utopia
adjectives that describe lost, broken dreams) silent, dry, dead, windy, empty, abandoned.
I always think of the American Victorian when I hear this word. When people left cities and started having picnics in their own back yards. I think it was the time in architectural history when suburbs were developing. But it also had something to do with balloon wood framing and the widespread popularity of Victorian cottages; Andrew Jackson Downing style. Not very interesting I know, but that’s what comes to mind for me. I think I would have enjoyed living in this time though.
A rationally defined fiction. A desire for perfect balance, peace, and understanding despite humanities proclivity for messing things up.
When I hear the word utopia I think immediately of failed utopias. A place where an ideal is met but creates a sterile and unchanging environment. An impossible, unhealthy world. Hitler tried to create a utopia. I generally think of a rigid system that rarely works; a broken or misguided fantasy.
A hist-aural utopia
Sweden
1970
When I was a little kid my middle brother spent a fortune on a wonderful HIFI system. Recently, I found his son using the amplifier as a workout-gear (it is heavy). This was odd and certainly a waste so I offered my brother to buy the lot. Together with the amp came two […]
Jeanne-Hachette
Jeanne-Hachette housing project. Architect: Jean Renaudie.
Designed 1970, completed 1975.
Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris.
The drawing shows one of the upper floors of the Jeanne-Hachette building, 50 meter above ground level. Each dwelling is different, each is on two levels. Each has at least one, and usually several planted terraces. The black triangles indicate the location of voids […]
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The Tate Gallery with the Millenium Bridge, for example
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Fun Palace
I saw Cedric’s Fun Palace at an exhibition on my first day of architecture school. It changed everything for me.
New Babylon
New Babylon is a postwar utopia where people, stripped of possessions and the need to earn a living, amble amiably across the earth
