UTOPIA

A Future by Design
Presented by Arch Zaldy Corpuz
With various talks from:
-Peter Joseph
-Jaque Fresco
-Roxanne Meadows
-Cameron Sinclair
-Alaistir Parvin
-Chong Koon Hein
-Various Scientists around the globe
 Utopia is ideally a perfect surreal place, especially in its social,
political, and moral aspects. Its a place we would dream of being
the perfect world in which everyone's hopes and dreams come
true. A place that is majestic in which we could escape and be
happy in, its a place in which we all wish existed. The next few
slides are some other example’s of other people’s idea of utopia.
Everyone’s idea of utopia differs, utopia can be anything that you won’t it to
be. My ideal utopia would be a perfect beautiful place that’s clean and
green with no destruction or evil in the world. There would be no racism or
poverty with everyone having an equal share of everything, no natural
disasters killing thousands of people or wars with people killing each other
over thing’s that simply don’t matter at the end of the day. There would be
peace always and everyone constantly happy with thee finest of weather. If
I could create a utopia that’s how I'd have it.
The movie Avatar is a good example of what a majestic beautiful
utopian place is. James Cameron the director created this place in
which he thought what the perfect world would be. The movie
imagines the Na'vi tribe from the planet Pandora who is extra-
terrestrial, and lives in a supposed perfect harmony with nature.
This exploitation of Pandora is because man has depleted the Earth
of all of its resources. The intent to mine a valuable ore from
another planet will destroy the purity of their culture that is in
perfect commune with nature.
Hitlers idea of a perfect world was
the perfect race. There was no place
for freedom, the government
controlled every part of everyone's
life. Hitler used extensive propaganda
to brainwash the nation into
believing his theory about creating
the perfect nordic race. Therefore, it
was Hitler's plan to rid the nation and
eventually the world of Jews,
Gypsies, Negroes, handicapped, and
mentally ill persons. This plan was
called the final solution
The beach is movie about a tale of a secret island which is a real paradise on
Richard starred by Leonardo Dicaprio discovers the beach paradise and its se
community of travellers whose lives, on the surface, appears perfect and pe
However, Richard will soon learn what he has found is no paradise. The islan
utopian paradise until man inhabited it.
Nelson Mandela was a fighter. Instead of
bowing down to this unjust system of
government, he became a lifelong warrior in
the battle to free South Africa. He wanted to
create a more safer and fairer world for his
people of South Africa and he spend all of his
life working towards that goal.
The Dali lama wanted to
create a zone of peace at
the heart of Asia, where all
beings can exist in harmony
and the delicate
environment can be
preserved this was his
perfect world.
Malcolm X was a radical
black Muslim during the era
of police brutality against
African-Americans, and he
sought to seek an end to
white prejudice and violence
against blacks so that they
could have a more peaceful
fair equal life.
A utopian world can be a fantasy world made up
in your head as an escape. It could be a place that
we go to after we leave this world, a place that is
another life after death a sort of place that we
imagine to be heaven.
The world we live in today is
far from perfect and will
never be a total utopian place
with all the destruction that
goes on in the world. But
everyone has a place that is
there own utopia that we can
escape to, it’s just up to you
and your imagination and
what we make the most out
of the world that we exist in.
The Fabled Lost City of Atlantis
Plato's dream of an ideal city - "That does not concern us; we are more
interested in what type of city should be considered best. Above all others,
you should the city which most closely resembles this ideal."
Le Corbusier’s Utopia: The Radiant City

In 1935, Le Corbusier unleashed his blueprint for the Radiant City -- just one of
his many utopian visions, but perhaps the most significant. Le Corbusier
envisioned a city which would epitomize order and efficiency. When looking
towards the future of urban planning, he saw the most logical course of action
to be gutting each city and starting completely over.
 Frank Lloyd Wright’s Utopia: Broadacre City

“Imagine spacious landscaped highways,” Wright wrote in 1932, “giant roads, themselves great
architecture, pass public service stations, no longer eyesores, expanded to include all kinds of
service and comfort. They unite and separate — separate and unite the series of diversified
units, the farm units, the factory units, the roadside markets, the garden schools, the dwelling
places (each on its acre of individually adorned and cultivated ground), the places for pleasure
and leisure.
Karl Mannheim: Ideology
and Utopia (1936)

•Both are kinds of mentality

•Are important aspects of Sociology of
Knowledge

•As a social imagination, as periodic

response to established order gone stale,
and as locked into a developmental
historical process chartered from its origins
to its decline.

•His arguments are specially relevant to the

present consideration of an exemplary
architecture.
WHAT IS UTOPIA? A philosophical View
The best world would be the one most complete, or whole, reflecting the
harmonious relationships among all of it's parts (although unachievable).

According to Mannheim; Utopia is the mentality of groups with no hold to

power. For them, utopian mentality provides an imaginary plan they call upon
in their efforts to wrest authority from whoever controls present conditions.
In these way of conception, utopias are an organizing "image" that the
opposition uses to marshal its efforts toward replacing an established order.
It is the motivating force of social imagination, a utopian mentality is "crucial
for maintaining optimism", which includes evolving conceptions about "Good
Societies" and their potential realization.

