urbfutures From Critical Theory towards Contigent Utopia[s]
Frankfurt School From Critical Theory towards Contigent Utopia[s] Germanic Culture and the Predicament of Modernity: Politics, Philosophy, and Architecture, 1848-1988 for Professor: Kenneth Frampton GSAPP -Ware Professor of Architecture by Kenneth Mata
[An explorative synthesis of their influences in relation of our present towards the future]
Retro-perspective “What is meant today by housing shortage is the peculiar intensification of the bad housing conditions of the workers as a result of the sudden rush of population to the big cities, a colossal increase in rents, still greater congestion in the separate houses, and, for some, the impossibility of finding a place to live in at all. And this housing shortage gets talked of so much only because it is not confined to the working class but has affected the petty bourgeoisie as well.� Frederick Engels, The Housing Question. 1872
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [modernist dreams of utopia]
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s]
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s]
Sociology of Architecture • What is the relationship between the individual and his or her designed environment or social setting? • What is the relationship between an organization and the building wherein it resides?
[ The person in the building is just as important as the building itself ] • Are we architects/designers only focus our designs as ‘art’ or as a monotonous living structures? • How much do we really care about the human response of these spaces? Classical Sociology of Architecture today is associated with its systematic plan of research methods of quantitative and qualitative dimenson of Social research. This is related to sociologists and philosophers including Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Michel Foucault.
[exploration]
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Ernst Bloch “The Principle of Hope” [the not-yet conscious]
Michel Foucault “The order of things” [Of other spaces]
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Ernst Bloch “The Principle of Hope” [the not-yet conscious]
[July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977] Bloch differed from the Frankfurt school over fascism and saw religious expression as part of the human desire for liberation.
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial]
Foucault theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions.
Michel Foucault “The order of things” [October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984] [Of other spaces]
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s]
Ersnt Bloch “The Principle of Hope” [the not-yet conscious] Influences: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme. Influenced: Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin,Theodor W. Adorno, and associated with the student upheaval in the late 60’s, and many others until present day. “Philosophy will have conscience of tomorrow, commitment to the future, knowledge of hope, or it will have no more knowledge” (Bloch, Principle of Hope) “We must believe in the Principle of Hope. A Marxist does not have the right to be a pessimist” (Bloch)
Georg Simmel
(1 March 1858 – 28 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.
Maximiliam Karl Weber
(German: 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist whose ideas influenced the entire discipline of sociology.
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Ernst Bloch “The Principle of Hope” [the not-yet conscious] Synopsis: Book: Three volumes, divided into five parts, and fifty-five chapters. • 1st volume queries “Little Daydreams” (Part I) “Anticipatory Consciousness” (Part II) “Wishful Images in the Mirror” (Part III) • 2nd volume (Part IV) “Outlines of a Better World” • 3rd volume (Part V) “Wishful Images of the Fulfilled Moment” 1.. Leszek Kołakowski (October 23, 1927 – July 17, 2009) calls The Principle of Hope Bloch’s magnum opus, writing that it contains all Bloch’s important ideas. 2.. Roberst S. Corrington (born May 30, 1950) describes it as “monumental” 3.. Joel Kovel (born 27 August 1936) praises Bloch as “the greatest of modern utopian thinkers”
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Ernst Bloch “The Principle of Hope” [the not-yet conscious] Utopia[s] Marxism Psychoanalysis - “not-yet conscious” “Marxist Romantic” by Habermas. The Principle of Hope was originally to be called Dreams of a Better Life Three dimensions of human temporality
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Michel Foucault “The order of things” [Of other spaces] Influences: Freud · Hegel · Heidegger · Husserl · Kant · Marx · Nietzsche · Sartre and others Influenced: Giorgio Agamben · Gilles Deleuze · Jean Baudrillard · Nancy Fraser · Susan Bordo · Hamid Dabashi · and many others until today and perhaps the future • The History of Madness • The Birth of the Clinic
• The Order of Things, which displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, a theoretical movement in social anthropology from which he later distanced himself. • The Archaeology of Knowledge. • Discipline and Punish • The History of Sexuality
His so-called genealogies which emphasized the role power plays in the evolution of discourse in society. Foucault rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels later attributed to him, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity. His thought has been highly influential for both academic and activist groups. Foucault referring to utopias as; “situations with curious properties of being in relation with other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect’’ (Foucault,). These sites could be called utopias, but Foucault wanted to talk about real spaces. For this he introduced the concept of heterotopia.
