’s Lothlorien, with its dreamlike forest glades and elfin rulers. Utopia is not an impossible place, or at any rate, itis generally not supposed to be. It is a place that can conceivably exist — and, in the teller’s view, a place that should exist. At any rate, however out of reach, most utopias are meant to be pursued, Utopias represent an ideal toward which the mundane world must reach, They are examples to be worked for. Utopianism creates a political programme, giving direction and meaning to the idea of progress; progress is always on the way towards some hotion of utopia. (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003, p. 3) Pinder (2005) gives a specific function to utopia, distinguishing it from fantasy, stating that “one of the most productive functions of utopianism lies in challenging 18 definitions of the possible and the impossible.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 15) 162.3 Heaven/Hell — Eutopia/Dystopia In studying the notion of utopia, one notices a huge diversity in its interpretation. One thing is for sure; utopia is always pleasurable and desired by its creator. It is not our individual utopia which makes us think twice in trying to reach it; it is the idealistic visions of others which give us a sense of doubt in its intentions and consequences. This conflict between visions of individuals set off the common phrase; one man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia, in utopian studies. There seems to be a strong cynicism about the concept of utopia nowadays; people are tired of believing in an illusionary earthly paradise and consequently having a realisation of hell. In the above image released recently on the web, one sees a clear example of the undermining of the term ‘utopia’, associated with past ‘failed’ ideology of communism while creating doubt and preoccupation around Obama's administration, picturing it as a rather elusive promise. ”24 Making utopia useful- Marcuse’s six categories of utopia There is huge difficulty in trying to pinpoint the different interpretations that various individuals have about utopia. How could one use such a notion usefully when even the term itself is open to different interpretations? in trying to tackle this definitional question, Marcuse defines utopia as: A formulation of a long term desired, comprehensive goal, formulated as.a description of an alternate society that is presently perceived! as unlikely of realisation. (Marcuse.P, 2009) Marcuse further stresses the fact that every individual has a utopian urge but not all individuals have good intensions. He continues by stating that utopias should include the word humanist in their description, excluding the totalitarian, the fascist utopia and other self made utopias of power and violence. (Marcuse.P, 2009) Marcuse is also son of the famous philosopher, sociologist and member of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse who dedicated most of his life trying to understand the notion of utopia, while being under Nazi persecution in World War Il. (Marcuse.P, 2009) Like his father Marcuse, distinguishes between ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ utopias. The former being mere dreams and fantasies, while the latter are based on insights derived from critical social theory. (Miles, Autumn/Winter 2006) In trying to identify a practical definition of the term, Marcuse states that utopia can be subdivided into six categories, namely: The Utopia of Fantasy, The Critical Utopia, The Utopia of Physical Form, The Utopia of Human development, The Utopia of Abundance, and The Utopia of Strategic practice. 2.4.1 The Utopia of Fantasy: ‘According to Marcuse, this category of utopia is not useful or not usefully discussed science fiction fantasy. These fantasies are neither critical nor intended desirable end states, but simply projections driven by curiosity on how the future could be. (Marcuse.P, 2009) Although these types of utopias might not help in achieving utopia with direct action, one should not discredit them totally, nor take them too seriously. 182.4.2 The Critical utopi Such a utopia does not formulate a desired alternate humanist world, but rather criticises and exposes the shortcomings of the existence of reality. (Marcuse.P, 2009) The critical utopia shows a central concern in knowing the limitations of utopian representations in text, drawings, film and other media by rejecting utopia as a blueprint. (Fishman, 1977) This is the most common representation of the utopian, and its main idea is to show what would happen in the near future if we keep on moving on the same track, directed predominantly in criticising the status quo. (Science.jrank, 2008) This model of utopia can have rather satirical and negative representations of the future, showing what we should not be rather than what we should. These dystopias depict an amplification of shortcomings in reality such as; natural disasters, wars, totalitarian control, envy, greed, inequality...into the future. These visions suggest that if we correct certain trends, these negative effects would be overcome or avoided in the future. (Imagination, 1987)Dystopias give a warning to the present, thus being Ultimately a positive element in that they suggest the possibility and urgency of a positive (or rather a non-negative) change. (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003) Some of the most famous critical dystopian depictions are in the form of novels, such as We (1924), by Yevgeny Zamyatin ; Brave New World (2932), by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), by George Orwell. While these works of fiction were concerned with the effects of the dominant ideologies of the twentieth century, the dystopias they portray have a verity of rage in different scales and sectors enhancing the philosophical concept of cause and effect (causality). In Brave New World, the dystopian society was not created intentionally but rather is the result of the rulers’ attempts to create a utopia. The dystopian is sometimes categorised as anti-utopian. ‘Authors such as Jameson and Sargent tried to create a distinction between the two, while also arguing that some dystopian literature has only managed to create a reaction against utopianism rather than a reaction in trying to solve such issues which might result in dystopian realities. (Science,jrank, 2008) In such fictions one can notice the strong connection between architecture, society and dystopia, showing the consequences in architectural form of a vision gone wrong. 192.4.3 The Utopia of Physical Fort With this categorisation of utopia, Marcuse tries to formulate a distinction between architectural visions of utopia in a built form and other visions which contribute less directly to the built environment. According to Marcuse’s categorisation, “.. these are serious architectural schemes which do try to define what an alternative world would look like.” (Marcuse.P, 2009) Transforming the idea of utopian representation into a blueprint ~ Marcuse continues by giving examples of schemes by Le Corbusier as being one which fits this category of the utopian. (Marcuse.P, 2009) By creating this distinction, this should not be a basis of isolation from the other categories as all these categories of utopia interrelate and overlap intrinsically. This category will be discussed further on, 2.4.4 Utopia of Abundance: This is the utopia of material plenty in which all material needs are satisfied. In which no ‘one needs to worry about not having clean water, enough to eat or shelter.” (Marcuse.P, 2009) This is the most materialistic utopia, a materialism of necessity, (Marcuse.P, 2009) According to Marcuse, 1968 marked a new development in the conception of this type of utopia, which was perceived as “presently unlikely of realisation”. The year “1968 raised the question of this perception’, in Germany, France the United-States and other politically active countries. This year represented the “begging of a realisation that a utopia of plenty was achievable, it was immediately achievable... the development of the productive capacity was able to fulfil all material needs. ” (Marcuse.P, 2009) Marcuse explains that, that was the reason why his father wrote The End of Utopia — not to deciare its death but rather its self-destruction and its recreating itself in everyday life. (Miles, 2004) This is the same utopia, which Buckminster Fuller strived for and believed in: Itseems perfectly clear that when there is enough to go around man will not fight anymore than he now fights for air. When man is successful in doing so much more with so much less than he can take care of everybody at a higher standard, then there will be no fundamental cause of ar..Within ten years it will be normal for man to be successful — just as through all history it has been the norm for more to be economi obsolete. (Theodore J, 1967, p. 24) id physical failures. Politics will become This same utopia of abundance is also lately linked with Fresco's Venus Project (2002). According to Fresco, presently there are enough technology and resources for it to be feasible to achieve a utopia of abundance. He also states that by having a resource-based economy rather than a monetary system; there would be no destructive competition and “chiselling of each other” where abundance is controlled to keep prices 2steady. He further believes that by using technical solutions there would be so much abundance that money would practically be insignificant. This would also help in reducing crime and other social problems which are impossible to solve with this current system. (Fresco, 2002, p. 8) 2.4.5 Utopia of Human Developmen This is the utopia of personal and social freedom, “a utopia in which the possibilities of human development are unlimited and socially fully supported. Creativity is fostered in all individuals and they have the ability to meet their potential... create supports for creativity, for human development, for love, for different kinds of relationships between societies.” Marcuse warns that this can be an awkward juxtaposition as it may create a conflict between those who are still deprived from materialistic abundance and those who already achieved it in a way, but want more creativity, respect, love. (Marcuse.P, 2009) 2.4.6 A Utopia of Strategic Practice This is a similar term to which Harvey (2000) calls the utopia of process. It is a utopia Which does not focus on an end result or on the content of the vision, but rather on the way in which a vision can be achieved ~ “a way in which a democratic process can be developed to achieve an egalitarian society.” (Marcuse.P, 2009) This utopian idea focuses on the means and the steps, searching for a framework rather than a plan, focusing on the process of getting there rather than achieving it. Marcuse also comments on how Marx always held back in defining tl process in any detail while recalling Henri Lefebvre’s suggestion: ~not to define what the end result might be, but to define what its characteristics will be and to link it to the process of getting there. (Marcuse.P, 2009) Marcuse further discusses the direction in which this process has to led to; “to find a link between and solidify a unity with those who are deprived of the basic necessities of life and the development of productive forces of