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Moving Toward Utopia: Looking to the Future of Urban Development By: Matthew Bean March 2023 Thesis Advisor: Lee-Su Huang Departmental Honors Coordinator: Mark McGlothlin Major: Architecture An Undergraduate Honors Thesis Presented to the School of Architecture and the Honors Program at in Architecture with High or Highest Honors. University of Florida 1
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2023 Matthew Bean 2
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 04 Abstact 05 Introduction 06 Utopia: Seeking the Unachiveable 07 restad: The Future of Urban Development 09 Omphalos : Uniting Experiment With Experience 13 Conclusion
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4 The concept of utopia has been a contested topic of conversation in professions relating to the built environment for nearly a century. While it has been theorized, tested, and designed in several instances by some of the most prominent architects and urban planners in the world, the adaptation of a utopian even possible to achieve such a momentous vision for society. As a society, we are keen to express our desires and test our ideas such that they may become a reality. With the advancement of technology over the years, the construction, architecture, and engineering industries have elevated to new levels may ever be achieved in the future, this thesis attempts to explore the theories guiding the principles of utopia, its adaptation in today’s urban context, and the possibility of a future design methodology that could guide architecture and urban design toward a vision otherwise thought impossible.
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5 Society possesses an everlasting urge to outdo itself, express its desires, and push the boundaries for which it has already set. In regard to the built environment, the construction, architecture, and engineering industry has seen an astounding level of advancement year after year, creating extravagant structures and large-scale urban projects that explore the wonderous capabilities of the human psyche. Projects are getting taller, grander, more expensive, and seemingly more impossible to achieve at a logistical level all while attempting to balance social, economic, and environmental issues. Our ambitions as a society continue to test the limits of creativity and will continue to do so in the years to come. One of these ambitions has been the idea of utopia, which to this day, has remained unachievable by all accounts. Over the years, prominent architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier have conceptualized what a utopian society could appear to be, and since then, architects and urban planners alike have designed numerous structures and urban development projects around the world 1 To further explore the feasibility of utopia in relation to urban design and the evolution within the construction industry, this paper will utilize the restad District in Copenhagen, Denmark as a means for analyzing urban design and architectural opportunities as a strategy for adopting the structure of utopian ideals. Additionally, my Design 7 partner project in collaboration with Antonio Solis titled Omphalos environments that emulate the character of utopian architecture.
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UTOPIA: SEEKING THE UNACHIEVABLE 6 Our perceptions of the environments we experience are understood with our mind, body, and soul perpetuate these emotions. The soul is the guiding light in our search for utopia. However, because of the inherent differences between each other’s pasts, characteristics, and ambitions, our personal perceptions of the ideal, the imagined, and the perfect, vary. contrast can be established, serving as an immediate air to memory.†Calvino suggests that our minds establish contrasts and differences in our experiences to formulate a catalog of memories to access throughout our lives. 2 We resort to memories as they often emulate feelings of happiness. Through this process, our minds envision the environments and create metaphysical recreations of the spaces for our souls to occupy. 3 These spaces are only to be experienced by the individual who manifested them. Therefore, the principles that guide the ideas of utopia are inherently individualistic and would have The idea of utopia already displays doubt in the ability for it to exist within the practical world. As a collective, we have understood that the conditions of a perfect society, or the perfect place, are simply unattainable due to numerous societal, economic, and political issues we face on a regular basis. Utopia in this sense remains as a collective dream, unoccupiable by physical presence; a fabricated 4 2 Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities,†trans. by William Weaver, Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1974, 15. 3 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. by Maria Jolas, (France: University of France Press, 1958), 5. 4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, ed. by James E. Edie, trans. by Carleton Dallery, (Evanston, IL: Theories of Media, 1964), 3. Utopia (N): An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.
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7 The restad District is an example of how the concepts of utopian societies have evolved into the modern era of the built environment in a respectful and unassuming manner. Located in Copenhagen, Denmark, the district, divided into four distinct sectors, was created in 1992 as a response to the urban expansion of Copenhagen, thus propelling the development of the master plan for the area. (Figure 1) restad as a district focuses on the pedestrian experience and offers its patrons and residents a planning studies and projects around the world. 5 Figure 1. Google Earth Diagram of the restad district. The four zones of the district are displayed. restad Nor Amager Flled District restad City restad Syd
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8 29, 2011, https://www.chriskarlson.com/blog/category/Denmark. org/10.1017/S1359135515000196. 8 Ibid. The architecture and design of the structures within restad speak to the focus of the user by maximizing its property usage, utilizing a vertical model of construction that blends the needs of residents, often forming mixed-use structures that are designed with careful consideration for both its interior and exterior forms. 6 The restad district features some of the most innovative architectural projects in recent years that have pushed the boundaries of design in terms of geometry, programmatic function, and ideas on the future of societal living. (Figure 2) Innovation is the heart of restad’s built environment, and its adoption of the utopian model has seen the from international businesses and tourists. 7 The restad district acts as a playground for architects and urban strategists to experiment with their ideas capitalizing on the utopian appeal to create architectural projects that adopt seemingly outlandish characteristics. Utopia is often thought of in terms of its adoption of the imaginary, the unordinary, and the embrace the theme of this utopian urban fabric. (Figure 3) Figure 2. 8 House restad Syd. Picture of Interior Courtyard from the center axis bridge. Matthew Bean Matthew Bean “The concept of theming simulates a different time, culture, and world than the one that is physically lived [theme parks] are created out of a play of illusion, dream, and fantasy. They are capable of concealing the absence of reality by substituting it with a much more perfect, convincing, and newer appearance. In this sense, they are much more than a mere representation of imagination. They assimilate the real world and produce simulacra in the appearance of a theme park: They turn dreams and fantasies into reality and spectacle, as much as they commodify them.†8
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OMPHALOS 9 New York City acted as the site for the Design 7 project titled Omphalos completed as a partner project by me and Antonio Solis in the fall of 2022. Through the development of initial research into architects and urban designers to adopt their wildest ambitions at the urban scale in one of the world’s most populous cities. Similar to the restad District, New York’s encouragement of these ambitions has warranted the creation of wonderous construction projects. Yet, while the restad District works in the context of a newly formed master-planned district isolated outside of Copenhagen, New York City is a historic city whose urban personality works in a restrictive nature. The adoption of utopian ideals in each location has therefore evolved in very separate methods from one another. The restad District, through its architecture and urban development, functions as a collective society whilst New York City works in isolated moments of new construction, forming a eventual utopia due to its inconspicuous and slow evolution of the city, it has forced each construction project to act as an independent node. Figure 4. Park Avenue Building Map Diagram. Matthew Bean & Antonio Solis.
