UTOPIAs dysTOPIAs EUTOPIAs

Iordanis Stylidis

UTOPIA a drift to visual and textual pleasures

EUTOPIA short narrations for stochasmos and politics

δυσTOPIA the opposite of Utopia

UTOPIA EUTOPIA a drift to visual and textual pleasures short narrations for stochasmos and politics

δυσTOPIA

a digital publication 2021 ISBN 978-618-83884-9-9

1 UTOPIA (Thomas More - 1516) 2 CHRISTIANOPOLIS (Johann Valentin Andreae - 1619) 3 GARDEN of EDEN, paradise 1775 - 1779 4 NEW ATLANTIS (Francis Bacon - 1627) New Lanark, 1798) 5 SHALINE de CHAUX (Claude Ledoux - 1736 - 1806) 1822 6 NEW HARMONY (Robert Owen - 1771 - 1858) 1858 7 La PHALANSTERE (Charles F. M. Fourier - 1772 - 1838) 1840 8 Le FAMILISTERE (Jane Baptiste Godin - 1819 - 1888) 1890 9 Voyage to Ikaria (Etienne Cabet - 1788 - 1856) 1902 10 News from Nowhere (William Morris - 1834 - 1896) 11 Garden Cities of Tomorrow (Ebenezer Howard - 1850 - 1928) 12 SEASTANDING Floating Eutopias 13 WALKING CITIES moving δισTOPIAS 14 e-CITIES digital all-scale Eutopian settlements 15 BABEL Death of an ideology paradox

• 08 09 • 10 11 • 12 13 • 14 15 • 16 17 • 18 19 • 20 21 • 22 23 • 24 25 • 26 27 • 28 29 • 30 31 • 32 33 • 34 35 • 36 37

Iordanis Stylidis

Iordanis Stylidis was born in Edessa-Pella in 1959. He is a graduate of the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessa (1978-1984). Associate professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly-Hellas. His is an experience practiti years 1992 and 1999) in small and big scale projects (from houses to municipal administration buildings, interior restorations and fu a conceptual activist he is the curator of sixteen solo art exhibitions and installations and he has multiple participations to Biennale six books: 2020 / Uncountable Details, 2019 / Issuing Meaning, 2013 / An Urban Block, 2010 / Transportation of Memories, 2009 / D presenting a huge variety of information and analysis about: 1. the western visual culture, 2. the techniques to create and compose voyages to the eastern civilizations, 4. proposals, explanations and directions for the understanding of the landscapes and the habit writter on cartography, semiotics and the conceptual multi-correlations of the art phenomenon and the sciences into the modern t Coinstantaneously he is organizing, directing or participating to : 1. educational voyages (India, Oman, Egypt, Nepal, Germany, Turk landscapes of Europe (Tuscany-Italy, PortSaid/PortFuad-Egypt) and 3. the unfolding and comprehend of urban spatial details and The clarification, in depth analysis and in situ research of the fundamental bedrocks of meaning, including the urban and natural lan environment (…forming the vital properties of a robust regional identity..) and, nevertheless, the detection methodologies of the ve found understanding of these phenomena. Iordanis Stylidis have already launch to the digital continum (2014 – 2015) two art exhib of these unique art genres, the change of the method of recording and presenting data, the accelaration and enrichment of their th was a past expressional pattern. He is living in the city of Thessaloniki, the city of Edessa, the city of Volos, occasionally in the city of

aloniki (1987-1992). He is also obtain a diploma in Εconomic Theory from the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki-Greece) tioner in the field of the architectural analysis and composition, active as a solo performer or colaborator (mostly between the urniture production). Additionally, he is still participating in national and international architectural competitions. As an artist and e and Triennale international exhibitions since 1980. He is the writer of many essays, papers, concept manuals for education and Defecators, 2006 / The Geography of Water, 2004 / INDIA through JORDAN, 2001 / Communication and Design) e optical information, 3. the stochastic narrations and visual explanations on elements of analysis of the identity in long term tats, the contemporary urban environment, the multi-cultural ethics and political responces. Enthusiastic practitioner, tutor and technical and cultural environment. key, Syria, Iordan, Italy, Switzerland), 2. documentation and design collective workshops in Greek regional communities and the cultural events (Berlin, Istanbul, Venezia, Cairo, PortSaid) since 2002. ndscape, the multi-cultural urban expressions and the co-existence of multiple and collective entities into a constantly changing ery core of the contemporary urban life, are the tools and the practices used to activate and upload meditation aiming to a probitions under the titles ‘’Topiographia’’ and ‘’Still life’’. The two exhibitions include a major written thesis regarding the critique hematic field already tightly connected with the contemporary approach of what to choose and how to contemplate with what f Feres (Hellenic-Greek borders) Greece. Constantly traveling.

