Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hilde Heynen
The most challenging aspects of architecture today, in my view, have to do with the
necessity to resuscitate a utopian mode of thinking. This utopian mode of thinking is
bound up with a tradition of critique and a critical attitude that seem to be outdated or
old-fashioned for many of today’s leading architects. I am convinced, nevertheless, that
this critical attitude is the only strategy worth pursuing in today’s world of uncertainties
and threatening disruptions. It is therefore necessary to re-assess the tradition of modern
architecture, not because we can learn much from its diversity of forms and its actual
appearances (although we can), but mainly because of the critical, socially and politically
inspired impetus that was the motor for its development.
Of all the criticisms that modern architecture has had to endure since the 1960s,
the one of utopianism has apparently had the most impact. It seems that, by now, almost
everybody is convinced that modern architecture's utopian ambition was its most harmful
attribute. These aspirations are usually seen to be completely bound up with paternalistic,
not to say totalitarian attitudes, and are for that reason discredited and put aside. The idea
formulated by Paul Scheerbart, that culture is a product of architecture and that the
enhancement of architecture would therefore result in an enhancement of culture, is
denounced as utterly unrealistic.1
1
“Unsere Kultur ist gewissermassen ein Produkt unserer Architektur. Wollen wir unsere Kultur auf ein
höheres Niveau bringen, so sind wie wohl oder übel gezwungen, unsre Architektur umzuwandeln.”
Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur (1914), Rogner en Bernhard, München, 1971, p. 25.
of Hope, it is only by revitalizing the utopian tradition that we will be able to fuel a
critical reflection that will help us to act as conscious architects of our fates rather than as
helpless puppets of the institutions and imaginative worlds that we inhabit. 2 There are
vested interests that want us to believe that “there is no alternative”3 to the world as it is
organized today, with a globalizing capitalist system that has far-reaching and seemingly
inevitable effects, ranging from the necessity of child labor in upcoming economies in the
East to the spread of unemployment and urban decay in the West, not to forget the
continuing misery in the poorest countries in the South. Therefore, if we are not willing
to support the status quo, we should recognize the need for a revitalization of utopianism,
because it is the only strategy that enables us to sound the depths of our imagination in
order to explore the possibilities of the “not yet.”
These flaws cannot be ignored. We should question, however, the all too easy
solution of simply doing away with utopian thinking because of its built-in tendency to
2
David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000, p. 159.
3
Margaret Thatcher, quoted by David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, University of California Press, Berkeley,
2000, p. 154.
4
David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000, p. 173.
turn into its opposite or because of its totalitarian aspects. After all, it is through utopian
thinking that we train ourselves to imagine a better architecture that would correspond to
an alternative and better world. Though no alternative will be ideal, it is crucial to explore
possible routes to the enhancement of the good life for all. That constitutes, for me, the
most important aspect of the legacy of the Modern Movement: its capacity to criticize the
status quo, and its courage to imagine a better world — and to start building it. Modern
architects were admittedly often naive and simplistic in their architectural determinism,
but their utopian impulse was based upon a critical attitude and a genuine intention to
change the world. We should not denounce this dimension but rather seek to re-evaluate
and resuscitate it. 5
5
An attempt in this direction is undertaken in Amy Bingaman, Lise Sanders, Rebecca Zorach (eds.),
Embodied utopias. Gender, social change and the modern metropolis, Routledge, London, 2002.