(spring 2016): prof. ralph ghoche (pdf)

B+C | ABarnard and Columbia Architecture

UTOPIA AND COUNTER-UTOPIABarnard + Columbia Colleges Architecture Department ! ! ! ! SYLLABUS VERSION 2.0ARCH V3901 Spring 2016! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Tues. 2:10 - 4:00

Location: 501 Diana, BarnardRalph Ghoche, [email protected]

Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:10-3pm, 500K Diana

“A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing.” Oscar Wilde

COURSE DESCRIPTIONThe course examines the rich tradition of utopian thinking in architecture, urban planning and the visual arts. Here, utopia is explored in its modern form: as a call to transform the world through human planning and ingenuity. The purpose of the course is to better understand the role that the utopian imagination has played in the construction of social practices, the development of urban and social planning models, and technologies of power.

UTOPIA AND COUNTER-UTOPIA! 1 of 12

LECTURE SUMMARY

1. INTRODUCTION

PART 1: UTOPIA 2. ENTER UTOPIA3. INDUSTRIAL CITIES4. THE GARDEN IN THE CITY5. SPEED CITIES6. THE TOWER IN THE PARK7. COUNTER-CULTURE AND TRANSIENT CITIES8. CYBERNETIC AND NETWORKED CITIES9. Spring Break

PART II: COUNTER-UTOPIA10. NO-EXIT CITIES11. AFTER UTOPIA: POST-FUNCTIONAL AND NON-PLANNED CITIES12. UTOPIA’S RETURN13. Student Presentations14. Student Presentations15. Student Presentations

COURSE REQUIREMENTS!Attendance: Attendance to all course meetings is mandatory. An attendance sheet will be distributed at each meeting. More than two unexcused absences will lead to a reduction of one letter grade. More than four unexcused absences will lead to an automatic failure in the course. If you have a good reason for missing class, please inform the professor by email beforehand.

Readings: There will be approximately 60-80 pages of reading a week. The readings will be posted online. All readings must be completed the night before the relevant seminar.

Writing Center: I strongly recommend that students with even minor difficulties with writing set up an appointment with the Barnard Writing Center before handing in assignments. http://writing.barnard.edu

Course Assessment and Grading:Participation and Attendance ............................................................................................................ = 10%Weekly Reading Responses ............................................................................................................. = 10%Weekly Presentations ........................................................................................................................ = 20%Term Paper Presentation ................................................................................................................... = 20%

Term Paper Midterm Submission (750 words) ................................................................................... = 15%• Deadline: Thursday March 10: Emailed as MS Word document.

Term Paper Final Submission (2000 words)....................................................................................... = 25% • Deadline: Monday May 9th. Emailed as PDF document with images and image captions.

Discussion ParticipationStudents are expected to attend all Tuesday seminars, to do all seminar readings, to wisely and consistently contribute to the weekly seminar discussions. Participation during seminars is mandatory.


Weekly Reading ResponsesWeekly Reading Responses are due Monday nights at midnight. I will set up online discussion boards for each week on courseworks. You will be able to see your classmates’ responses only once you have added your own response to the forum. Once you have added your response, I recommend that you read some of the other responses on the forum. For each week of the course, you are asked to:

• write a 200-300 word response (no less, no more) to issues and polemics encountered in the readings for that week. In responding to the readings, you will need to briefly summarize the arguments that you feel are central to the week’s theme.

• End your response with one question. The question should not seek a factual answer (how much..., when did.... etc.) but should address what you see as the main points of debate in the readings.

The purpose of weekly responses is:• to demonstrate that you’ve read the assigned readings for the week. • To show that, beyond simply reading the texts, you’ve thought about the central arguments and

themes, that you’ve been able to draw connections between that week's various readings (and possibly, the readings from previous weeks), and finally, that you’ve been able to scale-up your thinking and consider some of the larger social / political / personal … stakes involved.

Your responses don’t need to discuss all of the week’s readings, although they should address most of them. The responses will be graded on a total of 2 points. In order to get a full 2 points, your response needs to demonstrate that you’ve read the readings and been able to focus on the main issues and arguments they present. For summaries that are poorly written, incomplete or do not demonstrate an adequate grasp of the material, students will get an R for the first couple of weeks, meaning that they’ll need to resubmit the response within a week’s time. Late responses cannot be accepted.