Utopia guides the socio-historical process by giving it an aim.

It is a characterization of utopia that harbours the possibility of returning a

social dimension to architecture, offering architects a way to consciously
consider.
"Social Imagination" which is utopian in character, is never static; it is always
envisioning a dynamic 'not yet' in response to 'what is'.

"Utopian Mentality" is a state of mind... that is incongruous with the state of

reality within which occurs.

"Wish Images" that remains outside the possible grasp of society.

"Help to maintain the current order and are not utopian."

"Not attainable" or are "intended to be unattainable".

e.g. Paradise after death is not utopia because it will not happen in this
world.
WHAT IS UTOPIA FOR?
Utopia envisioned as oriented action presents a challenge to 'common
conceptions' of it as unrealizable.

Conventional declarations of utopia as unrealistic encourages rejection of its

potentials out of hand, even if its project is only unrealizable under present
conditions. Revealed in this is a struggle between opposite forces. Status quo
versus a proposed new paradigm system.

Defenders of the status quo must uphold present conditions as the only
possible ones, but in doing so, they also restrict their ability to envision
potentials for bettering future conditions.

Utopian dreams are visions of social potentials that arise out of the
limitations of the present conditions.

For Realists, present reality appears impossible to transcend because it is

"just is". They will label utopias impossible in an attempt to neutralize
transformative potential at the outset.
THE LIMITATIONS OF A UTOPIAS
Utopia as a form is not the representation of radical alternatives; it is rather
simply the imperative to imagine them.

Fredrick Jameson said that a kind of paradoxical utopianism is suggested that

"it is impossible to imagine anything outside of ourselves, highlighting our
'constitutional inability to imagine utopia' not as an individual failure of
imagination but as a result of the systemic, cultural and ideological closure of
which we are all in one way or another, prisoners.

When utopian projections become plans for action without feedback loops..
they ultimately tend to resemble more like the science fiction prognostication
of technological utopianism or the totalizing qualities of absolutist utopias,
than any desirable ideal good city or society.
THE FOUR STAGES OF UTOPIAN DEVELOPMENT

PHASE I: THE ORGIASTIC CHILIASM OF THE ANABAPTISTS

Holds the origins to the modern utopian mentality as well as socialism.
Anabaptists' ability to redirect longings which up to the time.. gives rise to the
belief these desires could be realized in 'here and now'.
Adherents to Anabaptism want to locate a break in time in order to collapse
the distance between this life and paradise.

PHASE II: LIBERAL-HUMANITARIAN

Its adherents no longer seek a break in time to make their goal immediately
on the present but rather believe in infinite progress. It is a project for the
future that depends on an unfolding of enlightenment that evolves out of the
present, extensible into an indeterminate distant future.
THE FOUR STAGES OF UTOPIAN DEVELOPMENT

PHASE III: CONSERVATIVE

Utopia now is embedded in existing reality and seeks to justify the present as
inevitable and organic by claiming that it has grown out of the past in the only
way possible.

PHASE IV: SOCIAL COMMUNIST

It is a synthesis of the 3 earlier forms. It would result from a process of
intentioned effort and gradual concretization, which distinguishes it from the
Liberal Humanitarian conception of enlightenment as a result progress
stretching infinitely into the future.
REFORMING UTOPIA as a tool for change..

The overarching aim of this seminar is to reposition utopia as a positive

informing model, rather than as an absolute, restrictive and impossible one.
That utopia should be fully realized to remain valid and valuable.

Development of the relationship between utopia and architecture proceeds

alongside emphatic affirmation of the social dimension of both.

I would argue that architectural invention is akin to utopian projection and

that utopia harbours the potential to rescue architecture from aimless,
obsessive matter-of-factness, or a non-critical embrace of global capitalism.

Form all these, I would say that Architecture is not just about solutions but
also about raising awareness.
THE ROLE OF ART & ARCHITECTURE
NEW UTOPIA: A NEW CASE FOR OUR ZEITGEIST
HUMAN NATURE
Human Behaviour – The Nature vs Nurture false dichotomy
Genetics – predisposition is not equal to predetermination
Environment – We shape our environment, in return, our environment shapes us.

SOCIAL PATHOLOGY
Private Property – John Locke
Capitalism– Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”.
Money is pursued for the sake of profit.
Money creates money out of thin air.
Consumerism – Cyclical consumption

UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMY
Planned Obsolescence – wasteful of resources
Reliance in Fossil Fuel resulting to ozone’s
deterioration and pollution
The dilemma to the planet’s limited resources
for an exponentially growing population.
UTOPIA as a tool for change..
NEW UTOPIA: PROJECT EARTH
BIBLIOGRAPHY: List of further readings and
links to external online contents.
Ideology and Utopia, Karl Mannheim, 1936
Utopia and Architecture, Nathaniel Coleman, 2005
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, Peter Joseph
The Venus Project: The Choice is Yours, Jaque Fresco, Roxanne Meadows
Open Source Architecture, Cameron Sinclair
Architecture for the people by the people, Alastair Parvin
How we design and build a smart city and nation , Cheong Koon Hean - TEDxSingapore

For complete links, downloads and the powerpoint presentation copy…

Goto: www.zaldycorpuz.com/education/utopia