Web www.iordanisstylidis.gr (choose video to connect with the exhibitions running) https://www.facebook.com/iordanis.stylidis http://issuu.com/stylidis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvcUViB6qQh8mXgy80YCryw/videos http://iordanisstylidis.tumblr.com/ http://www.arch.uth.gr/DDW2014/ http://www.arch.uth.gr/PAW2015/ http://6-days-in-eutopia.blogspot.gr/ istylidis@arch.uth.gr https://www.instagram.com/iordanisstylidis/

UTOPIA

Thomas More, 1477 – 1535 (1516)

08 -- 09

Thomas More, a humanist, politician and chancellor of England (1529-1532) was Erasmus friend and trusted consultant of Henry VIII. He was sentenced to prison and later beheaded when refused to pledge to the power of the Church. The very core of his social philosophy reflected in his book Utopia published in 1515, the most known of his writings.

The title is a synthesis of the Greek words «ου» and «τόπος» meaning the place that does not exist. The book is influenced by the Greek Classic philosophers as well as the reports of the New World (North America) explorers. It is a detailed recount of sailor’s Raphael Hytholdaeus travels to the ideal society of Utopia, suggesting that Raphael was one of the 24 men Ameriko Vespucci lead to America.

According to the narration the isolated and unknown island of Utopia owes its name to King Utopos (in ancient Greek language ‘’nonPlace’’) the man who first approached, conquerred the territory and established the society. The shape of the island is semi-circular extending in a circumference of five hundred miles. The entrance to the island’s harbor is possible through a natural bay. There, there were fifty-four identical cities situated around a rural landscape. Hytholdeaus visits the city of Amaurot at the center of the crescent island. The well fortified city’s shape is rectangular two miles long in each side, by the spring of river Anydros (in ancient Greek language ‘’noWater’’). Amaurot is divided in four sections keeping the main market in the center. All residences belong equally to all citizens. Three storey high buildings include a courtyard and garden form a continuous facade along the length of the streets. Importand public buildings such as hospitals and slaughterhouses are situated outside the fortifications.

All Utopia citizens have direct access to community commodities. Private property of land and goods is strictly abolished. Communalism is reflected onto the social fabric structured not on the power of individuals but to family units forming the nucleus of social life. Agriculture is the bedrock of economy thus land is the source of wealth. All citizens work in the fields. There is no money based market of goods between town and countryside but direct exchange of goods and services.

Multiple constrains and commands adjust every day disciplines. For every breach of discipline there is a strict punishment. A political element that destruct the form of the ideal community pictured by More. “…all doors open by touch and close instantly thus every citizen can freely enter every house…’’ ‘’…there is a lot of available time to seek knowledge for this is the way to happiness…’’

Other important political characteristics of Utopia are the welfare communal living, euthanasia after a permission of the communal leaders, collective meals and feasts, worship of natural phenomena (an expression similar to Shintoism), atheism. The book is divided in two parts: a: the Dialogue of Council, b: the Discourse on Utopia. Most academics and political researchers comment on the book as being a satire on the power of Catholicism over every day life in the 16th century. Another interpretation follows the argument of a political theory for commonwealth, achieved only in the absence of private property.