capitalism” (Marcuse.P, 2009) 23.1 Chapter 3 A Utopia in Physical Form Utopia and the City Figure 6 Piero della Francesca’s Ideal Cty (1470), ( Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, Italy) Most utopias assume an urban form because, in fact, cities are where people congregate, most activities take form and most changes happen. (Marcuse 2009) Of the arts, architecture does not function without a concept of progress, which is naturally linked to Utopian discourse. Architecture may in-deed be the strongest site of imagining the future, because the discipline of building, the raw material of construction and the consequent unavoidable configurations of social space, are always focused on the world to come, as ‘opposed to a mere literary or SF speculation, (Johnson C. 8., 2007, p. 31) Together with other visionaries, architects could not control the urge to depict thei own idea of utopia; to envision architecture’s ultimate goal; to materialise the image of man in an ideal society through the ideal city. The notion of utopia instantly brings to mind images from the Heavenly City, The City of the Sun and The City of God. The connection between architecture and social structures has always been very relevant, architecture being the ultimate manifestation of man’s spirit and aspiration while “mirroring society's complexity within a frame that respects the human scale.” (Mumford, 1965, p. 1)The connections between the desire of utopia and the image of the city are considered by many critics as inseparable. (Rowe, 1976) In saying this, one should note how in history the term ‘utopia’ was connected with the city and the city- dominating society as opposed to Arcadia, being perfection in the natural world. (Pinder, 2005) With such a strong relationship, Kostof places emphasis on a dividing line between Utopia and the Idea city by saying that utopia does not have to be a city. Utopia is outside the realm of place and state and vague about the kind of physicality designs codify. (Kostof, 1991) Even though Plato was more interested in describing the structures of the perfect society, the link between utopia and architecture gets stronger when he gives the description of Atlantis by using Hellenistic town planning of the third century BC. 2(Mumford, 1965) According to Mumford, even though the ancient Greeks were not able to solidify their ideal of commonwealth, they managed to build one out of stone. He also suggests that "the concept of utopia is not a Hellenic speculative fantasy, but a derivation from a historic event: that indeed the first utopia was the city itself’. (Mumford, 1965, p. 3) Hence, Mumford argues that the very notion of utopia originated from the actual collection and organisation of human settlement; not only to protect ‘oneself from the enemy and to become wealthy in trade, but to search for the best life possible. In More’s utopia there is also a strong connection with the organisation of these physical utopias. in his text, he states that “if you know one of their cities... you know them all, for they are exactly alike, except where geography itself makes a difference”. (More, 1885, p. 44) During the middle ages, “..the city itself was transmogrified into an ideal form —a glimpse of eternal order, a visible heaven on earth, a seat of the life abundant”, (Mumford, 1965, p. 3) “The city was not just a larger agglomeration of houses public buildings, markets and workshops, [..] It was primarily a symbolic representation of the Universe itself.” (Mumford, 1965, p. 4) With such responsibilities in representing the universe, Mumford also points out that in late Etruscan and Roman cultures, when a new city was founded, a priest held the plough that traced the outline of the walls, while the main streets were strictly oriented to the points of the compass. “in that sense, the archetypal city was what Campanella called his own utopia: a City of the Sun.” (Mumford, 1965, p. 5) Figure 7 Etching from Alphonse Del Bene's cvita (1609) (wwwspamula.net) Veri sive Morum (The City of Truth; or, Ethics) Fra2 The physical utopia and control In order to create such physical utopias which could reflect the universe, order and harmony were a must in designing the city, controlled by the king at the top of the hierarchy. Like the medieval city and other previous empires, the king was also lowered down from the heaven, the symbol of order and power within the city, having “unqualified power over every member of the community commanding services, imposing sacrifices, above all enforcing abject obedience on penalty of death... To inhal the same city as a god was to be a member of a super-community: a community in which every subject had a place, a function, a duty, a goal, as part of a hierarchic structure representing the cosmos itself." (Mumford, 1965, p. 6) This same figure of authority was able to make these utopias possible, by means of a centralised system of power with the extensive use of slaves and punishing labour, Figure 8 The sphinx and Khafre's pyramid, Giza plateau, Cairo, Egypt (www.flickr.com /photos/mu_sd_ca/3526047072/) 25In More's Utopia, King Utopus invaded the land and used the indigenous population to create a channel around the land, separating it from the mainland and creating an isolated autonomous space to keep invaders away. (More, 1885) One central theme in the ideal city is the emphasis on showing a clear and unified idea in design, while also creating distinct edges at the perimeter by means of exterior walls and bastions. This {gave no opportunities for any exterior impurities to hinder the city’s order and unity. In studying proposals for ideal cities itis easily deductable that the main threat seemed to be coming from the uncontrolled exterior, and thus heavy surveillance and strict control were needed to retain order and authority. Similar to the Panopticon’, whole towns where planned on a similar way to aid surveillance and control within the walls. Two of the most famous projects for an ideal city are Sforzinda and Palmanova In Filarete’s proposal for the ideal city of Sforzinda, strict geometry was used through the use of eight axes of symmetry radiating from the centre creating the walls in the form of an eight pointed star inscribed in a perfect circular moat. Kostof (1991) links this iconographic shape with Filarete’s interest in magic and astrology, further 1g the universe. (Kostof, 1991) Although the emphasising the idea of the city reflect ideal city of Sforzinda was never realised; Palmanova, the construction of which began in 1593, shows the realised version of these same characteristics. The Panopticon is 2 type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785, The all observing eye of surveillance is positioned in the centre and surrounded by the observed, 26During the Enlightenment, again, many utopian thinkers focused on the city, ten through grand plans that embodied rationalist and reformist principles, and in critical dialogue with new political and industrial concerns.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 21) ‘Two years after Ledoux’s death, le rapport de Mart, des moeurs et de la legislation ‘was published. This report shows speculations not just on the future of architecture but as a social blueprint for a noble and moral working community. The salt works project in Chaux is a built manifestation of his theory. It shows an immoral, dishonest and Unreliable society of workers overlooked by strict management, aided by its architecture, The all-seeing eye - the overseer’s and the director's accommodation was placed at the centre of the scheme, facilitating surveillance. The eye's main focus was to achieve industrial economy by continuously occupying the workers’ minds with rational ideas and making them aware that someone was looking at them when they did not conform. (Kostof, 1991). In writing about the works at Chaux, Baczko says that “it might be understood as utopia itself imagined in stone, or even a museum in which the utopian dreams of the epoch are realised in an architectural representation and organised in a spatial whole”. (Baczko, 1989, p. 275) Figure 10 Perspective view of Chau, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 1741 ( (Spiller, 2006, p. 15) 27One feature of Utopian life would strike the modern democ 1e marks of the authoritarian state: The magistrates could invade the privacy of all and have their eyes out for any deviations from the permissible. Hythlodae noted that everyone worked when work was scheduled because no one escaped the watchful eyes of the magistrates. And where could one hide from scrutiny? Nowhere. More’s Utopia banned taverns, brothels, and any “secret meeting places” where there could be seductions. (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003, p. 63) The more perfect (orderly) the blueprint of utopia has to be, the more the controls from above are needed, until it (utopia) becomes totalitarianism with a barely human face. (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003) By creating so much pressure and control from above, one can easily transform a desirable place, into a nightmare, This strong link with totalitarianism makes Rothstein ask whether it was this link which made individuals so uneasy in tackling the notion of utopia, (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003) Sargent also states that: “The tendency in this century has been to equate utopia with force, violence, and totalitarianism.” (Sargent, 1982, p. 4) Sargent argues how a totalitarian utopia is possible when those in power consider utopia to be a blueprint to a perfect society; a utopia which is to be constructed with no significant departure from the blueprint, as any alteration would lower its quality. Sargent further states the dangers of utopian ideals by arguing that a convinced utopian that tries to build a eutopia will use force in order to achieve it, either because not everyone agrees on the desirability of the plan or because there is “disharmony between the perfect blue print and the imperfect people.” (Sargent, 1982, p. 5) but dream worlds become dangerous when their enormous energy is used instrumentally by structures of power, mobilised as an instrument of force that turns against the very masses who were supposed to benefit... the most inspiring mass-utopian projects, mass sovereignty, mass production, mass culture have left a history of disasters in their wake. The dream of mass sovereignty has led to world wars of nationalism and to revolutionary terror. (Buck-Morss, 2000, p. Xi) Look too closely at this utopia or any other, and one begins to shiver at the possibility. The last century's worst horrors—including Nazi Germany, the Soviet regime, the Maoist Cultural Revolution—grew out of utopian visions... (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003, p. 5) With such potential for destruction, Popper argues how those who envision creating heaven on earth will only manage to create hell (Popper, 1945). While Popper states that utopianism leads to violence and totalitarianism, one should note that Utopianism is not the cause of destruction, but it is the people's misuse of power and their egoistic intensions to impose their singular vision on others which creates the problem. In contrast with Popper, Bloch argues how utopia is the path away from totalitarianism. (Sargent, 