Because of the way how my degree is structured, in the past three years I have been shuttling between planning and landscape architecture and is mystified by how the concept of ‘utopia’ is elaborated by these two fields. We learn about Howard’s “Garden City”, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacres City” as utopia planning concept in our planning course. Closely associated with that is the introduction of works from Superstudio and Archigram in landscape architecture studios, which were also based on the utopian notion. However, it seems to me that these precedents differ from how we are being taught in understanding the concept of utopia in our planning course. My attempt for this blog entry is to compare the characteristics of planning-oriented and landscape architecture-oriented utopia thoughts and what they are offering to us.

It can be said that it is human’s basic desire to make their living environment more liveable. No matter how hard we tried, however, we are often frustrated with the reality that urban space is chaotic and problematic. People tried to look for answers in solving the urban problems by drawing out an imagery vision of a ‘perfect world’ where conflict no longer exist. Based on Plato’s ‘Republic’, Thomas More in his work ‘Utopia’ (1518) established the foundation of the mankind desire to create a place where everything is perfect.

There is a growing number of people joined More’s exploration for the perfect world by elaborated upon More’s thoughts and search for answers to the urban issues of their time as the yearning for a pleasanter urban living space becomes more eager during the time of industrial revolution. More and more industrial towns with poor urban disorder such as slums, poor living condition, health and moral issues, social unrest and destruction of natural beauty starts to arise. Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier attempted in solving these problems by controlling the population of the city and better organised urban layout along with a series of social and economical reforms.

Howard’s aim was to create a place where it contains benefits from both town and country so that people have good access to green space while enjoying work opportunities. His Garden City, with limitation on the population of one town (max 30,000) prevents the poor living condition generated from over-crowding that faced by many industrial cities of his time. (Howard, 1945)

As oppose to Howard’s limitation on population, Le Corbusier’s Contemporary City Le Corbusier proposed ‘a Contemporary City of Three Million Inhabitants’(1929) .- instead of spreading the population across the urban area, Le Corbusier concentrated the population by housing the inhabitant into high-rise apartments.

Later in the 1960s, two innovative architectural firms, Superstudio and Archigram, were formed. Urban projects from these two avant-garde architectural bears utopia thoughts, however, their philosophy differs from the more traditional urban planning utopia concepts. Their works diverge from conservatism and offers surrealism, sometimes science fiction like perspective to look at how the city functions.

Archigram presents themselves as futurist and have a keen interest in the future ‘high-tech’ machine age. Inspired by Le Corbusier’s aphorism- – “The house is a machine for living in.” (Vers une architecture, 1923) they look at the city as a mage machine where different systems come together and plug into each together meanwhile try to solve urban problems through mage structures. Their ‘Walking City’ is an example in elaborating this idea by proposing moveable self contained living pods that could plugged into a larger system. (Archigram, 1999)

Superstudio, conversely, has a very different approach to present their utopia thought. Their The Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas ‘The Twelve Ideal Cities’ is an interesting example in illustrating their vision. This project proposed 12 different ways on how human are going to live in the future. (Lang, P. & Menking, W. 2003)

All of the above works: Garden City, the Contemporary City, Walking City, 12 Ideal Cities, strike us with ideas which has been influencing the professions that deal with urban space, yet, the theme they want to communicate in each of these utopian cities various.

Howard and Le Corbusier have a high degree of concern on protecting the natural environment by limited urban sprawl and rationally considered comprehensive factors that affect urban space. Archigram and Superstudio, on the other hand, unconstrained from logical thinking and disregard social and environmental issues in their design. Unlike the Garden City and the Contemporary City, however, Archigram and Superstudio’s works are not blueprints for the future. These hypothetical projects offer us a different way in understanding how cities function. Superstudio even uses their work in a negative sense. McGuirk (2003) summaries Superstudio’s approach in a few lines:

“Superstudio developed an extreme aesthetic that looked like modernism run wild and yet purported to offer an egalitarian utopia freed from the cycle of consumption.”
“What Superstudio are offering is a spurious utopia designed to make one reflect on how the world could look if the then accepted norms of design and urban planning progressed unchecked.”

While Howard and Le Corbusier provide us with a solid ground on how the urban space can be improved, Archigram and Superstudio’s works critically re-thinks the way that we see design. Natalini, a co-founder of Superstudio, wrote “…if design is merely an inducement to consume, then we must reject design; if architecture is merely the codifying of bourgeois model of ownership and society, then we must reject architecture; if architecture and town planning is merely the formalization of present unjust social divisions, then we must reject town planning and its cities…until all design activities are aimed towards meeting primary needs. Until then, design must disappear. We can live without architecture…” (Lang & Menking, 2004 )

I would like to round up by quoting some questions raised from a student in an online discussion board (jungmi, 2007):

‘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?’

Perhaps you might think some of these examples could only remain in academic books or science fictions. But… are they offering us a way to relieve form the orthodox planning doctrine that we have been restricting ourselves with?

References:

Peter Cook (1999) Archigram, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.

Le Corbusier (1923) Vers une architecture, 1923.

Le Corbusier (1929) The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, The Architectural Press, London, Chapter XI.

Robert Fishman (1977) “Introduction” in Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, New York, Basic Books.

Thomas More (1518) Utopia [online].

Ebenezer Howard (1945) Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Farer & Faber, London.

Justin McGuirk (2003) “Superstudio- life withour objects’ Icon, architecture + design. April. [online]. Accessed 15/04/07.

jungmi (2007) [online]. Accessed 19/04/07.