Utopia's relationship with the production of space, implicit or explicit, has always been enduring and has generated channels of experiment. As utopia carved its path to the surface through these channels and gained materialized bodies, disappointments, and thus, criticisms were aroused. One immediate and strict response to such disappointments was to "reject the utopian altogether" and to seek ways to strip real-world practices of any remaining "utopian garb" (Cunningham, 2011, 178). On the other hand, many critics, today, believe that this is a null attempt, if not at all impossible (2). Theorists agreeing on this line find leaving such broad agendas aside as an easy escape from the responsibilities of arresting and correcting problems within urban settings. They rather call to put broader agendas back on the table, yet with a revision on what to be critical of. At this point, Reinhold Martin (2010b) proposes to turn to utopia as a revived version of criticality. Martin (2010b)'s approach succinctly reveals the emergent perspective from which the utopian tradition is approached. Rather than trying to find faults with utopias, urban critics/theorists/practitioners are now looking for useful elements in the utopian genre. They seek the relevance of utopia today, with an awareness of the dangers and risks of their direct translation into real-life practices. The aim in this is to examine the utopian tradition to drag out "useful ideas, enlightening images, challenging visions, and perspectives" and therefore use it as a "navigational compass" to respond to the wide-ranging issues of contemporary urban settings (Geus, 1999). This, however, primarily necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the existent varieties of relationships between utopia(nism)s and actual space. Assuredly, the journey of utopian imaginary parallel to real context is not a smooth one. However, when read chronologically, only a generic undulation between utopia and space through time may be revealed. This prevents any close readings, and thus a holistic grasp as such. In order to
This text visits and manifests the critical utopianism embedded in the praxis of Peter Cook, within which resides a promising mode of architectural thinking based on reflexive inquiries rather than absolute and closed utopias. It aims to revert questions that link utopia and spatial determinism towards questions that revolve around utopian methodologies that become trainings of architectural imagination.
Ovaj se rad bavi prikazom metodološkog značenja utopizma u praksi urbanizma i osobito u arhitekturi polazeći od temeljnih definicija kojima Ruth Levitas opisuje utopiju kao metodu. U radu se daje pregled raznih oblika utopizama u arhitekturi (izuzevši same arhitektonske utopije) u najširem smislu kako bi se identificirale glavne tendencije ove metodologije tijekom 20. stoljeća.
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