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The antinomies of utopia. Superstudio in context.Hilde Heynen

"One of the crucial antinomies of art today is that on the one hand it wants to be and must be

squarely utopian, since social reality increasingly impedes utopia, while on the other hand it

must not be utopian so as not to be found guilty of administering consolation and illusion."

Adorno, 197

!hen Adorno wrote these lines in 197, they were more than applicable to the phantastic

imagery that was at that time abundantly present on the architectural scene. he si#ties were

the age of the megastructures, the age of utopian dreams but also of dystopian commentaries.

he beginning and ending of this age can be roughly mar$ed by two e#hibitions at the

%O%A in &ew 'or$( Visionary Architecture in 19) andNew Domestic Landscape in 197*.+n the short history of the megastructures one can obsere the reersion of utopia to dystopia,

from actiist optimism to critique and pessimism. + want to trace this deelopment by

discussing three of its important manifestations( -onstants &ew /abylon, the wor$ of

0uperstudio and the #odus2pro3ect of O%A.1

New Babylon

!ithin the utopian landscape of the si#ties, which resonates with names such as 4uro$awa,

5uller, 5riedman, Archigram, 6topie or Archioom, -onstants pro3ect stands out for its

ideological rigor. he technological utopias of, for e#ample, Archigram or /uc$minster 5ullerhae no distinct social concepts underlying them. 5or these architects it is, aboe all, the

fascination with the e#treme technical possibilities of new materials and construction methods

that informs the imagination. he underlying concept seems to be that the possibilities

realied this way will benefit eerybody8 but neither Archigram nor /uc$minster 5uller lin$

these ideas with a socio2political ision. -onstant, on the other hand, situates his pro3ect New

Babylonemphatically within a neo:mar#ist social critique and presents his ision of the

future as ;antithesis to the false society< based on an entirely new distribution of the means of

production.

&ew /abylon indeed traced a new form of society and dwelling. +ts point of departure is the

idea that a thoroughgoing automatiation of production can reach a point where wor$becomes unnecessary so that people can en3oy endless free time. he surface of the earth then

is gradually coered with sequences of =sectors=, gigantic structures built on high supports that

tower oer a landscape that is used for fully mechanied agricultural production and which is

coered with lanes of fast moing traffic. he typical feature of life in the =sectors= is that

people are totally liberated( they are freed from all ties, norms and conentions8 they stay in

an enironment that is entirely free of oppression and which they hae full control of. &ew

/abylon is a dynamic labyrinth that is continually being restructured by the spontaneity and

creatiity of its inhabitants.

-onstant has illustrated this future situation in numerous maps, maquettes, drawings and

paintings. he maps show a whole series of lin$ed structures stretching out across the

landscape. hey e#ist on arious scales, starting with a quasi2uropean dimension 2 as for

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instance with the map for the >uhr area of &ew /abylon 2 and continuing with models

simulating the deelopment of concrete cities or city districts Amsterdam, Antwerp, ?aris,...:.

@uring the first years of &ew /abylon, -onstant made a large number of maquettes that come

in a ariety of forms umbrella shaped transparent constructions, shell2resembling structures

the so2called Bspatioores:, Bsectors meaning sections of the large megastructures that

would coer the landscape, maquettes of labyrinthine spaces, etc. Aboe all the maquettesgie a picture of an artificial world that is dominated by technology and in which artificial

materials and ingenious construction techniques are used to ma$e a type of dwelling that

e#ists separate from the landscape and whose typical features are interpenetration and

indeterminacy. A nomadic mode of life is thus suggested that is made possible due to

technology.

As his wor$ on &ew /abylon progressed, -onstant relied increasingly on drawings and

paintings as to coney its atmosphere. He made numerous s$etches that eo$e the

construction principles of &ew /abylon, e#pressing the tension and poetic power of structural

forms. Other prints and drawings gie an impression of the spatial character of &ew /abylon.

5eatures suggesting dynamism and mobility are frequently emphasied here 2 stairs, ladders,lifts, ad3ustable walls. &ow and then there are some blobs that loo$ roughly li$e human

silhouettes. A typical feature of the drawings is the tension they coney. his tension is often

created by graphic means 2 fragile shapes are opposed to compact ones, dar$ is opposed to

light, dynamic lines are contrasted with static olumes. 0ometimes tension is produced by the

rhythm of the walls that gie structure to the space depicted, or it issues from the moement

of the human figures or from the distortions of perspectie. his tension can be seen as

indicatie of the continual oscillation between the liberating and unheimliche impressions that

the iewer is sub3ected to. +n this sense the drawings 2 more than the maquettes 2 form a sort

of modification of -onstant=s discourse of a utopian world that is free of oppression and

inequality.

