Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia ed. by Nathaniel Coleman (review)

The cover image of Nathaniel Coleman’s Imagining and Making the World is a photo by Coleman of Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum renovation in Verona. It shows the skillful layering of elements from different eras assembled by Scarpa and the bridge that connects the upper floors of two buildings from different periods. Such skillful connecting of disparate things is rare. Yet this is what Coleman and his contributors have set out to do: connect architecture and utopia.

Coleman himself seems to question this enterprise. In his introduction he writes, “If the likelihood of achieving a utopian moment in architecture that is sustainable through time and occupation appears . . . unpromising, what possible claim could any building outside of the confines of an intentional community (or fiction) possibly have on Utopia?” (15). There may be hope—“there might still be some way to rescue the proposition that architecture can be utopian even today,” but only by “returning the discussion to the utopian potential of works of art on the one hand, while keeping intentional communities nearby on the other” (15).

For Coleman, utopia’s significance does not lie “in the degree to which [a] project . . . approximates some familiar utopian image . . . but rather in the degree to which every step of the way . . . is a utopian process” (11). His object is “not to construct a Utopia” but to “imagine superior forms . . . for human inhabitation that emerge out of the critical moment Utopia shelters” (11). For a building to be “an exemplar of utopian imagination,” it must “embody social imagination, especially regarding how it structures and negotiates relationships of individuals to each other, to society, to the world, and to nature” (19). Utopia brings meaning to architecture by granting “a sense of purpose in improving the lot of individuals and groups” (21). Coleman holds out the hope that “by (re)visiting Utopia’s verdurous offerings, architects might have their consciousnesses raised to demand more of themselves and their clients” (23). In his essay, included as the eighth chapter of the book, he states the main idea of the book clearly: “Utopia can catalyze the radical reinvention of architecture, infusing it with the conviction that society can be improved through reconceptualizations of the world” (184). He wants nothing less than this radical reinvention and sees the incorporation of utopia into the process of architectural endeavor as one route to it.

This is all very well and good, but the chapters that follow Coleman’s introduction are so varied in content as to present a problem. Fair warning—despite the subtitle, this book is not primarily about architecture. Of the ten essays it contains, only one is about a building (Ersoy). Three are about writing about architecture (Kerr, Coleman, Wegner). The others are about city planning or writing about city planning (Powers, Davis and Hatuka, Miles), literature (Narayana), representation (Sullivan), or intentional communities (Haney). This reflects the editor’s belief that architecture, planning, and urban design are “artificially separate professions,” and that reintegrating them is “a fundamental first step toward fostering settings that are welcoming to people” (315), but it leaves the reader somewhat disconcerted.

The essays are divided into three sections, titled, respectively, “Architecture and Fiction,” “Reconsiderations,” and “Prospects.” The logic for assigning an essay to a section is not always clear: why, for example, Wegner’s essay on the writing of Rem Koolhaas should be in “Prospects,” while Ersoy’s work on Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart and Powers’s on Filarete’s Trattato are in “Fiction.”

The intended audience for this book is architects, city and regional planners, urban designers, and, as the back cover says, “others who study and make the built environment,” as well as utopian scholars. Coleman’s introduction will, however, be heavy going for most architects and other designers, who do not have a background in utopian studies or theory. The essays themselves vary in approachability for the typical designer...