Chicks on Speed: U is for Utopia

Publisher:
Sonderzahl
Publication Type:
Chapter
Citation:
Schwimmende Städte, fliegende Häuser: Zur Utopie der Stadt, 2014, 1, 1 pp. 62 - 65 (4)
Issue Date:
2014-10-01
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Suddenly after decades of stagnation in architectural visions, Utopias have appeared again. You might think that crises, wars and disasters would bring architecture back to earth, but the opposite is the case. Considering current utopias, they are similar to those of 1968, but there are obviously distinctions. They are no longer orientated on increasing pleasure nor do they show too much belief in technological progress. they rather adapt the tactics of short term therapy. Instead of digging in the past they quickly recognize the problem and consider how to deal with it best. Along the issues of autarky, uchrony and the promise of happiness finally the term off-utopian is used (following tatlin's off-modern), that best describes the strange appearance of projects (ruinous, scrapped, crooked). The new utopias have becomes seriously somehow and freed themselves from ego- and euro-centrism and masculinity still prevelant in the 1970's. Nonetheless they are not without (black) humor. Not at least because too serious utopian promises have never been successful.
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