Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0218 - Utopia: Visionary Art, Architecture, Theory

This course is an examination of visionary plans in architecture and art, including the works of C-N Ledoux, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Wassily Kandinsky, and others. The course begins with an examination of significant literary utopias, including the books by Sir Thomas More and William Morris, and we conclude with a work by Octavia Butler. We will consider the philosophical constructs of utopia in architectural drawings, buildings, and plans as well as in film, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts. We will consider how different projections about life in the future are also harsh criticisms of the present, which often rely upon 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. We examine the tensions between theory and practice, by studying the successes and failures of actual attempts at utopian communities. We will conclude with the question of whether utopian design is imaginable in the 21st century. keywords: Art, architecture, literature, history, philosophy

Time and Narrative Students in this course can expect to spend 6 to 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.