Weekly Reading Presentations Each of you will be required to present once during seminar over the term. Depending on class size, there may be two presenters per seminar. Presenters for a given week will have to meet together and divide up the reading material in an equal and coherent way. You and your co-presenters will prepare a common powerpoint presentation that will integrate all material that might help foster a better class discussion and better dramatize the theories and ideas presented. Presentations shall include a visual slideshow which should include as many of the buildings, urban schemes or visual projects listed on the syllabus for the given week as possible. These projects should be used to illustrate the main themes and questions addressed in the readings. Furthermore, each presenter should choose one building, urban scheme or visual project and present that project more fully. For this project, you should provide comprehensive visual material (sketches, plans, maps, elevations etc...). Presentations should last a total of 20-25 minutes (for all presenters).

Presentations will be graded qualitatively according to this set of criteria:• Clarity of thought: how well you can describe some of the more difficult and nuanced ideas and

arguments in the readings. It is absolutely essential to gain a good grasp of the main themes elaborated in the readings. You’ll probably need to read some essays twice and do additional research in order to get a proper handle on the material. Please take a look at the list of additional readings at the end of the syllabus. You may want to read some of them before your presentation.

• Visual presentation: Your presentation needs to be organized in a coherent way. You’ll be marked on how well you can connect the ideas elaborated in the readings with the projects you choose to present.

• Originality and Unity of Thought: Your presentation should not follow the pace and narrative of the readings too strictly. In other words, you should identify the main themes and arguments (thesis) of each reading and state them at the onset of your presentation rather than tediously going through every element of the author’s argument. A great presentation will have clearly


stated the main themes, arguments and will have identified the stakes of such arguments (Why is this important? What is the context? How does this argument/idea differ from other possible interpretations?).

Term Paper and Term Paper PresentationsEach student will prepare an 8 page term paper (approx. 2000 words) based on one utopian scheme of the student’s choice. The goal of the paper is to connect the utopian scheme to the real-world context out of which they emerged. What real-world social problem, concern or malaise does your chosen utopian scheme seeks to address or react to? What cultural/social/political tensions does it seek to resolve or reconcile?

You must use footnotes following the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.You must all set up an individual appointment with me to discuss your paper topic ideas before Feb 25.

Some common writing problems to avoid: 1. Use of Quotations: The most common issue has to do with the use of quotations. Students often use quotations in order to avoid explaining a point or making an argument themselves. They often will insert a quotation directly into a paragraph without context and without mentioning the source. Many students will use quotations that are two to three sentences long without any analysis. As a general rule, quotations should be used sparingly and need to be explained and discussed by the student. It is often preferable to paraphrase a quotation in the student’s own words and add a footnote citing the source.2. Thesis Statement: All final papers must have a clearly articulated thesis statement (1-2 sentences long). Your thesis statement should focus on the larger stakes (why is this important? How does it add to or dispel some of our assumptions about subject X) and connect it to an existing discourse (this can be a discourse that we’ve examined in class or not…). A strong thesis statement will help structure your essay and give the reader a better sense of the purpose of each paragraph in the overall argument. 3. Run-On Sentences: Often, students will try and cram too many ideas into one sentence. This tends to lead to grammatical problems. Good writing often alternates between a short, declarative sentence, and longer descriptive sentences.

GRADING SCALE97.5 - 10 = A+92.5 - 97.4 = A90.0 - 92.4 = A-

87.5 - 89.9 = B+82.5 - 87.4 = B80 - 82.4 = B-

77.5 - 79.9 = C+72.5 - 77.4 = C70 - 72.4 = C-

67.5 - 69.9 = D+62.5 - 67.4 = D60 - 62.4 = D-

Below 60 = F

LEARNING OBJECTIVES!Upon successful completion of this reading and writing intensive course, the student will be able to: 1. Develop a critical understanding and awareness of some of the decisive ideas, theories and debates

relating to utopian discourse over the past two centuries.2. Understand the role that territorial and urban organization play in the construction of social practices,

human subjectivities and political awareness.3. Understand the way that discourses traditionally seen as external to the discipline of architecture

inform and elucidate its practice and production.4. Demonstrate the ability to read texts critically and to relate issues encountered in these texts to

contemporary architectural discourse and practice. 5. Develop research, writing, and critical thinking skills through the research and writing of a series of

reading summaries and a term paper that use textual and visual evidence to state a meaningful thesis.