1982) 28itis a form of inclusion or integration that attempts to overcome or cure the ills of the differentiation necessary to civilised life. And therefore a utopian system is often distinguishable froma fascist or totalitarian one only on the basis that the utopia has not been realised.” (Rothstein, Muschamp, & Marty, 2003, p. 29) However, utopia and totalitarianism are not only linked to politics. Like the elitist profession of the politician, architects and urban planners have the same elitist responsibility to control the quality of the built and unbuilt environment giving the possibility to transform the architect into an egoistic dictator of space and aesthetics rather than a professional in service to the community's needs. Given the fact that architecture isin itself an art and heavily influenced by the individual, there is a fine line which shifts the final design from one side to another. With regards to this, Muir argues how “the humanist theorists of the ideal city designed numerous planned cities that look intriguing on paper but were not especially successful as livable spaces.” (Muir, 2007, p. 175) In taking Palmanova as one of the most famous examples of ideal cities in the Renaissance, it was supposed to be inhabited by self-sustaining merchants, craftsmen, and farmers creating a fully self sustainable settlement, “however, despite the pristine conditions and elegant layout of the new city built, no one chose to move there, and by 1622 Venice was forced to pardon criminals and offer them free building lots and materials if they would agree to settle in the town. Thus began the forced settlement of this magnificent planned space, which remains lifeless to this day and is visited only by curious scholars of Renaissance cities” (Muir, 2007, p. 175) Due to this neglect of society, critics tried to make a istinction between the utopian and the static blueprint of an ideal city. In spite of their emancipatory aims, the utopian schemes have often been viewed more generally as authoritarian, They have appeared as an attempt to fix geography and freeze history in totalising vision as such but in their preoccupation with engineering a better future through the projection of an ideal spatial form... their emphasis on categorising, sorting, expelling and regulating as well as on achieving wholeness and overcoming contradictions and antagonisms through the construction of a harmonious and pure space (Pinder, Visions of the city, 2005, p. 109) ogulated scheme. A fundamental reason lies notin 293.3 Architecture of Power Although thoughts on utopia are more directed towards the subject of politics, one has ‘to admit that architecture and the urban environment are strongly affected by political decisions. Tinniswood comments that the architect has always been expected to correlate and work within his social context, The architect is an instrument submitting and giving service to the dominant power. Architecture, while providing its direct function, has always the task to maintain power in its place. Tinniswoods argues that architecture is not autonomous, as some design prima donnas would like it to be, rather architecture is conceived and grows from society, and it is a product of a specific period in time. (Tinniswood, 1998) Figure 11 Albert Speer's Design for the Grosse Halle in Hitler's Germania Project 1940 When discussing the link between politics and architecture, the author is not focusing on the link between politics and specific architectural styles, but rather the politics of spatial manipulation the power to take pragmatic decisions in the process of changing the environment in its spatial form. With respect to this, itis worth noting the contradiction in architectural symbolism and politics in recent history making the subject too subjective too focus on. It is interesting to observe that when Nazism rose to power in 1933, modern architects such as Mies van der Rohe made many compromises and attempts in order to achieve conciliation. (Blake, 1993) 30etch of centr cohe: A Crit (Franz Schulze, 1989, Mies vanMies frequently tried to convince Hitler that the modernist style was the true spirit of Nazi Germany. Philip Johnson later describes this attitude as the new craving for monumentality under the Nazis. (Blake, 1993) The modernist style was also utilised by the Fascists, contradicting the very initial idea of modernism in bringing a humanitarian utopia, In response to this, while some might think that neo-classical architecture is highly elitist, Tafuri (1976) explains how classicism accepted by Jefferson was immediately stripped off from anything which made architecture isolate itself from the civil life, “They were deprived from the aura of inaccessibility” (Tafuri, 1976, p. 28), and for these reasons, in the United States it could be used as a symbol of freedom, democracy and open mindedness. (Tafuri, 1976) 323.4 Architecture’s Dirty Little Secret Utopia Is not a state, not an artists’ colony, but the d all arc re, even the most ty secret tect debased: deep down, all architecture, no matter how naive and implausible, claims to make the world a better place. (Koolhaas, Utopia Station, 2003, p. 393) Change life! Change society! These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space. (Lefebvre, 1974, p. 26) There is the idea that to change society and life, one has to change the physical space. This is the study of projects that tried to utilise this idea and come up with architectural visions expressing a desire for radical change to solve unpleasant or even threatening situations in their present reality, thus going beyond the notion of architecture as an object formalising space and providing shelter, but presenting it as a panacea for all social illnesses. With the idea of architecture being the means of achieving a better world, architects ran with the idea of making the world a better place. In the 1800s, Boullée produced a multitude of sketches of a didactic secular architecture that would morally improve society. Being directly affected by the French revolution, his designs show an obsession with death, authority and the grandeur of the new state. (Hughes R. , 1980) Due to the decentralisation of power and the rise of the bourgeoisie, these designs could never be built as it would have required a slave state to build. Through the nineteenth century, architecture as a profession had nothing to say about the miseries and inequalities of society. Architecture itself was a symbol of inequality; architecture ‘was only in service to the upper bourgeoisie, the Church and the State. (Hughes R. , 1980) The belief in natural progress was still very vigorous by the end of the nineteenth century, further emphasised by Nietzsche's will to power, suggesting that one did not find new possibilities but created them. (Gifford & Zezulka-Mailloux, 2003) This ideology together with the industrial revolution, “expanded human possibilities and appeared to reveal people's vast and rich creative capacities. With the establishment of new systems of production and technology, the old world was shaken and a new one seemed within reach” (Pinder, 2005, p. 8) This strong relationship between the utopian impulse and technology could be clearly seen by the way Koolhaas describes the sky scraper as being the means to produce an unlimited number of copies of virgin lands on the same site. (Koolhaas, 1978) Due to these advancements in technology at the beginning of the twentieth century, the idealist Futurist and the Soviet Constructivists were religious about the fact that technology could reform culture and work against the injustices of industrial capitalism, seeing themselves as social engineers rather than as architects. 33(Hughes R. , 1980) Soviet Constructivists like Rodchenko, Leonidov and Melnikov imaged vast community centres, social condensers and palaces of the people, all based on the aesthetics of the machine (Hughes R. , 1980) One of the most prominent architects in the futurist manifesto was Antonio Sant’élia, who- created a dynamic and multileveled city of the future, where it's architecture could set man free with the name of Citta Nuova - The New City. In his visions, Sant'Elia, destroys the static city of the past to build a new one, while stating that every generation had to build its own city. For Sant’élia, Futurist architecture was not an arid mixture of function and usefulness, but retained its right to be Art. (Spiller, 2006) 34a5 Utopia as a Project This is a story of the last century's big promise in architecture to create a humane world; a utopia for all with the help of technology and rational schematics. According to Tafuri (1976), modernism changed the idea of utopia from a formerly ideological utopia toa utopian realism; utopia became a project. (Tafuri, 1976) In June 1928 the Congrés International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) was founded by Le Corbusier. The CIAM was one of many 20th century manifestos with the aim of advancing the cause of "architecture as a social art”, (Wurster, 1965, p. 49) The CIAM participants believed that arts could reform people, particularly architecture as itis the art which one inevitably encounters every day. By creating rational designs, they thought this would create rational societies. Philip Johnson recalls the optimism of those times in quite a sarcastic way; “it was one of those illusions of the 20's... the modern movement. The international style we named it. It had a strong opinion that if you have good architecture the lives of people would be improved... architecture improved people, people improved architecture until perfectibility descend on us like the holy ghost and we would live happily forever after” (Hughes R. , 1980) Like the previous visions of an ideal city, Le Corbusier's schemes involved the use of pure geometry. Like Corbusier, many modernist architects believed that pure geometry is linked with rationality and morally sound civilizations. 36ig FHA \ YRS Ny Figure 19 Le Corbusier, A Contemporary City for Three Million People, 1922 (Pinder 2005 p. 99) For Le Corbusier, a geometrically ordered landscape was an object of desire, the more the order in its geometry the more happy and secure its citizens would be. (Pinder, 2005) Architectural innovations were now created to serve the lower parts of the social hierarchy instead of powerful patrons. Due to the destruction caused by the First World War, the architects’ concern was the increasing problem of housing. (Blake, 1993) This glimpse of the modernist utopia came to materialisation in social housing schemes and the community planning movement in northern Europe. (Wurster, 1965) Social housing gave the authority to one or a small group of individuals to design and come up with new typologies for the habitat of an extensive number of citizens, hence strongly affecting their way of life. Pinder (2005) disputes on how the modernists’ utopia had a tendency to separate and disregard society from space. “Space is marked as a distant realm as if it were the preserve of specialists such as architects and planners, while social dreams are pursued with a relative neglect of geographical constitution.