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Michel Foucault “The order of things” [Of other spaces] Heterotopia is to describe places and spaces that function in non-hegemonic conditions. These are spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror. A utopia is an idea or an image that is not real but represents a perfected version of society. Foucault uses the term heterotopia to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye. Foucault uses the idea of a mirror as a metaphor for the duality and contradictions, the reality and the unreality of utopian projects. A mirror is metaphor for utopia because the image that you see in it does not exist, but it is also a heterotopia because the mirror is a real object that shapes the way you relate to your own image.
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] Michel Foucault “The order of things” [Of other spaces] “First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.” Foucault principles that articulates different types of heterotopia or spaces that exhibit dual meanings: 1. A ‘crisis heterotopia’ is a separate space like a boarding school or a motel room where activities like coming of age or a honeymoon take place out of sight. Boarding school, military service, the honeymoon, which, at certain times, remove people from urban space for reasons connected with the experience of sexuality. 2. ‘Heterotopias of deviation’ are institutions where we place individuals whose behavior is outside the norm . 3. Heterotopia can be a ‘single real place that juxtaposes several spaces.’ 4. ‘Heterotopias of time’ They exist in time but also exist outside of time because they are built and preserved to be physically insusceptible to time’s ravages. All with an eye on preservation and accumulation. 5. ‘Heterotopias of ritual or purification’ are spaces that are isolated and penetrable yet not freely accessible like a public place. 6. ‘Heterotopia has a function in relation to all of the remaining spaces. These two functions are: heterotopia of illusion creates a space of illusion that exposes every real space, and the heterotopia of compensation is to create a real space--a space that is other’. • Momentary heterotopias: fairs, carnivals, shows, bienniales, expos which in a sense do the opposite to those listed above. • Chronic heterotopias: Disneyland, Sydney’s Darling Harbour, which institutionalise the carnival and make a permanent space for it, connected to tourism. • Imaginative heterotopias: such as the colony. (We might also interpret the the left’s historic relation to revolutionary states in this manner). Interestingly, Foucault also puts the ship under this heading, as a ‘vessel’ for the imagination, “a floating part of space, a placeless place”
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s]
origin
Utopia projected reality of issues as ideal conditions = not real coditions
language
religion economy
R e f l e c t i o n
M e t a p h o r
origin Heterotopia religion
language economy
representation of a existing issues but not seen in society = real conditions
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial] “Heterotopia, the Tragic Fall” by Vincent J.Stoker
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [A philosophical gradient notion of the mind, time, the material, and the spatial]
Fluctuations: 1. Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong (demolished1994) 2. Torre David, Caracas, Venezuela Heterotopic spaces are sites that are places outside all places but at the same time relates to all the other sites from which it is located against. Foucault used the mirror as a metaphor for a Heterotopia due to its ability to reflect and disrupt. When considered in such a way the Kowloon Walled City and the Torre David can be seen as such a mirror to Hong Kong and Caracas simultaneously where some aspects of it confirm through its similarity with the rest of the urban fabric but also unsettle through its rejection of the norms outside the cities informal settlements.
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
Torre David, Caracas, Venezuela
Transformative Heterotopia
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] Torre David, Caracas, Venezuela
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [fluctuations - analyzed] by Strelka Institute, Russia Russia
microrayons and favelas
Brazil
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [fluctuations - visions] by MVRDV
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [fluctuations - visions] Award winning entry of Metous Studio Titled: Barrios de los paracaidistas, Mexico city, Mexico
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] [fluctuations - visions] Solar Park South competition re-using sections of the decommissioned Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, Italy
UTOPIA[s] – transition – HETEROTOPIA[s] It is crucial that we find solutions to reinvigorate the often neglected, marginal urban spaces that we labeled as transformative heteropic conditions of the inevitable faith of overpopulated cities and one that should be addressed as to mitigate overcrowding and over construction of outer city lands.