cindy moon_utopia

People always dream utopia. It usually means ideal and useful corrective positivism. However, the concept of utopia is not always happy because its actual meaning is no place or not existed place. (Mumford 3)

Lewis Mumford said utopia has been in Greek and Rome period. The base idea about utopia is from Plato and Aristotle. However, actually the word ‘utopia’ started using at. It means when philosopher thought about system of society, they didn’t define their dream as utopia.

As from Plato, utopia is always related with city because it has to be explained between the relationships between people. Community or hierarchy, everything is from society and it goes to the space of where people have been. At first, it was used for how people who have athuority control the society well for their will. Plato was to rationalize and perfect the institutions to make ideal pattern for creating structure. In contemporary societies, his concept is so far from utopia. However it was one way to achieve society’s ideal at that time.

After the system or structure of society has been changed because of mechanical progress, the concept of utopia became different. As St. Thomas More talked about, discussion about power in society moves to about system. In this example, we could see archigram for the plug-in city. They try to make continual circulation and blur the boundary but unified by continuous architecture (Sadler 57). Archigram dreamed about superimposing new society; however it is different from new Babylon. while new babylon was focused on view from exterior, plug-in city started from interior. Because of this difference, plug-in city could approach about conjectural and more legible and dynamic life in modern society.

However, archigram emphasized too much about mega structure of architecture, even though they want to connect the space. They ignored the changing flow and only concerned about hardware. They thought all the hardware could solve the problems and realize the utopia. Also after new Babylon which already was defined as failure disappeared, archigram lose their opponent subject to lead their topic. Even though many architect got influence on their works, there is no philosophical utopia right now. We just devote the phenomenon for the next good progress.

Utopia

According to Mumford ”the first Utopia was the city itself” (p3). He describes the creation of ancient cities as the creation of utopia. Unfortunately the utopian city is very fragile and the distance between the utopia and the dystopia is not that great. Mumford mentions isolation, fixation, regimentation, standardization, militarization as attributes to the utopian city. Later in the Mumford reading the utopia is called: “sterile dessert” (p10). A very negative description.

Fustel de Coulanges and Bachofen describes the city as a religious phenomenon with the primary function to create order. The city was an ideal form “a glimpse of eternal order, a visible heaven on earth, a set of life abundant- in other words, utopia.” (p13). On page fifteen again there is the description of the unstable condition of the utopia. Almost immediately it changes to its opposite, the dystopia. To create the utopia there needs to be a collective force. Described by Mumford as the human machine, the platonic model of all later machines.

The Plug-in city and New Babylon looked forward towards the end of labour and towards automation. New Babylon looked into the far-distance and Plug-in city to the near distance. New Babylon tried to create new social places, without an exact recipe. Peter Cook and Michael Webb with their plug-in city were more interested in the creation of an organizational system with smaller individual units. In both New Babylon and The Plug-in city the working class had disappeared. Sadler writes: “convinced that the qualities of the everyday could be enhanced by design, and that technology could lift the passions of humanity from the quaqmire of the street into the city of the sky”. The vision of a modern utopia.

Utopia

Architecture 209X, Spring 2007

Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases

Nicholas De Monchaux

Qing Wang

Utopia

Utopia, a word has been always associated with city context. It was born with city. The origin of city was the idea of centralized dwelling. It is the materialized will of kingdom. It is the idealized form of dwelling. The idea of Utopia is to realize the human commonwealth which never has been conceived. But the city becomes the perfect ground where Utopians test their thoughts. The interesting thing about Utopia is that Utopians care the human commonwealth but not the single person. It pursues the collective benefits and ignores the personal difference. That’s where Utopia fails. Each person is different and irrational. Utopia tries to uniform the condition of dystopia reality and gives the solution. In fact, Utopia is seen as irreal fiction as opposite of reality. It is always related with sci-fiction. Actually, the paradigm of modern Utopia – Archigram inherited this fiction quality. The cartoon like cover always implied the content of their projects belonging to the future not the present reality. Their project – plug in city also looks like the machine from sic-fi movie Star War. In Japan, Metabolism also shared some similarity with Archigram. In both of their projects, there are some mega structures with infrastructure connecting the city network. The living units can be added or subtracted by the change of the city. Paradoxically, Plato’s utopia was refused to change. It was conceived as a perfect stable system can be sustained forever. Metabolism and plug in city tries to adapt this dynamic quality of the city to make it sustained. The chaotic and changing reality is more complicated than this ideal single system can accommodate. That’s where reality and utopia differs.

