Toward a Concrete Utopia (architecture at MoMA)

Each object is a clue, a key, to an entire world unlike our own—past, present, or future, it is not this immediate world

—Philip K. Dick

In August, I had the chance to see a photography exhibit at MoMA on utopian architecture in the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.  So, this isn’t a post on science as much as science fiction—the failed utopian vision of a temporary nation.  I’m fascinated by utopian architecture in various forms, whether Soviet brutalism or the glass architecture of Paul Scheerbart.  It’s something about the way that buildings activate space, the way they elicit our attention as occupants and spectators.  I’m not an architectural scholar, so I don’t have the conceptual vocabulary to formulate the relation between buildings and bodies.  Instead, I’ll let the structures speak for themselves.

            I don’t recall names, functions, or dates.  In this blog, you’ll be treated to an unmarked stroll through time—from roughly the late-1940s to the late 1980s, if I recall correctly.  Rather than specify buildings and builders, I invite you to enjoy the other-worldly quality of these structures.  Utopian architecture introduces us to alternative histories on our own planet.  They reveal possibilities momentarily surfaced, only to recede again into the temporal fabric.  In many ways, these buildings were experiments, and part of an experiment, failed though they might be.  They let us entertain the histories that weren’t.

In the case of this exhibit, the photography is as central as the architecture.  Look at the framing, the angles—between the supporting legs, up toward the mostly imperceptible capital.  Gray skies complement the concrete.  Utopia isn’t always green; but it can be…

            These next few make me think of sci-fi compounds on alien planets, a strange mix of brutalism and organicism.

            I still find myself getting lost when I look at these photos, speculating futures that could have been—maybe some that should have been, and maybe some I’m thankful weren’t (or aren't?).  At the very least, these buildings force us to rethink our relationship to space and to others around us, not to mention city, region, country, and globe.  Utopia demands sacrifice and more than a little uncertainty.  It’s important to remember that Marx and Engels criticized the ideology of utopian socialism, targeting the movement’s teleological momentum and projection of an idealist program.  Marx and Engels argued for a scientific brand of communism, a revolutionary politics that could withstand the weight of uncertainty.  Even if Socialist Yugoslavia couldn’t meet such demands, its architecture reflects the scope of that vision.