CLASS SCHEDULE

WEEK 1

Tues. 01/19 INTRODUCTION

WEEK 2

Tues. 01/26

ENTER UTOPIA

• Thomas More, “Utopia” (1516), in The Utopia Reader, Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. (NY: New York University Press, 1999), 77-93.

• Antoine Picon, “Learning from Utopia: Contemporary Architecture and the Quest for Political and Social Relevance,” JAE 67, no. 1 (March 2013), 17-23.

additional readings:• Anthony Vidler, "Cities of Tomorrow," Artforum International (Sep 2012).• Rowe, Colin. “The Architecture of Utopia,” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and

Other Essays (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1976): 205-217.

WEEK 3

Tues. 02/02

INDUSTRIAL CITIES

[ J.-N. Ledoux, Saline de Chaux, Robert Owen, New Lanark; Charles Fourier, The Phalanstery, J.-B. Godin, Familistère at Guise, Jules Verne, City of Steel; Port Sunlight; F. L. Wright, Johnson Wax Headquarters; Work and Concentration Camps; Cedric Price, Potteries Thinkbelt; K. Kurokawa, Floating Factory; P. Soleri, Novanoah II; J. Stirling, Siemens AG project ]

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, excerpt on Bourgeois and Proletarians in "The Communist Manifesto," in The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. Robert c. Tucker (New York, 1972), pp.469-483.

• Anthony Vidler, "The Scenes of the Street: Transformations in Ideal and Reality 1750- 1871," in On Streets, ed. S. Anderson (MIT Press, 1986), 46-76.

additional readings:• Anthony Vidler, "The Theatre of Production: Claude Nicolas Ledoux and the

Architecture of Social Reform," AA Files 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1981), pp. 54-63. • Evans, Robin. “Regulation and Production”, Lotus 12 (1976): 6-16. • Wiebenson, Dora. Tony Garnier: The Cité Industrielle (New York: George Braziller,

1968), excerpts.• Charles Fourier, “The Phalanstery” (1848) and “The Harmony of the Four

Movements” (1846), in Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu, eds., The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 240-245, 399- 402.

• Vidler, Anthony. “The New Industrial World: the Reconstruction of Urban Utopia in Late 19th Century France,” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 242-256.

• Schorske, Carl E. “The Idea of the City in European Thought: Voltaire to Spengler”, in Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 37-55.

• Harvey, David. “Fordism,” in The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1989): 125-172.

• Ralph Ghoche, “Zola’s Volatile Utopia,” in “Utopia c. 2016,” Journal of Architectural Education 67, no. 1 (Spring 2013), 32-38.


WEEK 4

Tues. 02/09

THE GARDEN IN THE CITY

[ Ebenezer Howard, Garden City; F. L. Wright, Broadacre City; Le Corbusier, Radiant Farm; Ludwig Hilberseimer, The City in the Landscape; W. Katavalos, The Chemical Marine City; Kisho Kurokawa, Agricultural City; J.L.R. Chanéac, The Crater Cities; New Alchemy Institute, Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island ARK; SITE, Highrise of Homes; G. Günschel, The Settlement of Teerhof on Weser Island, Bremen; P. Hammond, U. Schippke and the US dept. of Agriculture, The Atomic Agrarian City; A. Branzi, et. al., Agronica; Andrea Branzi, et. al., Masterplan Strijp Philips; MVRDV, Pig City; Vertical Farms ]

• Ebenezer Howard, The City of To-morrow (1898), (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), author’s introduction.

• Wright, Frank Lloyd. “Broadacre City: A New Community Plan” (1935), in Leland M. Roth, ed., America Builds: Source Documents in American Architecture and Planning (New York: Harper & Row, 1983): 483-488.

• Meredith Tenhoor, “The Architect’s Farm,” in Above the Pavement- The Farm! (New York: Princeton Architectural Press).

additional readings• Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Living City (New York: Horizon Press, 1958): 116-140. • Cranshawe, Roger. “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Progressive Utopia,” Architectural

Association Quarterly 1 (1978): 3-9.• Ciucci, Giorgio. “The City in Agrarian Ideology and Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and

Development of Broadacres”, in Giorgio Ciucci et al., eds., The American City: from the Civil War to the New Deal (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1979): 293-388.

• Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (Toronto; New York: Bantam Books, 1975).

• Charles Waldheim, "Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism," in Bracket I: On Farming ed. Mason White and Maya Przybylski (Actar, 2010).