utopia

What is interesting about the word utopia is that it possesses both a positive and a negative meaning. Positive, which is its primary use and as defined by the dictionary, is an imaginary place and a place of ideal perfection and social condition, which some strive for and believe that lays somewhere in the future. Negatively, defined as an impractical scheme for social improvement, the term is used to describe something which is too advanced- goal that is un-reachable.
All three texts deal with both, the positive and negative, which seem to probably go hand-in-hand, rather than either-or, when talking about utopia.
All three texts look at the possibilities of and desires for achieving this place of perfection, and the failures of doing so. Lewis Mumford is the only one whose thesis in Utopia, The City and the Machine tries to argue that utopia actually did exist and that “the concept of utopia is not a Hellenic speculative fantasy”, but that “indeed, the first utopia was the city itself”(Mumford, 3). Even though this is a speculative thought, what is more interesting to note in this statement is that utopia is equated with the city. In Sadler’s article New Babylon versus Plug-in City, Constant’s New Babylon and Archigram’s Plug-in City are hypothetical projects of hyper-structures also striving for utopia in the form of a city.
Marvelous works for their time, the Plug-in City and New Babylon respond to the current need for change evoked by the “disappearance of the working class” (Sadler, 65) post the industrial and mechanical revolution and its replacement with the new mobile “leisure class”.
The word ‘avant-garde’ continuously comes up when reading all three articles. Our desire for control and advancement, instrumented by science and technology is what allows us to constantly look ahead in search for what Plato regards to as a “self contained unit”, that is enough self-sufficient to “have enough land to feed its inhabitants and make it independent of any other community” (Mumford, 5).
Utopia, in the positive sense, is in the future and only avant-garde and progressive thinking can bring us closer to utopia, which constantly gets re-defined. Does this mean that the state of utopia is actually un-achievable, and the positive notion of utopia will always go together with the negative, as un-reachable goal? I do not know, but “the only limits to what might be accomplished… were those of the human imagination” (Mumford, 13)

Utopia

The Article ‘Arcology’ is a try to find ideal city type in relationships between environments and human resources. For grasping an image of the arcological city, divided analysis and clarification of purpose are effective strategy for the nebulous image of utopia. It is because investigation of every connected factors related with city is necessary for building a logic of ideal city. However, when I meet arcological discourse which is focused as our utopia, I have a same impression. It is a sort of manifestation not an imagination or emerging. Big premise is that we should go that direction because we are here.

Through architectural history, efforts to visualize or architecturalize utopian city were truly challenging works. A sketch concerning future city has a philosophy toward utopia or would-be dystopia. Archigram’s works were amazing even on the view of contemporary position. Their paper works involve a little archeological view but more are focused on outlining the future in excavating the patterns of the past. (58, New Babylon versus Plug in-city) That’s reason we can feel their insight is quiet keen even in current base. The comment “If man is no longer bound to production-labour, he will also no longer be forced to stick to a fixed place.” is can be applied in mobility and ubiquity based on current technology. It’s one of evidences their ideas were actually future oriented. Main key that they could imagine some relatively reasonable ideas-with current base not at that time- was they faced era having plenty of changes within short scroll. They could concentrate the changing phenomenon itself.

I assume expecting future city and drawing it might be easy in 1950~60 than now. They were stepping an apparently changing stage as the physical environment. But, now we are standing on the changed changing cites in terms of physical settings but invisible human environment is changing more quickly than modern times. Then, how can be our future city imagined? What is the relatively strong process to keep an eye on contemporary world. And, what is the keen view and thoughtful insight anticipating our future. Archigram had acutely aware of supposed freedom form dogma. Then, are we too free from dogma? Or, our future cities totally are not free from economical dogma?

The Transmigration of Utopia

The Transmigration of Utopia
Utopia has roots dating back to the Hellenic period and whose literal translation means “no place.” Lewis Mumford writes in depth about utopia in his “Utopia, The City and The Machine” starting with a philosophical description and ending with a more historical explanation of the concept.
Lewis Mumford shows the utopias have generally been relatively unimaginative considering the emancipated class of the Hellenic period and questions why they found such problematic regimented models, as stated by his example of the humane More. Though Mumford thought of More as being tolerant and magnanimous on the subject of religious convictions, More eventually succumbs to the limitations of other utopian authors namely: isolation, stratification, fixation, regimentation, standardization, militarization. He continues that the reason for this failure is do to the individuals inclination towards self preservation or greed, thus abandoning the "liberating sources of unpredictable and uncontrollable creativity." Interestingly the quest for a perfect place for all humankind turns out to be an exclusive club Med with servants to fight your wars to boot.
On the other hand, Mumford questions this premise for a more grounded historical explanation in the sense that utopia, particularly in Plato's case, may have not been sterile, but rather looking towards the historic city. It is sort of like combining the best of both worlds by taking a republic, minus its' failing politicians, and an ancient city, minus all of the often forgotten hardships. Interestingly enough, he dives deeper than these philosophical assertions to back his reasons for the rise in utopian ideals as coming from establishment of the city by a king that represents God and who is constantly trying to "hold chaos at bay and ward of inimical spirits." The establishment of the cities infrastructural eternal order and its' mark as a sacred place for the Gods create an otherworldly appearance. The final conclusion is that modern philosophers like, More, Cabet, and Bellamy all reverted to the kings urban organization as a reaction toward their new free market economy.
The final conclusion is that we eventually reach utopia through science. Kings and Gods are all rejected by the elite and machines through science have improved and explained the physical world. Mumford notes astonishingly however that the collection of these machines in a totalitarian system has become society’s God, and therefore has crushed the notion of utopia. Further he asserts that the only people that can see the destructive nature of the Invisible Machine are the scientist and the artist. While the they arrive at their conclusions differently, the resultant is dystopia.