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 80) In Le Corbusier’s wri argued in his writing about a problem which France was facing; the lack of a head or father, o patriarchal cast leading the nation. According to Pinder, this did not only refer ig there is the recurrent theme of authority in architecture. Corbusier to an individual or a group of people, but rather a plan. Itwas the correct, realistic, exact plan that was meant to provide the solution to existing problems and to pave a route for the exertion of patriarchal authority, acting as a tyrant, a tribune of the people (Pinder, 2005, p. 82) 37Chapter 4 The Insensitive Blueprint 4.1. The Death of The Blueprint As blue-prints to be literally produced on earth they have been disastrous and tyrannical; the re efficiently it has been carried through ge scale utopian schemes then, In practic are short yrehensive the plan, and th ion and misery it has produced, L hat men are inherently more perfect or more docile or less land City Art Gallery, 1962, p. 18) lived fiascos. They all presupp restless th hey are in fact. ( Unfortunately, these idealistic designs which were assumed to make the world a better place and solve the desperate need for shelter did not work very well. These failures shattered this elusive dream and hope of the modernists’ city and its rational society, giving a pessimistic reality check to contemporary architecture theories and its ‘social engineers’ These mistakes sent back the concept of utopia back to the world of fantasy, or rather dramatised it as being a dystopia. In a 1980s documentary film, Trouble in Utopia, Hughes discusses the end of this elusive dream, linking it with what Jencks coined as the death of modernism in 1977. (Hughes R. , 1980) Jencks’ “uncritical repetitions of his all too brief analyses” (Johnson C. B., 2007, p. 33) on the end of modernism and utopia, were far from giving any consolation and hope for a better future. This criticism was rather interpreted in a pessimistic way, deeming utopia and all its aspirations responsible for the modernist naive conclusions in assuming society's needs. (Johnson C. B., 2007) With Jacobs’ (1961) Death and Life of Great American Cities, the notion of utopia received a huge slap in the face as she argued that how such utopian schemes (influenced by the CIAM) were created from the bias of abstract principles, neglected societies existing urban life and its complex unpredictability. Jacobs focuses more on the death of the street and sterile environment those schemes [“as in all Utopias"] would create. (Pinder, 2005) Jacobs was against the singularity in thought and the pureness of space; rather, she opted for the “colourful chaos that seemed to characterise cities in a democracy”. (Blake, 1993)According to Jencks, one could determine the death of modernism from the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe Project at St. Louis in the United States. (Jencks, 1984) This symbolism of the failure in modern architecture started from the desperate need to save the city of St Louis from the rapid decrease in population. There was a desperate need to ensure enough affordable housing units with the minimum cost possible. (Hoffman, 1999) The mayor of St Louis, impressed by the grandeur of technology and progress in New York, wanted to recreate the city into a ‘Manhattan on the Mississippi’, Pruitt-goe being the first project of a larger vision. Acting under pressure the St. Louis Housing ‘Authority launched this redevelopment scheme in January 1950. The commission was awarded to the then young architect Minoru Yamasaki who, with the help of George Hellmuth, persuaded the authority to adopt the modernist style high rise designs for the public housing, This persuasion was easy when the same high rise housing project Cochran Gardens had previously won architecture awards. (Hoffman, 1999) When completed in 1956, the Pruitt-lgoe project consisted of 33 eleven story buildings, containing 2,879 dwellings. (Hoffman, 1999) The high rise was trusted as being the best option of the, many other redevelopment proposals. This time it wasn’t for low-income citizens, but for middle and high-income families. These other proposals Which never materialized were also designed in the same way, rivaling Pruitt-goe in scale and height. Le Corbusier was highly influential in this design. Like the unite de habitation, the buildings in Pruitt-goe were raised on pilotis, leaving a clear common public ground level free for natural landscaping and public activities. In relation to this, in Newman's theories of Defensible Spaces (1972) argue how this supposedly common-space-to-be in reality turned into 2 no man’s land, the plurality of owners made it difficult for individuals to relate to, leading to neglect, vandalism and crimes. These kinds of spaces were not just found on the ground floor, but also in the corridors and recreational galleries. A few years after its construction, vandalism, disrepair and crime flooded the building. The project’s architectural innovations had transformed themselves into nuisance and danger zones. The high crime rates made the development notorious and. the high number of vacancies showed that even poor people preferred to live anywhere but Pruitt-Igoe. In 1972, the St Louis Housing Authority, in a highly publicised event, demolished three of the high-rise buildings. A year later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declared Pruitt-Igoe unsalvageable and demolished the remaining buildings (Hoffman, 1999) 39Although one cannot argue that the actual development was a huge failure, some critics argue that this story grew out of proportion, and that the conditions in which the project initiated was too difficult to resolve only by architectural means. Bristol criticises this over-emphasis of the Pruitt Igeo as the failure in modernism, calling it the “The Pruitt-Igeo Myth” (Bristol, 2004, p. 352)While numerous examples of modernist urban schemes which further show doubt on the idea of having @ blueprint for an urban utopia. Two examples are the Broadwater Farm London and Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer's picturesque city of true that the failure of this project was over emphasised, there are Housing Estate Brasilia. In the latter, while probably being one of the most photogenic cities in the world, its residents argue that the designer did not spend enough time studying the residents’ needs but rather tried intensively to make the city look good on plan and from a passerby’s perspective. In arguing against the lack of social considerations, in an , the resident stresses the fact that the city was interview with a resident in Brasi designed with the driver in a car in mind, at a time when few people in Brasilia even afforded such a luxury. This specifically vehicle-oriented design incapacitated travel on foot, a custom which was always pleasurable for the Brazilians. (Wachtmeister, 2007) Lucio Costa also imposed burial conditions on the inhabitants. He stated graves should be shallow and have plain tomb stones and not be ostentatious in any way. (Wachtmeister, 2007) It is ironic how moder m managed to transform what was initially driven by a socialist intension, into Architecture, 2008) \dividualism in design. (Woods, Visionary We ordinary earthly beings must take all conditions into account, but Niemeyer had the overnment’s confidence to realise the images of his mind without too much interference, (Wachtmeister, 2007) 414.2 In Coleman's Utopia on Trial (1985), the link between the ‘death of modernism’ and the elusiveness of utopian ideology was further emphasised. To show the neglect of modernist architects in designing for the community, Coleman and her team surveyed 4,099 blocks of flats in England containing 106,520 hou: 1@ units. Continuing on Defensible Space, Coleman also related design features and statistics with lence and other social deviance. This data was collected and represented in graphs Newman’ with different design features as variables, showing the difference in crime rates accordingly. While her research provides a stimulus to analyse housing from the point of, -w of lived experience rather than planning intentions, Benton argues how one should be aware of Coleman's “flawed and biased research” being; “motivated by a passionate commitment to Thatcherite values of individuality, family and self-interest as the only guardians of stability”.(Benton, 1999) While not knowing exactly the extent and potential of utopianism, she deliberately uses this word to discredit it. This clearly shows Coleman's misinterpretation of the word in linking it with an authoritarian and. singular thinking in design. This book takes the format of a law court; Coleman shows evidence in the format of graphs and tables to the jury and accuses utopia of being insensitive to the needs of the public. After quite a one sided court session, Coleman does not think twice about giving the final judgment, deeming utopia guilty for its “sins”. In this misuse of the term ‘utopia’, Coleman attacks the idea of change and progress rather than criticising and the idea of pure space and its indifference to society. Abstraction towards a Humane Utopia. Any serious utopian thinker will be made uncomfor tailed recommendations concerning all face le by the very idea of a blueprint, of fife, (Kateb, 1965, p. 454) Even when a utopia is designed as a realistic alternative, its not intended to be achieved in all its detail, Its a vehicle for presenting an alternative to the present. Itis 2 glimpse of a hat the author perceives to be better. Its designed to break through the barriers of the present and encourage people to want, and work for, change. (Sargent, 1982, p. 57! functioning society at a moment in time containing In 1959 at the Otterlo Congress, the end of the CIAM was announced, giving the right for all people to contribute to the image of their habitat. For such a complex society, “simplistic formulas, magic keys and quick slogans of utopian extraction were inadequate tools.” (Nicoletti, 1971, p. 271) The future had to be prepared for, not by prophecy but with a continuous search. After the major acceptance of Jencks' death of modernism, Tafuri’s idea of modernism as a project in achieving utopia seemed farfetched. People were fed up of looking at seductive architectural drawings which 42looked good on paper and then ended up being a realisation of a dystopian nightmare. The ides of a blueprint for an urban utopia seemed too rigid and totalitarian, limiting the future to only one option of an elite group rather than being flexible and humane. This produced only an architect's utopia rather than a pluralistic utopia for al. (Nicoletti, 1971) William Morris predated this collective affirmation of the death of utopia as a blueprint for a future reality. Pinder (2005) shows how Morris was worried about proposing utopian visions, stressing that his visions like all literary utopias should not be taken too seriously as a plan for the future. He also knew that to do so would create many political problems as he was aware that his visions would not fit everyone's desires. He further stresses the fact that it is very dangerous if one thinks that one’s, ion would provide an ideal form for all society. (Pinder, 2005) In continuation with Morris, Howard also tried not to detail his Garden City of Tomorrow, but left it on a schematic level, showing just its main characteristics. His diagram showing The Three Magnets