Utopia
and the city of tomorrow
(day 2, 27-01-2000)
contributions:
Hans Achterhuis
Franziska Bollery
Hilde Heynen
Chris Dercon
Kas Oosterhuis
Elia Zenghelis
Leon Krier
Panel discussion
9. Hans Achterhuis - philosopher, University of Twente
++ contribution: 'The two sides of utopia' ++
Hans Achterhuis studied various utopias by reading and compairing the texts on them. From this he concludes that, at least in the written sources, there is little difference between utopias and and distopias.
According to Achterhuis, Thomas Moor's 'Utopia' generally is seen as the source of the utopian thinking. It is a humanist vision. Constants' work is very much connected to Marxism. In Marxism, however, utopian thinking is abandoned as senseless. Marxism is a scientific approach, no dream-building, and therefore rejects the utopian.
Baudrillard
describes the United States as the realised utopia. We can conclude now,
with Baudrillard, that we are living in a partly realised utopia.
New Babylon
features the transparent of the utopia; 'humans don't need private places'.
This transparency however is also strongly linked to totalitarian societies.
The individual does not exist in utopia. 'You will be crazy to turn your
back on such well-intended collectively.'
In philosophy there is a difference between positive freedom (freedom to) and negative freedom (freedom from or freedom of). The classical human rights (for instance the freedom of speech) are bases on the negative freedom.
This negative freedom does not exist in utopia's. There is no possibility to exclude. Utopians have a very strict control on society.
Achterhuis makes no differentiation between the ingredients of distopias and utopias. To a certain extent they are exactly similar, using the same means to control society. Both are anti-humanist.
The main question this lecture offers is: Do I really want to live in a utopia - it is at the same moment the starting point of all distopian texts.
<top>
10. Franziska Bollery - professor of architectural
and urban history at DUT
++ contribution: 'exploring Babylon' ++
Bollery explores the starting of the utopian thinking from Fourier's dreams, Robert Owens texts, to the real inventor of the utopia: Thomas Moore. Her contribution focusses on the arcadian element utopias - the landscape stting of many older examples of them.
<top>
11. Hilde Heynen - architectural theorist, Catholic
University of Louvan
++ contribution: 'New Babylon and the antinomies of utopia' ++
The project of the modernity aims at the making of a better life; it has therefore utopian elements.
According to Heynen Ernst Bloch is the philosopher of utopia, the utopian ideal of the future. It is the 'still unachieved Heimat', where the dream of the better life is finally realised. This is the goal of human endeavour. One could interpret this also as a complicating of modernity.
Heynen introduces also Walter Benjamin, who distinguishes two types of dwellings:
a. The dwelling
as a case, with the imprint of the inhabitant, an art-nouveau etui.
b. The 20th century dwelling, transparent (Giedion, Mendelsohn, Le Corbusier)
longing for light and air. Every medium which distorts the relation between
the inhabitants is taken away. (transparency).
Benjamin describes the Bauhaus as cold and sober, places where you cannot leave traces (due to the smooth surfaces) and he sees it as an example of this new conception of the dwelling.
Constant unites the Modern definitions in the work of Habermass and Benjamin and takes their items in his own way way to an extreme.
To Hilde Heynen in New Babylon - the quasi-realistic but critical alternative to a society of that moment - the whole line of the modern movement comes together with the neo-Marxist discourse.
The success of the project is in the recognition of the failure of the project. The inescapable contradictions in utopia lead to its failure. For Adorno utopia is a negative concept, but it should always be there on the horizon, to keep society conscious that is yet far from ideal. It should not take a real (built) form. Adorno sees utopia as a combination of eutopia and utopia; the perfect place and the non-place.
Art must not be utopian, so it can not be administered for its failure to become real. In that aspect (negatively seen) New Babylon was a very successful project.
It is the contradiction (everyone does what he/she really wants but it will not lead to social conflicts) which makes New Babylon for us difficult to understand. To Heynen the pictures and drawings, rather that the text, suggest how Constant has been struggling with the problem of making a perfect future. It shows the impossibility of this utopia, of this perfect society.
<top>
12 Chris Dercon - art historian, director of Museum
Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
The afternoon
session was lead by Chris Dercon. He pointed out some actualities of Constants'
work, here resembled as keywords:
- morphological (negation of inside/outside space)
- psychological (maybe New Babylon is effecting us in new (youth) culture)
- nostalgic (sentimentalist Neo-Marxist actuality or comparison of Sectors
with computer structure)
- the Wigley factor (the publishing of the book 'The Hyper Architecture
of Desire' and the exhibition in the Witte de With Center for contemporary
Arts - the actuality of historical practice and investigation of projects
from the past to put a pressure on today)
- hyper architecture per se (Bill Gates, …, Joep van Lishout as hyper
architects of desire)
- maybe we are sick of Koolhaas' Generic city but don't want Aldo van
Eyck to come back either (a touchy topic to talk about)
<top>
Kas Oosterhuis presented the project "Wild Babylon", by showing a range of internet sites pointing at the different ways that New Babylon ideas became realised through global networks as meeting places. From Activeworlds.com - welcome to the 3D Internet, work of Marcus Novak - genetic algorithms and global intelligence, Nicolas Schöffer - spatial dynamism to the question "How to generate architecture that is programable?" and work of Greg Lynn that keeps dynamism inside a design to "Cymatics - the science of the future?" which is using sound, vibration, oscillation to create form, program architecture.
Oosterhuis presented his project "Transarchitectures", visions of digital communities, where buildings feed data, architecture becomes unpredictable. Pointing out that, as one human being, architect is not master of the process.
His last project made for the Venice Biennalel is a 'time based art'- piece, as he is calling it push-and-pull media, an electronic space which is changing by navigating through it.
