Post War Utopias
Montag, 07. Dezember 2015 - 19:00 Uhr
Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
Visionary Cities: Utopian Urbanism and Science Fiction
Nic Clear | Endowed Professorship for Research in Visionary Cities
All lectures will be held in English.
At the beginning of the 20th century the concept of the city of the future was dominated by two competing narratives, the first looked forward to a dense collectivised industrial model dominated by machines and technology while the second saw a more rural mode of dispersed development based on a concept of urban sprawl and the hegemony of the individual.
For Tony Garnier technology was the means to achieve a fully socialist city, while for Le Corbusier it would bring about a hygienic utopia of light and air facilitated by new building typologies and rigorous zoning.
In stark contrast Frank Lloyd Wright saw suburbanisation and a semi-rural structure of individual dwellings as the most effective means of accommodating the future.
Both of these positions drew on concepts that had been extensively developed within the genre of the ?scientific romance?; from the spectacular technological societies of Verne and Wells to the medievalism of Morris and the ?boys own? adventure stories of the Pulp magazines, the city/country and industry/nature debates were already firmly established as part of the popular psyche.
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When discussing Science Fiction and Architecture it is usual to look at the architecture ?in? Science Fiction and in particular the architecture in Science Fiction films. In this series of five lectures that relationship will be reversed and it will be the Science Fiction in Architecture that will be discussed. The lectures will map out an alternative reading of a number of architectural movements and projects where the work will be viewed explicitly ?as? science fiction.
The definition of Science Fiction that is being used relies on Darko Suvin?s conception of the ?novum?. Suvin contends that Science Fiction should contain an ?exclusive interest in a strange newness, a novum? that distinguishes it as ?an alternative to the author?s empirical environment?. The intention of these lectures is to make an explicit connection between the genre of Science Fiction, as a system that uses conceptions of newness and alterity and examples of visionary architectures and will attempt to re-theorise 20th century architectural production through the lens of the ?novum?. A lineage of visionary architecture will be explored in relation to texts, films and artefacts that operate within a much more familiar territory of the science fiction genre.Starting with Futurism and Constructivism and developing through the concepts of the Industrial City, post war technological utopias and ending with the neoliberal architectures of late capitalism which appear to have expunged the concept of a celebratory form of architecture production for the supposed necessities of the market.
Nic Clear is Head of Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, where he also teaches a postgraduate design unit that specialises in the use of film and animation in the generation, development and representation of architectural spaces. Nic is particularly interested in the intersection between architecture and Science Fiction. He edited an edition of AD titled Architectures of the Near Future and has written the Architecture section of the Oxford Handbook to Science Fiction.
Lecture Series Winter Term 2105|16
12.10.2015 | Lecture 01
Introduction: A Strange Newness
09.11.2015 | Lecture 02
Science Fictions of the Avant Garde
23.11.2015 | Lecture 03
The Industrial City and Its Antithesis
07.12.2015 | Lecture 04
Post War Utopias
11.01.2016 | Lecture 05
The Architecture of Late Capitalism and Beyond