Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0218 - Utopia

This course is an examination of utopian plans in modern architecture and art, including the works of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, William Morris, Bruno Taut, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, El Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Buckminster Fuller, and others. This class will consider the expression of utopia in architectural drawings, buildings, and plans in relationship to painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts. The course will consider the role of history in utopian schemes: how different projections about life in the future are also harsh criticisms of the present, which often rely upon real or imagined views of social organizations in times past. We will examine the relationship of the individual to the community, and consider how spatial constructions-real and imagined-can affect this relationship. The course begins with an examination of significant literary utopias, including the books by Sir Thomas More, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris. Different philosophies and approaches to utopian design will be studied, as in the theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Ptr Kropotkin, Ernst Bloch, Karl Mannheim and Lewis Mumford. This class will also examine the critically important relationship between theory and practice, by looking at the successes and failures of actual attempts at utopian communities, (such as the Shaker villages, the Kibbutz, the Darmstadt Kunstlerkolonieor Walt Disney's Celebration, Florida). The course will conclude with a discussion of contemporary sensations of dystopia and chaos, and consider whether utopian design is applicable to the 21st century.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Writing and Research