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UTOPIA AS A CRITICAL TOOL IN ARCHITECTURE

UTOPIA AS A CRITICAL TOOL IN ARCHITECTURE

A Brief Project Introduction FREDRIK TORISSON ResArc/UMA 2014 Communications

A Brief Project Introduction

FREDRIK TORISSON

ResArc/Communications 2013 UMA

Abolish reality: Do we live in the best possible of worlds?

PROJECT INTRODUCTION My research project explores the concept of “utopia”. Utopia is a concept which is, arguably, implicitly or explicitly present in all architecture, yet, the relationship between architecture and utopia remains undertheorized.

THE U-WORD Utopia is an extremely “thick” concept; it is interpreted in multiple ways and given different meanings every time it is used. It is these days often wielded as a weapon, and nowhere more so than in the discipline of architecture, where it is used as a very blunt weapon to dismiss one’s opponent as an unrealistic dreamer, or a fascist (Coleman 2012). In the context of this project however, utopia is redefined as a critical/heuristic concept and a transformative concept, using Ernst Bloch’s very functional definition of utopia (as opposed to definitions based on form or content) (Bloch 1995).

Utopia thus becomes both a filter through which the world is understood—or a pair of glasses, as Marcel Proust put it—as well as a tool to transform it. Instead of producing the perfect society, utopia opens up possibility; it is an escape attempt to break free from our

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NO UTOPIA IS ONE. 1. Utopia always turns sour – Karl Popper 2. Post-utopian position: to have no utopia would be one – equally impossible 3. No longer utopia when we get there. (start over)

beliefs and habits as well as from the dominant ideologies, whose propagators continuously insist that the present order is the only one possible. Utopia becomes an instrument for imagining difference and for addressing the world as well as architecture. It becomes an instrument to explore what we want, from articulated hopes to the seedy underbelly of compensation and revenge.

On a conceptual level, the research project addresses utopia as a concept. The project explores the notion of a utopian imagination and the notion of the utopian function. Utopian imagination addresses the possibility of imagining something ‘other’ from what is. One central utopian paradox is: how can we imagine something other than what is? Most utopian thinking is primarily a somewhat distorted reflection from what is, either aimed at critique of the existing or the engagement with emerging or disappearing potentiality. Fredric Jameson would argue that it is by definition impossible to imagine something that is “radically different”, since one of the fundamental definitions of radically different is that we would presumably not be able to imagine it (Jameson 1995). Others, including Ruth Levitas, posit that utopia cannot only be about critique in the form of negation, but must involve the attempt to imagine a positive ‘other’ (Levitas 2000).

This is closely linked with the notion of the utopian function—what does utopian thinking do? Jameson would argue that utopia always can only be a critique of the existing societal order. In extension, one could suggest, as Susan McManus has, that utopia is a deterritorializing agent, the function of utopia is to undo what is, not to propose any new order, which in extension would per definition become oppressive (McManus 2005). Levitas on the other hand would argue that utopian thinking must point out not a totalising solution, but a direction (Levitas 2000).

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Was modern architecture utopian? (Pruitt-Igoe in the background) Modern architecture became synonymous with utopia.

Colin Rowe (Popper)—utopian poetics without politics Manfredo Tafuri—architecture & capitalist modes of production…

Regardless of whether one understands the utopian function as critique or direct transformation, the utopian function is closely linked with the notion of hope as elaborated by Ernst Bloch (Bloch 1986). Hope is a multi-faceted concept, and as Darren Webb has shown, there are many different forms of hope, ranging from patient to transformative (Webb 2013). Hope, regardless of its form, is primarily transformative (i.e.; it seeks to change something), which is central to either definition of utopian function.

Building upon these fundamental definitional works, “utopia� is perceived as a fundamentally plural concept. It is a bridge between discourses and disciplines, between fact and fiction, and it opens up discussion. It is further concerned with the disruption of habit and belief., and with challenging doxai through the proposition of positive alternatives. In other words, utopia operates on the edge of the current doxa, and seeks both to challenge and extend this edge.

RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES My research explores the concept of utopia from a variety of perspectives. One principal perspective is the role of utopia in postmodernity. This argument has been forwarded by among others David Harvey (Harvey 2000) who argued that the world that is forming in post-modernity (ironically) takes on another metanarrative. This post-modern metanarrative dictates that there is no alternative to the way we do things presently, that we live in the best possible of worlds and that any transformation would be for the worse. This is a postideological condition, where ideology is supplanted by a supposedly objective metanarrative. Following this line of thought, utopia and the real become mirror images of each other with minimal difference

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beyond the superficial—objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

My research explores if and how utopia remains an implicitly relevant force and how this is expressed in architecture.

A second perspective explores the potential of utopia as a vehicle of critique (of said metanarrative) that transcends negation. Architecture as a making discipline is charged with the double task of reading society, i.e.; interpreting what is, and writing society, transforming it into what it could/should be. “Praxis” is used to denote “the way in which we do (or make) things”, literary praxis would thus be writing, for instance. Praxis in this sense can be interpreted to involve acting in the world, transforming it directly. This interpretation was emphasised

by Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach, in particular in thesis No. 11, where he posited that the philosophers had been focused on interpreting the world, but the point was to change it, to transform it (Marx and Engels 1976).

The ability to transform the world requires a certain agency, the ability to “make a difference” as Anthony Giddens defined it, the ability to do something other than that demanded by the dominant ideology (Giddens 1984). Agency is thus bound up with the notion of “power”, and in a sense also opposition, or at least alternative. Architectural praxis is operating within very restrictive frameworks, imposed by both the real estate market’s logic and the state’s logic, and as Tafuri once noted, the architect is by no means an autonomous actor, but one whose actions are constrained by the powers that be (Tafuri 1976).

Consequently, the architect’s ability to directly transform the world is severely limited—if not even, as Tafuri would argue, non-existent. The project aims to outline potential transformative praxes that challenge the conditions of architectural production and the frameworks that govern these from within these frameworks, in other words: to outline forms of agency without power.

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“[Utopia] is an operative alternative to nihilism, a concept which functions motoristically to help men shape the world in a humanistic direction, and can do so because it has a basis in the world. Bloch emphasises the productivity of utopia: its cognitive function as a mode of operation of constructive reason, its educative function as a mythography which instructs men to will and desire more and better, its anticipatory function as a futurology of possibilities which later become actual, and its causal function as an agent of historical change� Wayne Hudson Be realistic: demand the impossible (Paris 1968)

To challenge the operational frameworks of architectural production is by no means a natural operational territory of the discipline. On the contrary, architecture in its fundamental function delineates territories and manifests the power of the dominant ideology. The very act of constructing a building is an act of, to use Deleuzian terminology, reterritorialization—while the utopian praxis here outlined would be a praxis of deterritorialization. This utopian praxis imagines beyond the constraints that regulate the architectural production, and through its praxis (rather than theory) challenges and attempts to break through these frameworks, fundamentally constructing a physical challenge to them in the form of a positive alternative.

[Currently, the project is approaching its 25% mark, and the project will no doubt transform significantly over the coming years.]

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Bloch, Ernst (1986), The principle of hope (Oxford: Blackwell).

--- (1995), The principle of hope. Vol.1 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).

Coleman, Nathaniel (2012), ‘Utopic Pedagogies: Alternatives to Degenerate Architecture’, (23: Pennsylvania State University Press), 314-54.

Giddens, Anthony (1984), The constitution of society : outline of the theory of structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Harvey, David (2000), Spaces of hope (California studies in critical human geography; Berkeley: University of California Press).

Jameson, Fredric (1995), ‘Is Space Political?’, in Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anyplace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).

Levitas, Ruth (2000), ‘For Utopia: The (limits of the) Utopian function in late capitalist society’, Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, 3 (2/3), 25.

Marx, Karl Heinrich and Engels, Frederick (1976), Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 5, Marx and Engels: 1845-1847 translated by Celmens Dutt et. al (New York, NY).

McManus, Susan (2005), Fictive theories- towards a deconstructive and utopian political imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Tafuri, Manfredo (1976), Architecture and utopia : design and capitalist development (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press) xi, 184 p.

Webb, Darren (2013), ‘Pedagogies of Hope’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32 (4), 397-414.

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