<top>
14 Elia Zenghelis - architect, founing member
of OMA
++ contribution: 'Exodus - the city as significant environment' ++
Elia Zenghelis was presenting the project 'Exodus - the city as significant environment' made in 1972 as a competition entry for Casabella magazine. At that time he was working together with Koolhaas. It was responding and belonged to a specific time context. "Principles behind it stand still for me as 30 years ago. What has changed is only time." It was a revision view to reality. As the project originally was half written, Elia was presenting it by reading it and showing images that during time got half lost. Some of the words and sentences told today could strangely echo in your mind today:
"Good and a bad half (…) urban exodus (…) wall (…) obstacle from agonistic distance (…) escape (…) architecture has been guilty instrument of this despair (…) division, isolation, inactivity, aggression (…) totally desirable future (…) architecture that generates its own success (…) architectural oasis (…) runaway from architecture of collective monument (…) we witness the exodus of London, London as we know it will be a pail of ruins (…) picturesque ruins (…) 11 parts (…) first step of indoctrination program (…) spontaneous planning centre (…) conceptual Olympics mixture of physical/mental exercises) (…) continuous confrontation with the old city (…) new forms of behaviour (…) social condenser (…) exhibitionism/ spectatorism (…) social inventions (…) perform (…) voluntary prisoners (…) hallucinogenic experiences (…) moods of exhilaration (…) frustrated energies and desires (…) accelerated atmosphere of illusion (…) instrument for indoctrination of existing culture (…) vacant pedestals (…) empty provocations (…) incubator of ideologies (…) moral fever, esthetical masturbation (…) the park of aggression / into creation (…) elastic piece of rock (…) architecture of great hights (…) private cultivation (…) institute for biological transactions (…) modern healing (…) lowering of average life expectancy (…) group of dancing nurses (…) infinitive number of exhibited live Napoleons, Christs … Epilogue: It required mental believe in the city. Rehabilitate … of metropolitan lifestyle. P.S. It is clear that there is no 'problem'
<top>
15 Leon Krier - architect and urbanist
++ contribution: 'The Modernity of Traditional Architecture' ++
Krier - carefully avoiding any mentioning of New Babylon - said he was for different reasons living in exclusion for 10 years. He started his story from his student days in 68/69 in Germany as he said 'when architecture was mainly about prefabrication and industrialisation'. At that time he was looking for a master and got a chance to work for Stirling. The talks of that time were like "Drawing is a fascist activity, we must discuss!"
Krier is stating that as humans we need also stable things, but that also we live in an age where we can completely disagree but also exist next to each other, where identity is only fantasy. The question for him was - How could we make a city of all these conflicting ideas?
He now lives in France, where "Modernism is state religion". "I never in my life lived in modernist house, but that does not mean that I am not modern person! (…) Old Delft is masterpiece in itself, but how can we make something like that with our means? We should rethink what should be industrial and wat not. The future does not like cloning but automatisation of creating. (…) I don't care less about Delft, or about history. But they are object lessons still valid for young architects today." Krier does not see himself as anti-modernist, but he thinks that it was a lost century. It is not the industrial condition but ideology that creates a problem of reproduction. Craft / industrial objects will in future be no contradictory. Cars can be clones but if buildings are cloned than there is no town any more, everything becomes suburb.
As experts we have to be extremely sensitive towards the market, because of profound desires. It can't be any better than people make this market. Architectural schools should look more at the technical side of projects than at the ideological. If it is technically truthfully done, than it is good.
Krier was talking about the attitude of modernist architects and their disruptive intervention on traditional buildings. Than he showed series of images of such an intervention by traditional means on Falling Waters house. "I was ideologically prepared to like everything that Le Corbusier has done. But when you see it and you don't like it you should for God sake tell that you don't like it." Critiques can change perception of your liking or disliking.
20th Century cities grew by explosion, which creates cancer, incurable diseases. Traditional architecture works through convention so it can't be really wrong. And for example if you have too much public space it becomes disaster (over 30%). One should avoid like hell buildings that are oversized, as they can't be broken in smaller parts.
At a lot of points audience could easily agree with Krier's words, but at the point when he started to show his work lot of these words turned to have the other meaning from the one you can as architect trained in modernistic tradition get attached to.
<top>
Some of the first questions were addressed to the provocative story of Krier. "Are you an Utopist?" - "Definitely not! Utopia was always for me extremely boring." "Are you maybe a holistic architect?" "Traditional." And to Elia: "Are you guys still friends (Zenghelis and Krier)?" "Yes. He is not more different than in '68. We fundamentally agree on the nature of everything but we are different in the expression of it."
Kas Oosterhuis reacts on Kriers' words: "Leon Krier is a crocodile. Three million years old. Evolution didn't stop, it is still going on. I am looking forward what new forms are evolving, I find that liberating."
Constant said that from Krier he didn't get anything new. On the question what is the difference with his strive for better life, Constant said that in last 30 years life has changed a lot, "the way of living is so different, but it didn't get any better."
About New Babylon - "I didn't stop because I didn't have any confidence in society but because I could not go any further. I thought that someone will come after me, I did as much as I could do." "Was it your idea to destroy old cities?" "No, no, I didn't want to destroy anything and I never did. I thought that it should start at the place where people gather. It is proposition for a life that is rapidly changing."
Constant in a reaction to Elia Zenghelis: "I felt "Exodus" as caricature of New Babylon, which didn't have anything to do with freedom of automatised world." Elia responds: "Maybe it turned out to be caricature project but it was not meant to be."
To Wigley:" Your books were very well behaved. You didn't point at future." Wigley: "I don't believe in the concept of future. I believe in research. It has strong relation with the present."
< back