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Miguel Lopez Melendez DDes, 2018 Perfect Horror: A Poetic Reflection on Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt (1924)
Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt is a theoretical urban scheme with architectonic character. Reality was assumed as what it is, to provide an alternative to the chaos of the metropolis. The “Real” was understood as a defeat, while the urban project was presented as a potential remedy for our ills. What if we just simply assume failure as fate? Look around. “Perfect Horror” is a provocation, a reflection on the implicit success of failure and the tacit failure of success.
Advisor Charles Waldheim What do you prefer: reality (no lies, no truths) or idealism (lies and truths)? The dehumanized urban landscape of the Hochhausstadt casts a shadow on a coherent urban proposal to reorder the chaos of the metropolis. A chaos provoked, according to architect Ludwig Hilberseimer, by industrialization and speculation as economic and aesthetic category.1 The overwhelming reality eclipses any urban project. The radicalism of Ludwig Hilberseimer relies on his lucid and realist analysis of the capitalist city, according to Pier Vittorio Aureli.2 Reality is radical. The Real is what it is, no imagination, no symbolism, no humans. There is no idealism. Hilberseimer The Hochhausstadt is a framework, not a messianic solution, which emerged from and for the Real. A Real that is impossible, according to Jacques Lacan, because it doesn’t have fissures.3 The fissures proposed by the dialectic of symbolism, therefore reality is radical. You can’t hide your miseries anymore. Perfection is impossible. Is reality perfect?