CHRISTIANOPOLIS

Johann Valentin Andreae, 1586 - 1654 (1619)

10 -- 11

German scholar, Lutheran theologian and humanist, Andreae works express the need of a broad social reformation based on his ideas on the uplifting of societies derived from education, science and technology. His conceptual framework is clearly identified in the book «Christianopolis». Andreae was profoundly influenced by the ideas of More (Utopia) and Campanella (City of sun). His vision of a square based fortified ideal city stands on the monastery like architectural synthesis engulfing a brotherhood, a complete community. Christianopolis meant to house four hundred people living in buildings forming rows around a central square where the Temple is situated. The city’s plan is an allegory of a community separated from the ethos of its synchronous standard civilization expressions. To the east side, Andreae propose the family units, to the south, the workshops for baking and producing flour (mills) from the surrounding wheat and corn cultivations, to the north the kitchens and the laundries and finally to the west the workshops for manufacturing ironworks, bricks, glass, pottery, wooden furniture. At each side, there is a huge tower where the communities perform all communal and religius exercises. Within the first rectangular perimeter of working facilities lies the inner section of living quarters.

Two rows of houses (264 apartments) separated by a wide road. Balconies, walkways and bridges constitute a network of passages and access to every direction, each and every apartment. Gardens for collective use cover the space between residencies.

The last inner system of buildings surrounded by a double row of gardens is the College.

Four storey high buildings include departments for Logic, Astronomy, Sciences, Ethics, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Grammar plus Libraries, Laboratories for Chemistry, Anatomy, Pharmacy and Printing. Finally, in the centre of this ideal urban formation stands the Temple where all four hundred citizens can assemble in a superb inner hall where ‘’...everybody’s ears are equally distant from the speaker’s mouth...’’ The detailed accound of the design of the city spring from the narration of a sailor. The governance of the city is the responsibility of three elected men and twenty-four consultants. Religion is the driving force of education.

The fundamental political bedrock of Christianopolis stands on the obligation of every citizen to exercise concurrently leadership and manual collective work in order to realize the condition of parity in labor and stochasmos. The economy of happiness and welfare embedded in the act of short working efforts to produce as much as the community need. Having no money, land or slaves, while acquiring whatever need for a prosperous living from the communal storehouses. As a genuine intellectual following the principles of Renaissance expresses high importance in the study of natural sciences, Chemistry and Mathematics evaluating most the importance of arts. ‘’...I embarked in the ship of fantasy to expose myself to the thousand risks following the desire of Knowledge…’’

GARDEN OF EDEN Paradise

12 -- 13

A visual description of an odd space-time entity described in Genesis, the Hebrew mythology, for the creation of Kosmos, carries the ideas of the beginning and the end of reality ‘’as we experience it’’. The ideal territory where knowledge sprang and led man and woman to the suffering of searching the meaning of origin till their final return, the apocalypce, of its identity. Numerous fruitful thinking endeavors to arrange the meaning of this eschatological politically oriented signifier, including paintings, essays and ritual orders (songs) form a symphony of stochastic stabilisers keeping vast numbers of humans submissive to its charm. EDEN is a word and a consept born within the Akkadian language from the Sumerian word edin meaning ‘’plain’’ and ‘’steppe’’ which trigger the origin of an Aramaic word meaning ‘’fruitful’’ - ‘’well irrigated’’ that led to a Hebrew word meaning ‘’pleasure’’ translated into the English phrase ‘’paradise of pleasure’’. The fundamental signifiers restraining the variables of meaning of paradise, are the tree of Knowledge, the snake, the garden, the limit (exodus-exit to reality), the dialoque (comprehension technique) between woman and man, the natural bedrock (plants, animals, water, weather) and the communication with the super-naturalistc ethos. This system of consepts form a cluster of interconnected communication trends sustaining the most powerfull mythos in human history. A constand naive dialectic clash between opposites forming and deforming reality, build the conseptual discourse that kept humanity trapped for centuries, till now, in a mythology of origin.

All fundamental episodes of living, creating, following and critisising ethos evolved and abandoned whithin this ideal garden scene expressing its powerfull still silence. Its existence as a receptor, a plateau of simple dream-like gestures keep repeated uncountable times to constitude a rigid nucleus of stereotypes for controlled behavior. Garden is the place for a tranquil meditation protected well from everyday violence. A sequence of stochastic accumulations explaining reality to its spatial and time limits. Limits that lose their meaning when woman and man stand under the shadow or cover by the thick fluorescent foliage of the tree of Knoweledge –of good and evil-.