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OMPHALOS 10 As a result of this, and the inherent drive of society to compete with ourselves, each new project has been forced to become its own utopia. Today’s large-scale urban project in New York City features accommodations for the public through retail, restaurants, and shared spaces whilst also containing programmatic elements centered around private ventures for residential living and business spaces. As an attempt to separate themselves from one another, each urban project adopts ambitious methods of design that seem to continuously test the boundaries for creative thinking and logistical possibility. Omphalos was ultimately guided by these principles an architectural language otherwise distant from reality in order to formulate its utopian personality. The project thus adopted the program of the grotto spa as a means of bringing otherwise natural environmental formations into the urban fabric. We began with the ideas of balance and symmetry to form the language for the cave structure. Using SubD objects as the base component, a process of stretching and merging was used to create these unnatural forms. (Figure 5) The formations were then fed into a grasshopper script that forced the objects to continuously mirror themselves, creating project. (Figure 6) Figure 5. Sub-D Geometry Formations Matthew Bean & Antonio Solis
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OMPHALOS 11 a complex design language that closely collaborates with the building’s program of the grotto spa. (Figure 7) The consideration for having the main program of the project revolve around a spa came relaxation. As previously mentioned, the mind and soul often search for places that allow for the recollection and creation of positive memories. We believed that the ambitious language of the cave structure in combination with the spa program would create a wonderous spatial and architectural environment for people to not only experience a state of peace and relaxation but to create vivid memories of a fantastical place that portrays the character of utopia within the city. (Figures 8-9)
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OMPHALOS 12 The Omphalos a balance of both public and private spaces that pertain to users’ needs to preserve the vision of thematic gestures and spatial components of the grotto spa, offering numerous types of pools and rooms. Users can also experience the rooftop pool that takes the patron outside of the interior cave extrusions. Finally, the larger tower houses private apartments and penthouses and also contains its own private grotto spa for residents to use. (Figure 10)
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CONCLUSION 13 Our minds and souls are in constant search of the perfect environment for our physical selves to embody. As a collective society, we strive to reach further beyond what we thought capable in order been viewed as the end goal in which to achieve inner peace. However, several urban projects, conceptualized cities, and larger societal issues have displayed the unfortunate fact that utopia is unachievable, at least, at the current moment. Yet, this has not discouraged architects and urban planners alike to strive to implement ideas of utopia within their work. Projects at several scales in the built urban environment have begun to adopt the core principles that guide the ideas of utopia. Due to the evolution of technology within the design Today’s cities have become playgrounds in which our ideas of the future can evolve and will continue distant as we once thought.
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14 2 Balik, Deniz, and Aalya Allmer. “This Is Not a Mountain!: Simulation, Imitation, and 3 Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1974. 4 Fitting, Peter. “Urban Planning/Utopian Dreaming: Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Today.†(blog), September 29, 2011. https://www.chriskarlson.com/blog/category/ Denmark. 7 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Eye and Mind.†Edited by James E. Edie, 1-19. Translated by Carleton Dallery. Evanston, IL: Theories of Media, 1964. Accessed November 4,
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mods:abstract lang en The concept of utopia has been a contested topic of conversation in professions relating to the built environment for nearly a century. While it has been theorized, tested, and designed in several instances by some of the most prominent architects and urban planners in the world, the adaptation of a utopian society in the urban landscape has yet to be accomplished. This has raised questions about whether it is even possible to achieve such a momentous vision for society. As a society, we are keen to express our desires and test our ideas such that they may become a reality. With the advancement of technology over the years, the construction, architecture, and engineering industries have elevated to new levels of efficiency that have made seemingly impossible projects a reality. As an analysis of whether utopia may ever be achieved in the future, this thesis attempts to explore the theories guiding the principles of utopia, its adaptation in today’s urban context, and the possibility of a future design methodology that could guide architecture and urban design toward a vision otherwise thought impossible.
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