Search results for "utopia"
showing 10 items of 111 documents
La ville, la raison et le rêve : entre théorie et utopie
1996
City, reason and dream : between theory and utopia. — This paper aims at comparing two kinds of discourses about the city, that of the microeconomics of cities, which is admitted in the realm of science, and that of Utopian cities, which is not. We analyse the processes of thinking which lead respectively to theory and utopia, then we compare the ideas of man and society upon which they are grounded. Finaly, we try to enhance the similarities and disimilarities between the two series of urban space representations to which these approaches lead. This comparison may contribute to a better understanding of the real nature of the theoretical discourse and lead both to a relativization and a va…
Henri Lefebvre’s lessons from the Bauhaus
2021
Throughout his writings, Henri Lefebvre made sporadic observations on the German art, design, and architecture school Bauhaus. His commentary on the Bauhaus can be read in light of his wider criticism of Modernist architecture and its political project. Despite its revolutionary aspirations, the Bauhaus provided ‘the architectural requirements of state capitalism’. This article argues that looking at Lefebvre’s ambiguous reading of the Bauhaus unveils the more complex trajectory of his thinking on Modernist utopian impulses to change society through design. Alongside his criticism of the Bauhaus as tailor made for what Lefebvre calls the neocapitalist state, his work also includes more posi…
Utopie, égalité et liberté : l'impossible idéal
2012
The purpose of this article is to derive the logical but unexpected consequences in terms of social justice, of the presuppositions on utopian constructions. In the conditions generally in effect in urban utopias which lay claim to a certain amount of social justice combining equality, fairness and liberty in different ways, equality is likely to interfere with liberty, even create inequalities, and liberty can adapt to inequalities, perhaps even create losses of liberty. Thus, the illusory perfection of Utopia is exposed. Analysis of the mechanisms and operating conditions of urban utopias, which have appeared recurringly especially since the Renaissance, makes it possible to show how the …
Claude Nicolas Ledoux, visionary architecture and social utopia
2008
International audience; Claude Nicolas Ledoux is not only the famous French utopian architect from the 18th century. He had also some very modern ideas about industrial production, urban planning, and "territorial intelligence". The project of the royal salt works (1775-79) was an opportunity to apply several very innovating ideas about economical organisation and social living. After the French Revolution, Ledoux planned an "ideal city" which continues to fascinate by its revolutionary vision of the future.
Utopian Formats: Simon Morley’s “Lost Horizon”
2021
International audience; In “Lost Horizon”, a 2014 ekphrasis, Simon Morley summons up not just one artpiece but several that have all in common to deal with utopia: a fifteenth century traditional Korean handscroll painting by artist Ahn Gyeon entitled A Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Paradise (1447); René Daumal’s uncompleted surrealist novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing (1952); James Hilton’s best-selling novel Lost Horizon (1932) and its Hollywood black and white adaptation by Frank Capra (1938), not to mention philosophical texts by Proudhon or Thomas More.Splicing together Western and Eastern traditions, high and pop…
The Politics of Utopia: Walter Pater’s “Lacedaemon”
2016
Walter Pater is not usually considered as a politically committed writer, neither is Aestheticism of which he was the gifted theoretician with The Renaissance (1873). Although the political commitments of the Aesthetic movement have been questioned over the last two decades, both by including women aesthetes, and by re-evaluating the movement’s dissemination among the middle classes, discussion of Pater’s political ideas is almost non-existent. His Plato and Platonism (1893) is however not so remote from politics since it discusses Plato’s political philosophy. In particular, “Lacedaemon”, the chapter devoted to Sparta, enables Pater to intervene in the political debate from an original sta…
Dalle "Città del mondo" al "Manoscritto di Populonia". L’ultimo Vittorini
2013
I mondi nuovi e il cinema d’anticipazione
2012
Sir Thomas More's Utopia : An overlooked economic classic
2019
Sir Thomas More's Utopia, published in 1516, is a classic work of how to organise a society based on common property. With a unique mix of common property, institutions and sound economic insights, we argue that More built a framework for a society that could be viable in the long run. While the conditions that make Utopia work are quite restrictive, it does provide a sketch of a society where common property may not stifle long‐term development, but is associated with productive workers and people content with their lives. peerReviewed