is a clear example of this simplification and a humble way of not to giving too much details or creating too many restrictions. In trying not to fall again into the trap of a blueprint, architects created abstract models of the city, leaving them open for interpretation. Rather than a plan, architects created a framework where no decisions are considered to be imperative, boundaries blurred and pluralism celebrated. eee MAGNETS, Figure 26 Ebenezer Howard, The Three Magnets, (Howard, To-Miorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform £1898) in juxtaposition with the Maltese New Town of Santa Lucia (Google 2010) showing the flexibility of the theory in adjusting to a specific locality, while keeping its main characteristics 43Nicoletti (1971) argues that between 1960 and 1963 there was an intellectual phenomena, which, according to him, could be defined as the birth of a new utopia. Two of the most significant of these new utopias were called New Babylon and Spatial City. (Nicoletti, 1971) In this section, certain groups and individuals who strived to move away from the notion of utopia as an absolute blueprint shall be discussed. This story started in 1956 when a Parisian writer and filmmaker called Guy Ernest Debord met a Dutch CoBra artist Constant Nieuwenhuys. In this same year, Nieuwenhuys had just started the project named New Babylon. THE NAKED CITY suusreuion oe vaneoate "oupaeres x Pyeeooae Figure 25 Guy Debord, The Naked City, 2005 p.154) This collaboration brought together a group of artists, writers and architects under the name of The Situationists international (S)) in 1957. (Alison, Broyer, Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007) Like the CIAM, The Situationists International thought that by changing social space, not only did society change, but it also become a means for radical political action. Change in social space had to go beyond the issues of design, architecture and planning and had to incorporate political questions about everyday life and urban culture. (Pinder, 2005)For The Situationists and th associates, the key factor for radical political action lay in changing cities and social space (Pinder, 2005). They had a love-hate relationship with the city: "they recognised cities to be key sites in the reproduction of social relations of domination of spaces of alienation and control. But at the same time they were concerned with the possibilities that lay embedded within these environments as they viewed cities as potential realms of freedom through which people could transcend alienation and create spaces in keeping with their own needs and desires, thereby realising their true selves as living subjects.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 128) Like the modernists, their intention was to change tendencies in the inequalities of space due to capitalism urbanization. They felt the need to address the “corruption of ideals on modernism” (Pinder, 2005, p. 128) as a result of the functional requirement of architecture to service post war reconstruction immediately after the two world wars. (Alison, Broyer, Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007) In relation to Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia, the Si thought that, Brasilia was “the supreme expression of functionalist architecture as a centre of bureaucratic power for Brazil.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 137) For them, urbai fe dream, urbanism had became the most concrete and perfect fulfillment of a nightmare”. (Pinder, 2005, p. 137) Nieuwenhuys focused on the term Unitary Urbanism from 1956 to 1974 to create New Babylon. For him, this was not a method on how one could plan a city but rather a m was “no longer a po: critique of urbanism. “It was forged out of a revolutionary struggle to transform social space and the everyday life”. (Pinder, 2005, p. 138) The Situationists understood that, urban schemes had to go beyond the limited conceptions of design, architecture and planning. They tried to detach themselves from these fields and saw them from a critical point of view “as specialist activities that conceptualised space as a terrain to be shaped by experts.” (Pinder, 2005, p. 140) One of their major issues was their refusal of building a permanent city which disabled transformation in time; instead they opted for a permanent transformation. This was a type of urbanism that would be in constant evolution with everyday life, controlled by the desires and actions of individuals. (Pinder, 2005) For the Si, the city was 2 zone of political struggle. They were against the lack of power society had in transforming the built environment and suggested a collective and participatory project; one that would be lived by its constructors. Unlike le Corbusier's and other previous urban visions, this project rather than try to suppress random and unexpected behavior with strict and formal geometry, it celebrated it by not giving the project a form what so ever, leaving it to be founded on human and history’s character of unpredictability, creating “situations” from everyday life. (Pinder, 2005, p. 142) 45S NS JS (LS Figure 27 Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon, 1963. (Pinder 2005 p.217) In New Babylon, Nieuwenhuys’ insisted that his work was not an urban planning project, “instead they (SI) had to give material shape to a revolutionary understanding of urban space and to encourage, as well as provide a medium for, a new approach to urban living” (Pinder, 2005, p. 162)When looking at Nieuwenhuys’ drawings, one can hardly notice any resemblance to any previous kind of visions on the city. There is no geometric purity, and his works express discontinuity and a continuous shift in spatial 46experiences created with the help of swirling and clashing lines. (Pinder 2005) While Nieuwenhuys tried hard not to give any clear form of what this project might seem, he still managed to show some of its major components. The main component was a giant, allowed the interconnection of different parts of the already existing space frame wi city. This space frame was raised from the ground, keeping the ground free from traffic or public meetings. This same structural framework floating on the city was also the same expression Yona Friedman used in his manifesto l’Architecture Mobile (1958), developing his Spatial City in parallel with Nieuwenhuys' vision, Unlike New Babylon, Spatial City was a more permanent structure, with services contained in the three jimensional frame. Like Nieuwenhuys’s Homo Luden (woman/man the player), in the Spatial city, the dwellers had the flexibility of reconfiguring their space bounded by this frame. (Muschamp, 2002) Figure 28 Nieuwenhuys, Mobile ladderlabyrint, 1967 ( Pinder, 2008, p.207) 47The emphasis on these models was that the Homo Luden could continually choose their own spaces and rearrange them according to their needs and desires. in giving expression to his project Nieuwenhuys stresses the fact that he only wanted to make a suggestion; having a far different intension from predicting how the world would look like. In knowing the risks that his project might still be considered as an overall individualistic idea, he demanded that any static and unalterable components should be avoided as much as possible, giving total flexibility to the Homo Luden to play in his, environment, free from boundaries, labour and spatial restrictions. The notion of utopia in urbanism shifted from a blueprint; focusing more on suggestions as a process of how to get there, and criticising everyday life with the help of abstract models and imagery. From the late sixties onwards utopia in architectural representation turned to a rather critical note through the works of Archizoom, the voluntary prisoners of architecture and the Italian based Superstudio, paralleled by the fantastic and technologically advanced cities of Archigram and the Metabolists. The architects in these times were more interested in criticising society and showing the infinite alternative worlds of what a science fiction based architecture could bring. There was little intension in envisioning an ideal city asa blueprint, as the city’s destiny was under the hands of pragmatic zoning in urban planning. 48494.3 The Schematic and the Real Vidler argues about the contradiction between utopian ideas and its representation in architecture, He argues that there is a strong rupture between the schematic and the real. (Vidler, 2000) This same idea was previously brought forward by the Frankfurt school philosopher Theodor Adorno, saying that one could not picture a perfect society without portraying the flaws in the existing world, clearly showing that as soon as one tries to express utopia, one involuntarily contradicts one’s own ideal. Its representation “sabotages its own realisation” (Adorno, 1991, p. 202) The representati inevitably becomes its own undermining, the image fakes the utopi establishing limits to its subject. (Vidler, 2000) In representing utopian visions Jencks suggests that repsentations should not be to clear and objective, but it should captivate its characteristics while giving a chance to the observer to give his own interpretations and future possibilities. But since the future is not yet, one should sketch it in vivid colours rather than attempt a finished portrait, For me, success in the art of prediction has the quality of a caricature by Daumier, something striking and disturbing that dramatises the possibility of choice.” (lencks, Architecture 2000 and Beyond: Success in the Art of Prediction, 2000, p. 6) These abstract models showed vaguely what could be, rather than a definite what should be; the architects’ representation of utopia transformed from a blueprint into an instigator of choice and possibilities. In order not to create such limitations while simultaneously trying to capture the feeling of what could be, once again the idea of a Utopia is in further danger of being misinterpreted and discredited to the realm of science fiction and fantasy, taking away all its potential in creating a productive change for the better. 