Junk for Code

The Situationist's new Bablyon

"Town planning is not industrial design, the city is not a functional object, aesthetically sound or otherwise; the city is an artificial landscape built by human beings in which the adventure of our life unfolds.” Constant Nieuwenhuys, 1960

The Situationist response to the city of the commodity and spectacle is a dreaming of the city of tomorrow. The ludic or recreational city is premised on the socialisation of the ground and the complete automation of the production. In this utopia we don't have to work, can lead a nomadic existence and one can live fully as creative beings. Only then can we become a homo ludens.

That is utopian rupture from the old modernist form follows function ethos. The Situationist vision is called the New Babylon. It is a utopian scheme for a new mode of dwelling and new society by Constant A. Nieuwenhuis. It exists in the form of a series of maquettes, charts, sketches and paintings. It is hard to get a sense of an urban life of play in the recreational city from images such as this:

or even this:

Constant attained a prominent position in the world of experimental architecture in the 1960s', but this influence faded and New Bablyon as a situationist city has been forgotten by urban designers. Constant stopped working on the project in 1974 and turned to painting.

These images are from the first large presentation of the New Babylon project since 1974 at Witte de With, (21 November 1998 to 10 January 1999). A monograph associated with the exhibition was produced. A symposium on Contant's New Bablyon was held in 2000. The forementioned exhibition contains images such as these:

It is hard to make out what this city of play would be like from such images.

The exhibition notes, however, give us some pathways that allow us to get into the project. They say that :

"New Babylon envisages a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play, in which traditional architecture has disintegrated along with the social institutions that it propped up. A vast network of enormous multilevel interior spaces propagates to eventually cover the planet. These interconnected "sectors" float above the ground on tall columns. While vehicular traffic rushes underneath and air traffic lands on the roof, the inhabitants drift by foot through the huge labyrinthine interiors, endlessly reconstructing the atmospheres of the spaces. Every aspect of the environment can be be controlled and reconfigured spontaneously. Social life becomes architectural play. Architecture becomes a flickering display of interacting desires."

New Babylon is now a historical artifact. As an artifact, New Babylon is less a practical, useful, ‘real’ piece of architecture and more a series of texts of a philosopher/artist designed to stimulate our thinking about urban form and life; a work of art about architecture and about architects. It's open ended overlapping texts breaks with the modernist iconoclast architect who is hailed as hero while the trend-followers are summarily dismissed.

It's conception of urban levels is an interesting way deal with the polluting mechanized traffic/inhabitiant conflict that lies at the heart of the modernist city. It opens up critical perspectives on our urban present as we tried to free themselves from the ideological trappings of the modernist sixties and early seventies. It introduces the ‘recreational’ aspect of urban life, the changing nature of leisure in our cities and their relation to the public domain.

It is hard to place play at the centre of urban life because the legacy of the twilight years of heroic modernism still haunt us. We struggle to keep alive the ideas of the European avant garde as we come to understand how intrinsically political and covertly ideological is even today's architectural production and discourse.

Maybe there is critical architectural work (postmodern architecture) that borrows from New Babylon and the Situationist International.

Contant's representations about space may connect with current concerns with electronic space, can act as a stimulating reference point for our ongoing conversation about the strategic role of space in urban social life and connect with some strands of postmodern architecture that loosen up the tight form and function coupling in modernist architecture.

Why not develop plans, ideas, concepts, spaces and buildings for large left-over waste land for a counter city? Why not foster an urban revival that redefines the position and identity of a city in a wider regional, national and international contests that transgress the old barren functional schema (more carparks, office towers and shopping malls) of contemporary urban design?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 5, 2003 10:54 PM | TrackBack