• Frampton, Kenneth. “The Usonian Legacy”, in Labor, Work and Architecture: Collected Essays on Architecture and Design (London: Phaidon, 2002): 226-233.

• Pinder, David. “Restorative Utopias,” in Visions of the City (London: Routledge, 2005): 29-56.


WEEK 5

Tues. 02/16

SPEED CITIES

[Haussmann’s Paris; Soria y Mata, Cuidad Lineal; Edgar Chambless, Roadtown; Sant’ Elia, Città Nuova; N.A. Milyutin, Magnitogorsk; Leonidov and OSA Team, Competition for Magnitogorsk; F.T. Marinetti, Angiolo Mazzoni, Mino Somenzi, Aero-Architecture Linear City Project; R. Neutra, Rush City Reformed; Le Corbusier, Plan Obus and Plans for South America; N. B. Geddes, Futurama; G.A. Jellicoe, Motopia; P. Eisenman and M. Graves, Jersey Corridor Project; A. Boutwell and M. Mitchell, Continuous City for 1.000.000 Human Beings; Paul Rudolph, Lower Manhattan Expressway; Diller and Scofidio, Slow House ]

• Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “The New Religion-Morality of Speed,” (1916) in Speed Limits (Montreal: CCA, 2009), 254-259.

• Norman Bel Geddes, Ch. 1 “Towards Design,” and Ch. 2 “Speed To-morrow,” in Horizons (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1932), 1-43. (Online)

• Aldous Huxley. “Brave New World” (1932), in Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds., The Utopia Reader. New York: New York University Press, 1999, 347-363.

additional readings• Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “Railway Space and Railway Time,” in The Railway Journey:

The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 33-44.

• Paul Virilio, “The Overexposed City,” in Lost Dimension, trans. Daniel Moshenberg. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991, 9–27.

• Christina Cogdell, “Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology,” Design Issues, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 2003), 36-53.

• Owen Gutfreund, “Rebuilding New York in the Auto Age,” in Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, ed. Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson. New York: Norton, 2007, 86-93.

• Molly Wright Steenson, “Interfacing with the Subterranean: Paris’s Pneumatic Post” Cabinet 41 (Spring 2011), 82-86.

• Rouvillois, Frédéric. “Utopia and Totalitarianism”, in Roland Schaer et. al., eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (New York and Oxford: The New York Public Library/Oxford University Press, 2000): 316-332.


WEEK 6

Tues. 02/23

THE TOWER IN THE PARK

[ Fritz Lang, Metropolis; L. Hilberseimer, High Rise City; M.v.d. Rohe, Skyscraper for Friedrichstrasse; Kazimir Malevich, The Suprematist City; Le Corbusier, Ville Contemporaine, Plan Voisin and Ville Radieuse, Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, Brasilia; Mario Pani, Cuidad Tlatelolco Housing Project, Mexico City; Emile Aillaud, Housing Complex, Pantin-les-Courtillieres, France; Candilis, Josic and Woods, Toulouse le Mirail; Minoru Yamasaki, Pruitt-Igoe, St-LouisWallace Harrison, Empire State Plaza; Louis Kahn, Philadelphia Plan; Friedrich St.Florian, Vertical City; R.B. Fuller and S. Sadao, Cylinder towers of Slum redevelopment in Harlem; R.B. Fuller, Triton City for San Francisco ]

• Le Corbusier, Panels of The Radiant City.• Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. “Charter of Athens: Tenets” (1933), in

Ulrich Conrads, ed., Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1970): 137-145.

• Candilis, Georges, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach Woods. “Recent Thoughts in Town Planning and Urban Design,” Architects’ Year Book XI (1965): 183-196. Special issue on “The Pedestrian in the City”.

• James Holston, "The Modernist City and the Death of the Street," in Theorizing the city- the new urban anthropology reader. S.M. Low ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 245-276.

additional readings• Ludwig Hilberseimer, “High-Rises,” in Metropolis-Architecture (New York: Columbia U.

2012), 201-217. • Pier Vottorio Aureli, “In Hilberseimer’s Footsteps,” in Metropolis-Architecture (New

York: Columbia U. 2012), 333-364.• Rem Koolhaas, "La Ville Radieuse," in In the Footsteps of Le Corbusier.• Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (New York: Dover, 1987). 163-302

(at least half of which are images). • FILM: Chad Freidrichs, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011) • FILM: Jean-Luc Godard, Two or Three Things I know about Her (1967).• Mary McLeod, "Architecture or Revolution": Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social

Change,” Art Journal 43, no. 2 (Summer, 1983), pp. 132-147.• Martino Stierli, “Building No Place: Oscar Niemeyer and the Utopias of Brasilia,” JAE

67, no. 1 (March 2013), 8-17.