Utopia

Utopia

Liwen Zhang

The word utopia is very interestingly intertwined with visions and discussions concerning the city and lives of its inhabitants. The ancient mythological city of Atlantis, as Mumford’s article mentions, is what Plato refers to as utopia, divine perfection, or “a visible heaven on earth”. Such strong convictions around the idea of a utopia and its strong ties to the city suggest how man has privileged the notion of progress from the very start, since ancient times, when we constantly strive toward a better future. Thus Mumford makes it clear that there is an inherent human need to control technology and live within reach of the divine, whether it be religion, kingship or through the need for technological advancement.

In Sadler’s article comparing and contrasting Constant’s New Babylon and Cook’s Plug-in City, both schemes could been seen as visions of what Plato would have called utopia, plans that placed control, progress and the need for technological advancement on to a entirely new level. Although both schemes were in response to the same problems that cities were encountering in the mid twentieth century, over population being the main challenge, they are both very different in terms of conceptual and formal approach. However despite their differences, what is important to note is that in both schemes, the increased need and thus response toward collective living and leisure is heavily emphasized. This increased need for community and leisure is facilitated by heavy mechanization and explicit spatial organization, where the city can again reinvent itself to become a solution and thus a utopia where its citizens can thrive.

The vision of utopia and the need for progress forward illustrates a sense of both believing and longing for the future which will be better then the past. As our relationship with technology becomes increasingly dependant and taken for granted, new problems and new responses will arise, along with the need for advancement, our visions of what utopia constitutes will continually be rewritten. It now seems apparent that such visions are not only dependant on human aspirations, but also our inherent need for direction and perception.

Human Utopias

In both the Soleri and Sadler articles, a definition of Utopia seems to find negative definition. Everyday living is described as ‘The week veneer of life ridden with blight and stillness, which megalopolis and suburbia are…’ (Soleri, 9) and Sadler relates the sentiment that ‘technology could life the passions of humanity from the quagmire of the street into the city of the sky.’ (Sadler, 58) Ignoring the obviously begged question of why the elevation of a street prevents it from being a quagmire, we can begin to see a difference between these two articles and the Soleri article, which accepts the limits of our human condition, this quagmire, and posits a historical instance of Utopia in the form of the ancient nascent city.

Mumford proposes that ‘every utopia is, almost by definition, a sterile desert, unfit for human occupation.’ (Mumford, 10) In the very next paragraph, he posits his thesis that this Utopia existed, like a child without Mortal Sin, but quickly lost its innocence, leaving, ‘as it were an after-image of its “ideal” form on the human mind.’ (Mumford, 11) The human collective is introduced as an ideal most utopias seek. Later in the text, this ideals most current form, that of the Invisible Machine, is vehemently warned against as an illusion. The idea of the city as home for God has been supplanted by scientific progress as god, and it’s heretics, the avant-garde artists, championed as ‘the only group that has understood the dehumanizing threats of the Invisible Machine’. (Mumford 23) The siren seduction of utopia is then contrasted to these avant-garde artists’ dystopic vision and Mumford concludes that neither rdystopia nor utopia hold human salvation. If this is the case, what good is a utopia.

Wittgenstein likened an ideal to a flat plane of ice; beautiful to behold, impossible to walk on. (I’m sorry I can’t find the reference.) And yet our formal explorations as architects often engage the flat stillness of water as an ideal surface. Most every building engages the flat, found only in ice and water outside the manmade world. So whether salvation is to be found or not, lessons are to be learned. Hence the importance of the lessons (some of them) found in Arcology; ‘They are not real, they are utopian’ (Sadler, 10). Arcology specifically deals with the ecology of the city and its future. #4, Arcology and Dimension, recognizes the need to humanize our architectural intentions. In #17, we see lessons in common with Archigrams vision of the individual. ‘Care for oneself will tend to be care for the whole.’ (Sadler, 11) Again in 34. ‘the individual user is always eccentric to the whole; symmetry in the whole, singularity in the parts.’ (ibid, 16) Above all, it seems Arcology is not a utopia that appeals to progress of the invisible machine of technology, but of human potential. ‘The creation of truly lovable cities is the only lasting solution for land conservations.’ (ibid 10) This appeal to emotion as a metric for city building is a refreshing break from the technological positivism that haunts architectural utopias.