Ideal cities, utopias or human paradises have been imagined in detail by philosophers, poets, architects, social reformers, religious devotees, and artists for more than two thousand years. The attempt to invent the perfect city, cradle of the ideal society, is an abiding and ever-evolving vision embracing a wide variety of fascinating and often controversial movements and figures, including Plato, Filarete, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas More, Thomas Jefferson, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, Bruno Taut, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the European Situationalists, the Japanese Metabolists, Archigram, Superstudio, and many more. But what can we learn from these intelligent inventions? What is that image or concept of Paradise and Utopia about? What city concepts and social structures do these utopias proclaim?

The Postopia workshop has been set up as an explorative exercise to understand the core characteristics of the many past utopias and ideal city concepts. The basic approach was to collect and categorise historical examples and specific theoretical details of past utopias, filter their main societal characteristics and formulate principles for spatial organisation. This collection is a first attempt to start an archive that consists of an extensive thematic bibliography or classification including historical, discursive, practical and theoretical material contextualizing the Ideal City and Utopia across cultural, temporal and geographical boundaries. The Postopia workshop finally worked out nine different utopian models by taking Rotterdam as a test-case and make the different utopias comparable.

How would Rotterdam look like if based on the principles of a specific utopia?

Tutors

Tihamér Salij, Stavros Gargaretas

Students

R.J. Gringhuis, M.T.M de Klijn, P.C. Santoso, W.W.Y. Wong, K. Al Beyboni, Marie d’Oncieu, G. Guerrier, Enes ISMAILATI, D.M. Kubienec, C.B. Van Rinsum , F. Rizzetto, M. Schavione, A. Tegkelidis, A.M. Wojcik, Martijm Van Gameren,Hahn NGUYEN, R. Reemaa, Kaspar STOEBE, R. Tan Guang, Konstantinos Voltas(TU Delft), Marc BOINET, Antonin Gosse, Gabrielle Renault, Chloe Certenais, Aimie Fortin, Axelle Gregoire, Matthieu Blond, Alessandra Monarcha Souza, Patriarch Nevado, Maureen Gerbe, Bndicte Arnoux, Laura Cardin, Lisa Heath Blut, Jules-Alexandre Collard, Alexandre Bonneau, Delphine Dautreme, Anais Le Gallou, Clemence Rodriguez, Victoire de Vilmorin, Lemaire Paul Alexandre, Christel Lechaux, Emmanuelle Eon, Christelle Deri, Carole Daussin, Maria del Pilar Rodriguez Martin, Hugo Lascoux, Franck Cardinal, Benjamin Ancel, Plougastel Maela, Julien Hones,Vianney Bera (ENSAV)

Guest Critics

Susanne Stacher, Ido Avisar

Collaborators

ENSA-Versailles (Susanne Stacher, Ido Avisar)

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