WEEK 7

Tues. 03/01

COUNTER-CULTURE AND TRANSIENT CITIES

[ Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture and The City Crown; Situationists, The Naked City; Constant, New Babylon; Cedric Price, Fun Palace; Archigram, Plug-In City and Instant City; Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, Oblique Architecture; Haus Rucker Co., Pneumacosm in the City, Superstudio, Holiday Machine; Lebbeus. Woods, The New City; Jean Prouvé, Nomadic Structures; F. Otto, Suspended City and Pneumatic Lunar Station; P. Maymont, Suspended City of Paris; Kisho Kurokawa, Nakagin Capsule Hotel, W. Döring, The City of PVC cells; Reyner Banham and François Dallegret, Environment-Bubble; M. Safdie, Habitat ’67 and Habitat Puerto Rico; Ron Herron, Walking City, J.-P Jungmann, Dyodon; L. Woods, Quake City; Vincent Callebaut, floating islands ]

• John Beck, "Buckminster Fuller and the Politics of Shelter," in Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2000), 116-125.

• Guy Debord, “Theory of the Derive,” (1956) Internationale Situationniste 2 (December 1958).

• Peter Cook and Warren Chalk, Editorial from Archigram 3, 1963.• Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, “The International Concept of Utopia,” in

Modern Architecture, 383-390.

additional readings• Cedric Price, Joan Littlewood, “Fun Palace,” The Drama Review 12, no. 3 (Spring,

1968),127-134. • Niewenhuys, Constant. “New Babylon” (1960), in Ulrich Conrads, ed., Programs and

Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1971): 177-178.

• Libero Andreotti, “Play-Tactics of the "Internationale Situationniste," October 91 (Winter, 2000), 36-58.

• Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, “Floating Utopias: Freedom and Unfreedom of the Seas,” in Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism

• Simon Sadler, “Formulary for a New Urbanism: Rethinking the City,” in The Situationist City (Cambridge, MA; London, England: MIT Press, 1999), 69-103.


WEEK 8

Tues. 03/08

Thurs. 03/10

CYBERNETIC AND NETWORKED CITIES

[ Louis Kahn, Philadelphia Plan; Candilis, Josic, Woods, Toulouse le Mirail, Bochum University, Frankfurt Competition; H. Kobayashi, The Submarine City; T. Zenetos, Electronic Urbanism; Archigram, Computer City; N. Schöffer, The Cybernetic City; Christopher Alexander, Houses Generated by Patterns, Stelarc; Nigel Coates and D. Branson, Ecstacity; MVRDV, Meta-City, Data-Town; Greg Lynn, New City; Reiser and Umemoto, West Side NYC Competition, C. Ratti, SENSEable City Laboratory; K. Matsuda, Augmented City; The Sims ]

• Christopher Alexander, "The City is Not a Tree," Part 1, Architectural Forum 122, no. 1 (April 1965): 58-62; and Part 2, Architectural Forum 122, no. 2 (May 1965): 58-61.

• Mark Wigley, “The Architectural Brain,” in Network Practices: New Strategies in Architecture and Design (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 30-53.

• William J. Mitchell, “Boundaries / Networks,” in Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 7-18.

additional readings• Anthony Vidler, “Homes for Cyborgs; Domestic Prosthesis from Salvador Dali to Diller

and Scofidio,” Ottagono, No.96 (1990), pp. 37–55.• Cedric Price, Joan Littlewood, “Fun Palace,” The Drama Review 12, no. 3 (Spring,

1968),127-134. • Antoine Picon, "Towards a City of Events: Digital Media and Urbanity", in New

Geographies, n° 0, 2008, pp. 32-43.• Matthew Gandy, "Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the

Contemporary City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, n° 1, 2005.

DUE: Term Paper Midterm Submission (750 words): Emailed as MS Word document.

