After visiting two exhibitions in the Summer of 2006, one on modernism and the other on utopianism, Tam Dougan got to pondering the nature of what it is we choose to build and why? Certainly the two movements have much in common - a brave new world where abundance of resources left few barriers to the mind, where conflict and strife were left behind. Sadly both of these dreams seem doomed to failure ..
This is a four page article. First published in December 2006
Extract:
The modernist movement dreamed of a world free of conflict, greed and social inequality. Moreover modernists believed in the ability of technology to transform society. Simplification combined with mechanisation would free the individual and allow them the space to develop more spiritually and more rationally in the new modernist world. Inspired by the Russian revolution, a new model for an entirely new society was born.Focusing on the design of basic elements that touched everyone’s lives, housing, furniture, domestic goods and clothes, its practitioners heralded, they hoped, a new and healthy future for all, free from poverty and disease.
Despite the word ‘utopia’, in the subtitle of the Future City exhibition, there was far more utopian idealism revealed in the modernists’ exhibition.
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