50Chapter 5 Post “End of Utopia” 5.1 ‘The End of Utopia’ I we think about avant-garde architects who have some visible profile, we don’t find work that envisions a social world widely improved by architecture. No utopias of the sort that dot the map of architectural history up through the post-Modern era of the 70s and 80s of the last century, Today, their aspirations seem to have retreated before the advance of capitalism and liberal democracy. (Woods, Utopia?, 2009, p. 1) Needless to say, the days of banners, flags and manifestos are now over; there is no longer any emancipatory task for architecture; there is no universal theory, no ideology to revere, no novelty to promote. (Alison, Broyer, Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007, p. 14) In trying to understand why such utopian ideas are so presently absent, Woods (2009) argues that it seems that nowadays the avant-garde is too busy focusing on pragmatic matters, neglecting the social context of architecture. He continues arguing that the reasons are very intrinsic and intertwined, but the main reason seems to be that there is a widely accepted feeling that we have reached The End of History (Fukuyama 1992) and The End of Ideology (Bell 1960). Although one can question Fukuyama’s text, there is the feeling that after the end of the cold war and the fall of socialism as a humanist, ideal, one doesn’t take long to believe in Margaret Thatcher's famous slogan that “there is no alternative” to capitalism and free market global dominance. The fall of the Berlin wall was not only a monumental episode is crystalising the victory of Capitalism and Liberal Democracy over Socialism; for the majority, it also gave the impression that one cannot imagine an alternative world which is better than the status quo. (Woods, 2009) This capitalist rationalisation also meant that the city and its inhabitants were also under the condition of a free market-driven economy; making it difficult for architects and planners to imagine a better alternative. (Pinder 2005) Unfortunately the sclerosis apparent in our cities also reigns in our heads... No one believes any ‘more that we can build that city on a hill that gleaming edifice that has fascinated every utopian thinking since Plato and St Augustine. (Harvey, Cities of Dreams, 1993, p. 18) There is a widespread feeling that utopian urban projects belong to a previous age, as remnants of hopeful but naive thought, as depleted husks unable to respond to current demands (Pinder, 2005, p. 240) 52It seems that, nowadays, architecture with the arts hardly have the potential to reform society alone, but it is limited to work with alternatives within the capitalist and the liberal democratic status quo. As Woods continues to argue, “In the current climate, the only possible utopias are those perfecting capitalism and its present, consumerists, forms and order.” (Woods, Utopia?, 2009, p, 1) Tafuri also brings up this argument and tries to anticipate the conditions for architecture for a “liberate society”, and states that: “The fall of modern art is the final testimony of bourgeois ambiguity, torn between positive objectives and the pitiless self-exploration of its own objective ie restlessiy in labyrinths of images so multivalent they end in muteness, nor enclosed in commercialisation, No salvation is to be found within it any longer: neither wand the stubborn silence of geometry content with its own perfection. For this reason, it is Useless to propose purely architectural alternatives. The search for an alternative within, the structures that condition the very character of architectural design is indeed an obvious contradiction in terms” (Tafuri, 1976, p. 181) While Tafuri undoubtedly knew about architecture's. service to pre\ us dominant regimes and powers, he continued that the power of capitalism is inescapable, mostly because “of the totalising reach of the processes of capitalist rationalisation.” (Tafuri, 1976, p. 181) How much closer to utopia can we get? We might say that capitalism isa utopia of se sopias would b satisfaction and restlessness, Who, then, needs a better society? Alternative u out-of-date as soon as they would be written or drawn. Ideals and idealism can only slow us down. Utopias can only get in the way. (Woods, Utopia?, 2009, p. 2) 535.2 The Pseudo-green Utopia Being an instigator of change, utopian presence is made dominant in times of distress, instiling an urge for change. The recent ecological and economic crises have awakened a lot of interest once again in the notion of utopia. Pinder (2002) discusses how he recently noticed a lot of historic interest in museums and academia, on the notion. He also argues about the risk that some might also fee! nostalgic for this end of utopia and start recreating such “singular pictures of the future or for supposedly stable and adequate representations of a good society”. (Pinder, 2002, p. 238) These images. rather than strengthen the idea of utopia, recede it back in association with totalitarianism and the naive. 54Figure 35 Crystal Island, Moscow. Designed by Sie Norman Foster, accommodating 30000 residents (www.fost randpartners.com) In recent years, the author himself has ni iced a lot of architectural drawings which Were seen as quite naive and improbable of solving any ecological problem, and give the idea again of utopia to be a singular architectural revolution which would save the world by means of one genius’s idea. Although one has to admire such desires to solve this issue, it seems that architects’ concerns are no longer focused on improving human society, but rather on saving the planet from society itself. Although Woods stresses the fact that taking care of this ecological issue fs very Important, he is also skeptical of leaving this issue up to capitalism. “But who can argue with the goal, and since the very ‘word socialism has become an insult, who would dare to? The lack of green utopias in a time increasingly obsessed with green issues may be due to capitalism’s success and unchallenged dominance.” (Woods, 2009, p. 2) 55While it is beneficial to be open to all future possibilities, it seems that the current mushrooming of future cities are nothing but pseudo eco architecture with few details ‘on the way they might function. These might not even be appreciated for their technical inventiveness, but might be only an aesthetic build-up of flashy and futuristic architectural motifs and forms with extra wind turbines and photovoltaic cells. 56These ideas keep on mystifying the idea of utopia, by giving the impression that its, only function isin the land of science fiction and individualistic fantasy. in Freud’s model of the human psyche it is interesting to note that he relates fantasy with his Pleasure Principle theory. According to Freud, thi tive drive to create initiates with the need to escape from immediate pain and daily struggles to achieve an immediate gratific also be considered as escapist. With regards to this, Marcuse also describes how society, when faced with difficulty in changing present political situations, turns in 1m. Like fiction media and drugs, it seems that utopia in architecture might protest and sometimes in defeat to an Aesthetic Dimension ~ a bastion of critique against harsh political realities. (Miles, 2004) Although, as previously mentioned, Marcuse’s categorisation is not meant to isolate but rather to pinpoint the six major characteristics of utopia, there seems to be a generalisation which leads to a misunderstanding when representing architectural motifs in a utopian context. Gillick argues about a common trend in exhibition structures to use the term ‘utopia’ as a foundation to categorise certain art pieces and representations which could be perceived as being naive. Gillick also argues that the misconception of the word, and the ironically interpreted Failure of Modernism, by default renders all progressive thinking as utopian, rendering the notion quite useless in practical discourse. (Gillick, 2003) When Lefebvre argued about the discrediting of Utopia, it was this same relationship which triggered his argument. He further stresses, the need to rehabilitate it, by showing a distinction between the two. (Merrifield 2006) While Nieuwenhuys proposed New Babylon as a suggestion to challenge the imagination of the future builders of the future city, he himself insisted in not postponing action to a distant future with favourable circumstances, but rather tried to take political action with his project. (Pinder 2005) This further distances the concept of. utopia from being only an individual's blueprint for society in the far future; and place more emphasis on the process of getting there by making every day productive change in contextuality to present everyday situations. | would argue that the greatest stre functional utopia. Scooping suppressed attempts to actually create a better place and actually have a better time, rather than just providing soothing images of experimental architecture and a mish-mash of interactive structures, however interesting they might be. (Gillick, 2003, p. 4) tion would be derived from its becomin jth of Utopia st and re-spreading a layer of ethical traces from a seque 875.2 Paper Cities: Urban Utopias Itis arguable that the notion of utopia within the cultural sphere is most attractive to those who have no ongoing interest in making productive change. Instead they create a sequence of mirage visions of how things could be if they were everything other than the way they are now. (Gillick, 2003, p. 4) What follows are a series of drawings which the author managed to gather from an exhibition in London, and thought that need to be pinpointed and used as examples in showing the way the notion of utopia is being used in exhibition structures, The exhibition was called Paper Cities: Urban Utopias which was recently exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts. These images could further confuse the visitor, and creates doubts on the practicality of the concept of utopian thinking itself. These illustrations describe clearly what Gillick argues about when he mentions this increasing number of exhibitions Which evolve around the concept of utopia; but yet they project the idea that the concept of utopia is nothing but a way in which an individual can communicate his dream like curiosities for the future. For this exercise, the author also categorised the drawings in accordance to Marcuse’s categoricsation of utopia. While these drawings clearly link the notion of utopia with that of fantasy, one can still appreciate the image's power to criticize society. Although these images might not have a direct impact in changing the world to a better palce, In his The Aesthetic dimension (1978), Marcuse argues that these aesthetic built up of fantasies might still be productive in changing slightly the ideology of future generations and individuals which will have a more direct impact in improving things. (Miles, 2004) The exhibition stated that: Architects, artists, designers and illustrators articulate ther ideas about the city, suggesting imaginative possibilities for the future. The exhibition also includes commissions from Peter Cook RA, Chris Orr RA, Marc Atkins, and RA Schools students inez de Coo and Rachael Champion... You are invited to create your own exhibition catalogue by tearing images from this wall. (Paper City: Urban Utopias, November,2009) 58Utopia of Fantasy -The Critical Utopia 61Figure 41 Laurie Chetwood’s drawing is a comment on how build unresponsive to environmental change. 