WEEK 9 Spring Break


WEEK 10

Tues. 03/22

NO-EXIT CITIES

[ J.ean-Paul. Sartre, No-Exit; Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; George Orwell, 1984; R.B. Fuller, Dome over Manhattan; Superstudio, Continuous Monument; Archizoom, No-Stop City; Rem Koolhaas et al., Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture; OMA, CCTV ]

• Superstudio, “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas: Premonitions of the Mystical Rebirth of Urbanism,” Architectural Design 42 (Dec. 1971), 737- 742.

• Rem Koolhaas et al., Panels of: Exodus, or Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972).• Pier Vittorio Aureli, "Manfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, Superstudio, and the Critique of

Architectural Ideology," in Architecture and Capitalism 1845 to the Present (Routledge, 2014), 132-146.

additional readings• Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” October 59, 1992, pp. 3–8.• Marie Theres Stauffer, "Utopian Reflections, Reflected Utopia- Urban Designs by

Archizoom and Superstudio," AA Files 47 (Summer 2002). • Kazys Varnelis, “Programming After Program: Archzoom’s No-Stop City,” in Praxis 8

(June 2006), 82-91.• Michel Foucault, “Panopticism,” in Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan

(London: Penguin, 1977), 195–228.

WEEK 11

Tues. 03/29

AFTER UTOPIA: POST-FUNCTIONAL AND NON-PLANNED CITIES

[ Reyner Banham et al., Non-Plan; Disneyland, Anaheim CA; EPCOT, Disneyworld, Orlando FL; Seaside, Florida; Leon Krier, Reconstruction of Stuttgart; Leon Krier, Poundsbury, UK; The Truman Show ]

• Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, “A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas,” (1968).

• Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage, 1961), excerpt.• David Harvey, "The Figure of the City," in Spaces of Hope (University of California

Press, 2000).• Louis Marin, “Disneyland, a Degenerate Utopia,” Glyph 1 (1977).

additional readings• Rem Koolhaas, “‘Life in the Metropolis’ and ‘The Culture of Congestion,” in

Architectural Design 47, no. 5 (August 1977), reprinted in Architecture Theory since 1968, ed. M. Hays, 320-332.

• Simon Sadler, "Open Ends: The Social Visions of 1960s Non-Planning," in Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism (Oxford Architectural Press, 2000), 138-154.

• Rowe, Colin and Fred Koetter. “Utopia: Decline and Fall?”, in Collage City (MIT Press, 1978).

• Congress for the New Urbanism. “Charter of the New Urbanism” (1996). • Sorkin, Michael. “See You in Disneyland”, in Variations on a Theme Park (Noonday

Press, 1992): 204-232. • Frederic Jameson, “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology,” in Architecture,

Criticism, Ideology, Joan Ockman, ed. (Princeton Architectural Press, 1985), 51-87.


WEEK 12

Tues. 04/05

UTOPIA’S RETURN[ Contemporary Projects at a utopian scale ... ]

• David Pinder, “In Defense of Utopian Urbanism: Imagining Cities after the ‘End of Utopia,’” Geogr. Ann., 84 B (3–4) (2002), 229–241.

• Reinhold Martin, “Critical of What?” Harvard Design Magazine 21 additional readings

• David Harvey, "On the Utopianism of Social Process," in Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

• Harvey, David. “From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation”, in The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1989): 125-172.

WEEK 13Tues. 04/12 TERM PAPER PRESENTATIONS



BIBLIOGRAPHY• Roland Schaer, Gregory Claeys, eds., Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World

(New York Public Library, Oxford University Press, 2000). • Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the (Un)Built Environment (Thames & Hudson, 2002). • Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the

Howard Gilman Collection (Museum of Modern Art, 2002). • Caroline Klein, ed., Futuristic: Visions of Future Living (Daab, 2011). • Robert Klanten, Lukas Feireiss, eds., Utopia Forever: Visions of Architecture and Urbanism (Gestalten,

2011). • Gunther Feuerstein, Urban Fiction: Strolling Through Ideal Cities from Antiquity to the Present Day

(Edition Axel Menges, 2008). • Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century (The MIT Press, 1982). • Leonardo Benevolo, The Origins of Modern Town Planning (The MIT Press, 1971). • Daedalus (Spring 1965); special issue on Utopia.• Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: the Desire Called Utopia and other Science Fictions

(Verso, 2005).• Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times (Basil Blackwell, 1987). • Reinhold Martin, Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (University of Minnesota

Press, 2010).• Malcolm Miles, Urban Utopias: the Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements (Routledge,

2008).• David Pinder, Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism

(Routledge, 2005).• Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (MIT Press, 1976).
