“Any map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.”— Oscar Wilde (1891) [then quoted by Lewis Mumford (1921), Bernardo Secchi (2005)]
Utopia has always been adopted as a critique of coeval societies. Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia” (1516) is an artificial island that serves as an imaginary laboratory to reveal the decline of customs and socio-political issues in 16th-century England, while proposing alternative solutions in his non-place (based on Greek “ou ‘not’ + topos ‘place’”). Utopia is not an urban model but a form of critical thinking tool. Two centuries later, Jonathan Swift depicts the utopian floating island of “Laputa” in his “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726), which hovers above the surface of the world due to its magnetic, adamantine soil. Its inhabitants have one eye looking outward to the cosmos above, and the other looking inward, resulting in a loss of contact with the earth, the community, and social gatherings. Swift’s floating island again serves as an allegorical critique of the widespread decline of scientific knowledge, disconnected from tangible social issues.
In the modern era, Utopia has embodied several ideological persuasions and political acceptances, in a tension between criticism and hope regarding Utopia as a tangible potential tool for transforming reality: from Weber’s democratic utopia to Bloch’s emphasis on its concrete essence of transformation, to Tafuri’s criticism of utopia and the role of architecture, to name a few. The 20th century has exhibited many radical and utopian projects in various geographical and cultural contexts, with similar efforts to showcase their diversity from the past, aiming for a new relationship between individuals, society, and territory (Secchi 2005). Of particular interest is Walter Benjamin’s role in the passage, the topic of this conference, which embodies an idealistic and utopian vision of progress for oneiric flaneurs who criticize and attempt to change society as well.
Vis-à-vis these multiple political and philosophical perspectives of Utopia, our primary question as architects, urban designers, and historians is what role Utopia might play in studying the socio-spatial structure of the city and in envisioning future transformation scenarios. How can we rethink Utopia through the passage as a positive tool for thinking, mapping, and design? How can we reconceptualize historical case studies of Utopia and passage as both critiques in history and imaginative visions of possible futures?How can we rethink Utopia, like the inhabitants of Laputa or modern Janus-faced architects, by looking to the future and the past, while grounding our practice in the present?
According to Bernardo Secchi, we need “extreme efforts of imagination” and also radical projects and utopias to express fundamental changes in society, “exploring possible futures by abandoning commonplaces” (2012, 2018). This session will be devoted to critically abandoning commonplaces while exploring the passage and utopian thinking through a constellation of case studies in different geographies. It features nine contributions where utopia and radical projects related to passages, mobility, and events influence and critically examine local society, sparking new projects or collaborations for future scenarios.
Papers relate to radical spatial-political transformations of society, from traffic circulation changes in Sweden (Eugenio LUX), to high-speed rail line controversy proposals in Switzerland (Marco FELICIONI), to a visionary infrastructural utopia for a circular bridge over the Stretto di Messina in Italy (Cristian SAMMARCO), to integrating active mobility into German riverfront redevelopment projects (Sanja AVRAMOSKA), to early carscapes and car-centric architectural visions (Alberto RONCELLI). Modern radical and utopian projects of circulation and “motopia” are reevaluated in America’s postwar future development (Jana CULEK), as suspended structures and patterns in Berlin and Tokyo (Elisa MARUELLI), as well as tabula rasa landscapes from Tange’s legacy (Giona CARLOTTO), and case studies of inhabiting dysfunction and spatial allegory (Radu Mihai MĂLDĂRESCU).
Bibliography
- Harries, Karsten. The Antinomy of Being. (Berlin/Munich/Boston: de Gruyter, 2019).
- Secchi, Bernardo. La città del ventesimo secolo (Bari: Laterza, 2005).
- Velo, Luca. Michela Pace eds. Utopia and the project for the city and territory, (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 2018)