62stween the rich and a eates a representation of the increasing inequality between t Figure 42 Williams creates a rep live in poverty in urban areas and the widening the por. "sixhunded millon peopl ve in poverty in urban ares and the disparity between rich and poor is reflected in our bul Paul Williams, architect 635.4 In Defense of the Visionary This distinction between practical utopias and utopias of fantasy is not intended to undermine the importance of envisioning an architecture which is far beyond our present realities. The notion of a pluralistic utopia should not be a tool to censor and cut, down individuals’ desires, aspirations and creative libido, but to make sure that behind all these visions which instigate a possible alternative reality, there is also a common goal with a practical agenda which would make these changes possible. if Western man now stops thinking and dreaming the materials of new images of the future and attempts to shut himself up in the present, out of longing for security and for fear of the future, his civilisation will come to an end. He has no choice but to dream or to die, condemning the whole of Western society to die with him." (Polak, 1961, p. 53) In relation to this, Jencks argues that visionary architecture is an essential field in architecture theory as it is not only used to compete and create a basis for debate on In arguing about the importance of envisioning future alternatives Polak writes: the future, but also because it invests hope and opens up new possibilities, preparing us for the future. (Alison, Broyer, Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007, p. 15) Concurring with Jencks, Broyer (2007) also argues that architecture goes far beyond what is built or meant to be built. “It is @ conceptual trajectory, the comparison of concepts stemming from heterogeneous disciplinary fields, which exempt it from all formal unification and open it up to its future development.” (Alison, Broyer, Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007, p. 15) In our own time we have not seen buildings equaling the cost of a forum of Minerva, of an ‘Amphitheatre of Vespasian, or of a Palace of Nero, therefore, there seems to be no recourse than for me or some other modern architect to explain his ideas through his drs take away from sculpture and painting the advantage that, as the great Juvarra has said, they now have here over architecture, and similarly to take architecture away from the abuse of those with money, who make us believe that they themselves are able to control the execution of architecture. Piranesi quoted in : (Wilton-Ely, 1993, p. 4) ngs, and soto Architects must continue to reclaim the ty, even ifit is only on paper. (Alison, Broyer Migayrou, & Spiller, 2007, p. 93)In defense of visionary architecture which has been built and has had a good reputation is Habitat 67. In this scheme, Safdie's idea was to reinvent the apartment building and give all the commodities of the suburban house in 2 high density apartment, reducing urban sprawl. "The idea was very simple, open orientations as much as possible, try to have the house as a separate entity, use open air streets open to the weather rather than corridors, everyone gets a garden which is open to the sky.” (Wachtmeister, 2007) Safe used LEGO blocks to create a design which was fully standardised and mass-produced achieving a high level of affordability. By giving different configurations with this one box, one could get 50 different types of apartments, having both luxuries of mass production and variety. (Wachtmeister, 2007) Although this project succeeded, his intentions were much higher. His first proposal was to make 1200 apartments, five times more what he built for the expo of 1967. Instead of 12 floors, it had to have 25, creating a huge public space underneath which could accommodate public buildings, shopping spaces, a school and a few offices. With this scheme, he wanted to show that housing should not be separated from the other parts of the community. (Wachtmeister, 2007) The project was so sought-after that it became very gentrified, inhabited by the upper middle class. flick.con 651 urban middle class living, otherwise what’s the point. Safdie in: (Wachtmeister, 2007) Some visionary architectural projects manage to grasp the complex conditions of reality and are designed in a way to work around these conditions. one should not be cynical in deeming all visionary architecture as naive. One should be open to professional expertise in suggesting new technologies, concepts, aesthetics and pragmatics. Although Cedric Price's Fun Palace might have been assumed by instinct to be too unrealistic, if deeply studied, one can see the vast amount of work and energy invested to detail this project. Unlike New Babylon, the Fun Palace was detailed to such manner that rationality and technicality shifted the boundary of what is realizable or not. (Spiller, 2006) An architect can use technology as the modern interpretation of alchemy, where some ideas which would have never been possible, are mode possible with the invention of new technically specific methods.When questioned about the Kunsthaus Gratz building with respect to technology, Peter Cook answered that “it is not using some pie in the sky extreme technology, we didn’t have high tech.. it is what | call crap tech” (Wachtmeister, 2007)In some cases, what were considered to be unrealistic utopias of fantasy back in their conception, are now common disregarded realities. While Nieuwenhuys’ project was only a suggestion of what the future could be, some may argue that New Babylon is the idea of the internet in materialisation. (Spiller, 2006) While Nieuwenhuys connected the city physically and used walkie-talkies for experiments to create new connections and situations in the city, nowadays the common man like the Homo Luden, can switch on his computer or cell phone, get into this cybernetic web of spaces and like a nomad travel in the immense and diverse worlds of the individuals’ immaterial spaces, whilst also giving the individual the chance to create a space for himself without any restrictions and limits of censor or any other moral norms. 6768This ease of interconnectivity of information and situations has never been so easy; especially when one considers the exponentially increasing Facebook phenomenon. Technology has advanced so much, that ideas and money have become the ultimate tools to realise future visions. When we consider the fact that these technologies keep its in trying to design ‘on increasing at an exponential rate, we are reminded of our the future. This limits our precision, disallowing any realistic foresight of future reality In looking at representations of the year 2000 drawn in the 1900, one notices the limitations imposed by the drawings which represented the future. This can easily be curiosities of the future cities and other science fiction applied to individualist technologies in present times. Figure 49 Villlemard (1910), Visions de 'an 2000 ( National Library of Fran: While one should never negate the potential of the imaginative and future The concept of possibilities, like any other overused mechanism, it could back attempting to solve every problem only with technology is to say the least naive, and could be an easy way out, leading to procrastination rather than to a practical change in the immediate present. ‘When the urge for change becomes introverted, when It slackens its grasp of the realities of the human situation, when it loses touch with history, when it becomes a doctrinaire obsession, then we have the antithesis of true reform, Instead of progress we have arrestment. Instead of ‘opening the way to yet further vistas of creative change, we have the stillness of a supposed perfection. (Auckland City Art Gallery, 1962, p. 18) 696.1 Chapter 6 The Shortcut... Isolation as a Shortcut The concept of isolation and tabula rasa was always a very strong characteristic in most Utopian propositions in architecture. It is worth noting the way in which, rather than trying to accept the complicated distortions of societies and improving them, certain schemes prefer to create new social orders or entirely new types of architecture, simplifying and controlling these complications with isolation or radical reinvention. (Leeser, 2009) These shortcuts make it impossible for such projects to truly work in real life. While some projects’ technicalities and methods of construction seem very rational and practical to apply, it is unlikely that every one of its inhabitants would agree to such conditions, aesthetics and way of life. Although Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti project is a very interesting prototype of how his Archology could work in solving the problem of urban sprawl, transport and other ecological problems, this new ecological city had to isolate itself from the source ‘causing the problems, for it to actually work. Instead of solving the problem in the city itself, Soleri confronted his present socio-economic structures with protest or even escapism. (Nicoletti, 1971) The reason why this prototype is located in a distant location of Arizona is not only because land is much cheaper there, then if it was in the city; by having his own land, he reduced the socio-political and historical dimensions, creating a clean slate which reduced complexities only to technical difficulties, making it possible to build his vision. The idea of isolating oneself and starting from scratch is also a very common practice in alternative communities around the globe. These communities believe that, only by isolating themselves from the rest of society can they ever hope to have a better life. One such group of people during the sixties was The Droppers who managed to create @ community by adopting Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome as their main construction technique, Clean the canvas, as Plato call brand-new rational world, This idea is nonse world... start afresh and by 3. im ossible to re Popper, Towards a Rational Theory, p.50 706.2 A Disneyfied Malta ‘As another form of isolation, one may also consider the neglect of a mass utopia as a larger social project. Political cynicism has led to the idea that one can do much better if one works hard in isolation rather than hoping for a human enlightenment which ‘would magically make everyone happy. While liberal democracy has given us hope that one day everyone would be free and happy, this ‘decentralisation’ of power and recourses manages to create mini kings of one’s own space, reducing the strength of the public realm. Presently, capital and commodities are considered to be the main shortcut in achieving one’s own personal utopia. Commodities have not ceased to crowd people's private dream worlds; they still have a function on a personal level... the abandonment of the larger social project connects this stopianism with political cynicism, because itis no longer thought necessary to he collective that which is pursued by the individual. Mass utopla, once ical correlate of personal utopia, is now a rusty idea. (Buck-Morss, 2000, p. X) Koolhaas brings out this issue clearly in his study on shopping. For Koolhaas, one can say that utopia has already been realised, enabling everyone to get a credit card and buy, buy, buy until one is happy. (Koolhaas, 2001) Quantity and prices of objects are the main concern, rather than quality. In his theories, Debord also argued about the continuous “blanketing” of social space with strata of commo: associate utopian visions with a “pseudo-world of illusion” and become passive spectators rather than active agents of social change. (Pinder, 2005, p. 131) nMarin sees utopia as a stage for ideological representation, showing the actors’ (society) relationship with their real conditions of existence. (English, 2007) When these social contradictions are smoothened down with distractions, one creates what Marin calls a Degenerate Utopia. Marin adds that these become degenerate as soon as there is the intension “to exclude, conceal, and sublimate some sort of contradiction or difference that would serve to compromise the hegemony of the given dominant ideology”. (English, 2007, p. 10) This shows “how the utopi representation can Figure 53 author's own photo be entirely