Castles in the Air
or how to build utopia today
Over time, utopias have shown their ability to guide and shape the evolution of the world towards more desirable scenarios. In them, we seek visions of harmonious, fraternal, and supportive communities; illusions of freedom and desires for more just and egalitarian forms of social order; innovations in productive and economic aspects; and our relationship with the world and each other. Many political and urban proposals in force today (universal suffrage, gender equality, minority rights, skyscrapers, garden cities, mass public transport, etc.) were once dismissed as utopian.
The increasing fascination with building cities on Mars or the Moon is driven by human curiosity, literary inspiration, scientific and technological progress, and a romantic desire to secure humanity's future outside a planet experiencing continual decay. Other more optimistic cultural movements, such as Solarpunk, imagine a sustainable future in which humanity has found innovative solutions to live in harmony with the environment through renewable energy, green technologies and community collaboration.
In the turbulent moment in which we live, the need to return to talk about utopia as a system of thought that helps us walk towards possible futures seems clear. The philosopher Francisco Martorell Campos argues that the purpose of utopia is to transform reality rather than to escape from it and encourages us to envision utopias as a response to prevailing defeatism.
Projecting ideal cities
During the decline of the Middle Ages and the birth of humanism, Thomas More first used the word "utopia" in his eponymous book published in 1516. Moro combined the meanings of "eu-topos" (good place) and "ou-topos" (no place), imagining a perfected society inhabiting an unknown time and geography.
Before the publication of this work, various philosophers, architects, and writers had already envisioned ideal cities. In these cities, architectural design created spaces that fostered different models of coexistence. The biblical passages of the Tower of Babel, which rose to heaven; Plato's city of Magnesia; and the rational urbanism of classical Greece of Hippodamus of Miletus, with its egalitarian grids, are some outstanding examples.
Then the renaissance theories of Tomasso Campanella embodied in "The City of the Sun" would continue along the romantic path, with concentric rings symbolising perfection and harmony; "Christianopolis" by Johan Valentin Andrade, or the later Phalanstery of Charles Fourier that was influenced by the romantic thoughts of Plato. All these ideas evolved to a greater or lesser extent until the utopian socialists of the nineteenth century, who imagined social improvements through new spatial systems. At this time, architecture was granted a new superpower: the ability to shape society. Underlying this idea is the belief that social problems have spatial solutions. Architecture is recognised as a powerful political tool, with its virtues and potential but its dangers and the risk of oppressive totalitarianism, transforming utopian dreams into dystopian and totalitarian nightmares.
From castles in the air to radical architecture
Over the past century, utopia has become a powerful tool for accelerating change. After World War I, historian, philosopher, and urban planner Lewis Munford, author of History of Utopias, argued that the most critical task of the moment was to “build castles in the air,” advocating a proactive and visionary attitude. Some examples of this idealism include Italian futurism, Japanese metabolism, Yona Friedman’s mega-structuralism or Constant’s great utopia of New Babylon created as a critique of the life model associated with the reconstruction of World War II.
Among the utopian dreams of the long reconstruction period, radical architectural trends of great intensity and formal richness emerged, motivated by the May 68 revolt, the arrival of man on the moon and the development of the mass media. Examples are Archigram, with its Walking city and the Plug-in City, the Continuous Monument of Superestudio, the Non-Stop City of Andrea Branchi, Archizoom, Ant Fram, Futures Systems, Hans-Rucker-Co or the work of José Miguel Prada Poole, reflect the intensity and richness of this era motivated by the rejection of war and the need to overcome the challenges of the moment. Unlike historical utopias, the latter relied on technology, creative freedom, flexibility, the value of the unfinished and the ability of the game as an engine of urban change, motivated in large part by the fear of a new nuclear conflict and the first symptoms of the eco-social crisis.
The fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s marked the decline of ideological enthusiasm. The financial crisis of the 90s and the subsequent construction boom turned architecture into a financial product.
Journey into a possible future
Now, primarily overtaken by the surrounding reality, we seem to have lost the ability to conceive of a better world. The current pragmatic and functional approach aimed at economic efficiency and sustainability offers little room for romantic speculation. An absence is a complete danger because, as the French philosopher and anthropologist Paul Ricoeur warns us, "a society without utopia is a society without purpose, a disoriented society".
The Biennial as an open and participatory cultural infrastructure
The 5th edition of the International Biennial of Architecture of the Basque Country Mugak/ is an invitation to share spaces of collective reflection and experimentation to explore what are the architectural utopias of our time that facilitate us to advance towards these better futures that we wish to inhabit. A border meeting point that gives us the opportunity to move about current urgencies and emergency proposals that will project us into possible futures.
