Utopia: Visionary Art, Architecture and Theory

This course is an examination of utopian plans in modern architecture and art, including the works of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, Bruno Taut, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, El Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Buckminster Fuller, Coop Himmelblau, and others. This class will consider the expression of utopia in architectural drawings, buildings, and plans in relationship with other art forms (painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, etc.) The course will consider the role of history in utopian schemes--how different projections about life in the future are also harsh criticisms of the present, which often rely upon real or imagined views of social organizations in times past. The course begins with an examination of significant literary utopias, including the books by Sir Thomas More, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris. Different philosophies and approaches to utopian design will be studied, as in the theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Pktr Kropotkin, Ernst Bloch, Karl Mannheim and Lewis Mumford. This class will also examine the critically important relationship between theory and practice, by looking at the successes and failures of actual attempts at utopian communities, and will conclude with a discussion of contemporary sensations of dystopia and chaos, and consider whether utopian imagining is possible for the 21st century.