caught in a dominant system of ideas and values and, thus, be changed into a myth or a collective fantasy.” (Marin, 1984, p. 239)In Harvey's study of the degenerate utopia, he describes it as “a supposedly happy, harmonious, and non-conflictual space set aside from the real world outside in such a way as to soothe and mollify, to entertain, to invent history and to cultivate a nostalgia from some mythical past, to perpetuate the fetish of commodity culture rather than to critique it.” (Harvey, Spaces of Hope, 2000, p. 166) These are symptom spaces to a problem, being 2 mere materialised fantasyland searching for a means of escape from reality, an opium for critique in spatial form. Instead of helping in solving problems, they are disconnected, turned into themselves, ro longer willing to radiate out “in that transformative move that was central to utopian conceptions of the modernist urban structure” (Pinder, 2005, p. 15) where its sense of Figure 54 Portomaso marina as an exam utopian pocke (ww ointevents.com} BIn this cynical time of the End of History adults know better than to believe in social utopias of any kind- those of production or consumption. Utopian fantasy is quarantined, contained within the boundaries of theme parks and tourist preserves, like some ecologically threatened but nonetheless dangerous z00 animal. When itis allowed any expression at all, it takes on the look of children’s toys — even in the case of sophisticated objects ~as if to prove that utopias of social space can no longer be taken seriously; they are commercial ventures, nothing more. (Buck-Morss, 2000, p. 26) This degeneration of utopia, according to Tafuri is the same inevitable destiny for architecture under capitalism. “They (present utopias) are unable to offer alternatives save those provided by the conjoining of technological fantasies, commodity culture, and endless capital accumulation” (Harvey, 2000, p. 75) Harvey continues to give examples of these degenerate spaces. Disneyland, being one of the most blatant examples, which made him coin the term: Disneyfication. He continues to state that many contemporary spaces have achieved a similar level of disneyfication all around the world, places such as amusement parks, shopping malls, airports, holiday resorts, city centres and even housing. (English, 2007) One can call it the modern reinterpretation of the medieval fortified city, where the king is authority, bastion walls transformed into cameras and security guards protect the city from the complexities and delirium of everyday life, Figure 55 The Knights of St, John's fortified military Utopia in juxtaposition with present developers ‘mini utopias of egoistie capital accumulation (Author's own photo} 4Figure 56 A typical suburban street in Naxxar showing a clear division between public and private and the neglect of the public realm. (Author's own photo) Much of our public spaces are the undesigned leftovers between road engineering and the design of individual buildings. Despite the occasional isolated embellishing project by local or central government, the public reaim is on the whole an ad hoc collection of minimum, dimension, badly constructed pavements and a varied infrastructure of randomly placed, utilitarian street furniture... our once elegant, respectful piazzas are now more than congested traffic junctions or informally arranged car parks, where pedestrians are at the mercy of vehicular trafic, (KTP, 2007) It seems that in Malta, there is an obsession with the creation of boundaries between the public and the private. The private sector is the people’s the only concern, being the only aspiration ~ one’s own personal mini disneyfied utopia, where one could find refuge from the neglected public realm; or rather, what is presently seemed to be considered as no man’s land. In the light of this, there especially when dwelling spaces are continuously getting smaller and smaller due to increasing market value. There is the need to strengthen the public realm and its ability the need to find a way to improve public spaces to shape itself with the desire of the public rather than being the private sector's leftovers. 5While talking to the locals in the photo, the author got quite an expected answer as, to why they decided to use that spot for their pastime. Apart from being quite a large roundabout, “almost like a park”, they said that there is no other place to go to which is. within walking distance. This highlights the need to reinstate the sense of place and community which has unluckily faded in recent years due to this constant neglect of the public realm. The once respectable local town centres, the hub of social activities, are also showing a weakness in supporting such daily activities giving way to the strongest, conqueror of public space- the comfortable personal vehicle. 766.3 The Developer's utopia Figure 58 Apartment blocks tacking over the hierarchy ofthe skyline in Rabat (Author's own photo) ‘The complex and sometimes conflicting demands placed on our land have dramatically altered ur landscape. The substantial funds funneled into the construction industry aver this short pperiod have led to voluminous and ubiquitous development, regrettably generally of poor quality, a result of economic expedience, but also of a faltering aesthetic appreciation and insufficient social responsibility. Despite attempts over the years to introduce elements of control to limit the damage, we have not had considerable success. The urgency now is to find native solutions, (KTP, 2007, p. 18) In studying Maltese examplas, the author goes back to his own present everyday ions; being the instigator of his urges to study utopianism. The degeneration of quality in the Maltese environment in the last few decades gives a reasonable cont ‘explanation for this urge to change. As one may easily notice, the Maltese urban and rural environment is far from being an example of a utopia. Following Independence in 1964, we have suffered from a lack of responsibility in taking care of our own environment, resulting in devastating uncontrolled development driven mostly by economic and socio-political agendas. It is important to note that before Independence, the public realm was never the responsibility of the Maltese but of colonisers. After Independence in 1964, the Maltese political class replaced the coloniser in the eyes of the Maltese; except that through the ies with Maltese politician one could negotiate one’s way out of one’s respon: respect to the rule of law. (Gauci 2010) Over-development has caused a devastating sprawl over the whole archipelago, blurring any demarcation line between different towns, agriculture land and open public spaces, without any aspirations in achieving good quality and a beautiful built environment, ”n) proposed bys Figu rieq 2010 showing urban sprawi, 41 years after Richardson's article. was written. eearth.com) 78The plan of the city should be distributed in such a way that the magnificence of the whole is subdivided in an infinity of individual beauties, all so different one from the other that the same object is never encountered twice, and moving from one end to the other one finds in each quarter something new, unique, and surprising, Order must reign, but ina kind of confusion. and from a multitude of regular parts the whole must give a certain idea of irregularity and chaos, which isso fitting to great cities (Tafuri, 1976) Quoting from F.Milzia, Principi di architettura civile, 3rd ed., Bassano 1813, voll, pp.26-27 Contrary to the Maltese urban environment, it seems that we as a society have actually managed to do the complete opposite, creating disorder and confusion with the construction of the same concrete module. Like the previously mentioned concept of Disneyfication, it seems that the Maltese society believes only in the private sector neglecting the public. This mentally in clearly shown in the way we build; the architect is bound (by the client) and expected to satisfy his client first and foremost, while obeying strict building regulations which are adopted on national level, in order to be in line with the ‘character of the place’. (0C2007) These building regulations, rather than being seen as the minimum one can do, have transformed into a common formula, where one calculates the acceptable minimum rather than designing by taking the locality of the site into consideration. The importance of recent developments are more focused on the quality of space the building encapsulates and the views from the building rather than the quality it can radiate and the views facing the building; leaving the public domain in complete hogwash . Figure 61 Advertiseme street are rendered smaller and in isolation from the context in that locality. ( Author's own photo) ocusing on the views outside the development while the elevations facing the public 79Al construction has an impact on the public, so all actors involved in construction must not only think of their own needs but also act in the public interest. Informed building owners are therefore just as important in the achievement of successful projects as, for instance, well~ trained architects who are skilled at the developing the best possible solution for the respective task, (Architect's Council of Europe, 2004, p, 6) Cited from (KTP, 2007) In defense of the present policies and guide lines, there is clearly written that such characteristics of the place should be preserved or enhanced. It seems that the problem is not the guidelines themselves, but who implements and how these policies are implemented are the most important factor in making these g (Francalanza, 2009) felines effective, New development should respect its context, including the character, appearance, scale, ‘massing height and density of the particular area in which itis situated 0C2007 Policy 1.3 Compatibility of new Development p.12 Developments should be designed so that buildings contribute collectively and positively through their siting and massing to the spaces they define. In particular, frontages should properly define public and private space. C2007 Policy 1.4: Development and Spaces p.12 The development does not detract from but enhances the streetscape 0C2007 Policy 1.7c: visual architectural Gains: p.13 Figure 62 Although the site is clearly beyond the lim f development boundary according to the Rabat local plan of July 2006, a newly built apartment block still rose beyond respectable heights, neglecting the concerned comments ofthe locals, outskirts of Rabat, (Author's own photo, 2010)Architects, developers, MEPA and all other stakeholders need to place the public's, well-being at a par with their particular interests (KTP, 2007, p. 31) es could be taken with a The application of the policies within the design gui degree of flexibility, if there is a strong reason to do so (Part 1 0C2007) Unluckily this flexibility in the system is perceived by developers as a loophole within these policies to maximise further the development of the site. Such allowances while further reducing the quality of space in certain areas, give the system a bad reputation. When policies are applied with flexibility claims of curroption and abuse of power are immediately pointed at MEPA representatives. (Francalanza 2009) Figure 68 Courtesy of Maurice Tanti Burlo'(Naliaperta) aL