he same is true of the paintings that -onstant produced during his &ew /abylon period.

ypical of some of these paintings are their iid brilliant colors, suggesting scenes of 3oyous

festiities. he element of play comes to the fore in the form of carnial2li$e figures in scenes

that teem with actiity. +n the =labyrinthine= paintings such as Ode lOdon 19)9: or

Ladderlabyrinth 1971:, howeer, the sense conflict is dominant. here is no longer any

definite perspectie here, no central point from which the spatial organiation can be grasped

as a whole. One e#periences this space as ambiguous and opaque8 human silhouettes wander

across it apparently aimlessly and without any interaction. -onstants gesture of farewell to

&ew /abylon might be found in a painting of 197C entitled Terrain vaue. An almost

apocalyptically acated space is set against a horion blac$ as night. he foreground andedges of the isual field are patched and cut with lines. /arely recogniable in the distance is

a structure out of &ew /abylon. A few walls and screens point ones gae toward the depths.

On closer inspection, the monotonous yellow2white surface that occupies the greater part of

the painting turns out to oerlay a more comple# bac$ground collaged from newspaper and

other imagery. +s this a palimpsest representing the end of historyD

&ew /abylon depicts a world where people are liberated from all norms, forms and

conentions. All oppressie ties are dissoled and there is no longer any fi#ed pattern of

social obligations or of loyalties to family or to a specific place. he law of the transitory

preails in &ew /abylon 2 immediate situations hae primacy oer permanent structures. he

commonplace 2 the ordinary eeryday framewor$ that gies life its form and which permitsone to postpone indefinitely any question about the ultimate meaning of life 2 has been

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abolished. +n a certain sense &ew /abylon is the fulfilment of the logic of negation that was

characteristic of the aant2garde( in order to achiee the goal of total liberation all norms and

conentions, all habits and traditions had to be destroyed. &ew /abylon thus becomes a isual

ersion of the dream of ultimate transparency, that /en3amin detected already in the aant2

garde of the *s. +t presents an image of a social form in which the desires of the indiidual

and the requirements of the community are inseparably entwined. As -onstant describes it, itis a society where there is no longer any necessity for secrecy and possessions8 it is an

absolute collectiity in which the general interest coincides automatically with the sum of

indiidual interests. &ew /abylon, it would seem, is a society without power relations. A

utopia li$e this, howeer, is full of internal contradictions, which surface inoluntarily in

-onstant=s drawings and paintings. +t is indeed impossible to imagine a society e#isting that is

so harmonious and free of stress without its indiidual members being subtly coerced to adapt

and conform 2 an oppression that implies the opposite of genuine freedom. @ynamism,

permanent change and fle#ibility are in fact ineluctably in conflict with qualities such as

peace, repose and harmony.

!hereas -onstants narratie about &ew /abylon tells of utter peace and harmony, whichwould be reached once the reolution has had its way, his imagery depicts a different story.

he drawings and paintings indeed seem to coney a much more in depth understanding of

the human condition than the te#ts. he images are hardly open to being interpreted as

foreshadowing an ideal future8 far rather they appear as a multilayered commentary on the

impossibility of giing utopia a concrete form. +n the comple#ity that we get an in$ling of

from the drawings and which comes to full maturity in the paintings, the =dar$ side= of the

world of &ew /abylon is also depicted. @rawings and paintings show a condition in which

wanderlust and the lac$ of permanent ties are untrammelled, but they also ma$e it clear that

this condition is inseparably bound up with the death drie, with groundlessness and

indeterminacy. A painting, as -onstant said way bac$ in his -obra period, is an animal, a

night, a scream, a human being or all of that together. his notion continues to hae its

repercussions in the wor$ of his &ew /abylon period. As a result the paintings ma$e isible

something that -onstant was still able to conceal in the maquettes and the narraties 2 the fact

that this utopian world is not perfect and harmonious, that the dismantling of all the

conentions leads to a ero point of human e#istence in which the authenticity that is strien

for is reduced to a torrent of perceptions and sensations and nothing more than that8 it is no

longer an ideal but a caricature. +n this sense &ew /abylon is a stri$ing proof of the

impossibility of giing utopia a concrete form and of ma$ing poetry the only moment of

reality( one cannot =dwell= in &ew /abylon.

Superstudio

+f -onstants wor$ started out as a positie utopia that gradually had to recognie its own

limitations, the wor$ of 0uperstudio was drien by different intentions. 0uperstudio described

its own wor$ in terms of ;radical architecture,< ;anti2utopia,< ;negatie utopia,< or ;guerilla.otterdam, 199C, pp. 1721)G.**

Koo$ing bac$ at it in 199C, in ;5ield rip A A: %emoir