2. Modernism- Building utopia through visualization

PART I- UNDERSTANDING UTOPIA

2. Modernism- Building Utopia through visualization.

Figure 2. Utopia Documents of Reality by Johannes Itten Figure 1. The fourth issue of zoom-Archigram edition that discussed science fiction, science fact, and space comics.

Visual arts have always been a good medium for designers to express their

interpretation of the imagery of the future society that we are moving towards. With

modernism came the trend of using new styles, new fonts and incorporating a

statement of the new style, which was highly influenced by the technological

advancement. Futuristic architecture was influenced by automobiles and space age, so

the curiosity and fascination about the same were depicted in the new style.

At the peak of modernism there were new ideas about functionality, programme and

flexibility. Hand renders and perspectives weren’t enough for architects to communicate these dynamic ideas. We needed something more abstract that conveys

greater information about relationships, assemblies and habitation, this led to the

propagation of diagrams and axonometries, they were more abstract than perspective

renders but conveyed more abstract ideas about the space rather than showing the space

itself. Enabled by widespread print media, radical groups like Archigram and Superstudio

began using collages, photography and juxtapositions of images to convey their radical

ideas, sampling images and textures from the print media like magazines, comic strips and

graphic text. These were revolutionary, cautionary, dystopian and utopian at the same

time but more than ever before, they were engaging and resonating with normal people

who could understand the big ideas offered. These ideas made celebrities of these young

architects and a lot of their ideas have propagated into the big architectural ideas of today.

Figure 3. The Gotham city from dc comics art by Jim Lee

Design and fiction

Fictions, as they are understood in a more conventional literary sense, can and do provide

a ground of learning. Critical fictional writing – writing that brings a conceptualized future

into confrontation with the conditions of limitation and potential of the present can and does fold into a design process.3

Fiction doesn’t disclose a future for us like a clear image, but rather provides exhausted

repercussions of changes that will happen eventually. They provide a scope of discussions,

corrections and strategic evaluation. They help us visualize the needs and opportunities

3 Remaking cities- an introduction to urban metrofitting by Tony Fry- page 175

of the coming future. It is therefore important to create a toolkit to deal with the resilience

that we are eventually going to be exposed to. Many technological inventions are based

on fictional imaginations and futuristic depictions like, space travel, transport,

communication, entertainment etc.

Besides, it’s always comfortable to work in an already developed framework, design

fiction helps break those boundaries of framework to imagine in a more liberated manner.

There is a diversity of media used to portray this nearly perfect scenario, slightly trajectory

from the fixed notions of storytelling. This helps us ponder on alternative scenarios,

questioning the norms we are usually surrounded with, opening up more and more

possibilities to look at the future. Design fiction therefore should be regarded as a

sociology of future.

The world is changing at an exponential rate and science fiction is fast becoming science

fact. Today virtual reality (VR) is a very handy tool for architects to stimulate a physical

environment to convey their design to generate the closest possible experience. The fact

that any design exists in the three-dimensional virtual work and can have an impact on

you like any built form does states that fiction in design isn’t something apart from the physical world. This makes the profession of architecture multi-faceted, as architects now

are employed as production designers of films, virtual games etc.