NEW ATLANTIS

Francis Bacon, 1561 – 1626 (1627)

14 -- 15

Bacon, a pasionate follower of the evolution science, lawyer, philosopher and politician, engaged in the pursuit of means humans could control nature. In his incomplete novel ‘’NEW ATLANTIS’’ (following his work Sylva Sylvarum (forests of materials) he describes his vision for an ideal future standing on discoveries and knowledge, a utopian narration based on the cultural heritage of Plato’s mythology for the mighty island Atlantis as commentated in the books Timaeous and Critias. A castaway reaches the island of Bensalem where the community of New Atlantis thrive. Bensalem in a composition of two words from the Hebrew language, the word ben meaning ‘’son’’ and the word salem meaning ‘’complete’’. The core element of communal living in the island is a constand scientific research. The center of all experimental research disciplines is located in the House of Solomon ‘’…the very eye of the Kingdom…’’. An envision of the modern research and applied science university. The head of administration in the college is the ‘’Father’’ and twelve associates who additionally practice their right to travel to wherever their interest lead, in order to seek and collect Knowledge (books, maps, objects, detailed catalogues of experiments). The associates are split into groups of three (four units) to exersize numerous, very delicate stochastic-scientific operations. All over the island there are multiple scattered laboratories either on the surface or under the surface of the sea following research programs for the natural sciences, pharmaceutics, medical therapy. All achivements of research are then applied fullfiling the needs of the society.

The community of the scientists constitute a powerful social class acting beyond the power of the king. The state is not the sole carrier of authority but the House of Salomon is in many ways superior to create and apply specific directions and orders. Private property, money market and social division are active while the form of governance, standing on the trandition of patriarchy, is monarchy. In a circle of twelve years two ships sail to the world carrying three men, the ‘’…merchants of light…’’, members of the house of Solomon, obliged to collect information, books and abstracts, patterns of experiments and written reports on the social, scientific and political contition of all countries visited. Particularly for the status of sciences, arts, mechanical inventions, innovations. ‘’…this communication discipline is not oriented to trade benefit, gold, silver, any other desirable commodities but the enlightenment. The divine light regenerating the world…’’ The philosophical-political purpose of the foundation as described ‘’…is the knowledge of causes, the secret motion of phenomena, the expansion of the limits of human research effecting all things…’’

SHALINE de CHAUX

Claude Nikolas Ledoux, 1736-1806 (1775-1779)

16 -- 17

French Architect Claude Nikola Ledeux who appointed general commissioner at the salt mines of East France at 1771, proposed LUIS XV the construction of a pre-industrial city at the area of Arc-et-Senans. Salt was a crucial commodity used mainly for preserving food (meat and fish). The first plan was designed without any cosncideration regarding the morphology of the natural terrain. All buildings were arranged at the sides of an enormous square connected to each other by porticoes. A system of covered arcades linked the center of adjacent sides creating a second smaller square. All buildings were perfectly situated to house the purpose of production. The buildings for the guards for the protection of the factory, the residences, the workshops, the bakery, the salt stores and the gardens to cultivate plants. The project was rejected by the King. Ledoux then designed a new circular shaped complex, following a hierarchical order of work containing all appropriate buildings. The proposal was accepted and its realisation lasted from 1775 to 1779.

Ledoux’s suggestion was to create a complete circular city, but eventually half of his design was realized. At the center of the diameter stood the house of the director and alongside the facilities of saltworks and administration buildings. At the periphery there were ten identical building units for the workers and the craftsmen surrounded by plantations and gardens. The city was surrounded by a huge avenue and fortifications. In the countryside, there were scattered mansions connected with the city’s communal life pattern, sustaining the connection between the city and the nature countryside.

The production of the factory was enormous at the time, and it was exported to Switzerland. In 1895 all activity was ceased due to the pollution of the nearby wells and the competition coming from imports of sea salt by railway.

Ledoux was inspired by utopian theorists and writers to apply ideas for the community’s social structure. The worker’s society was based round the family. All accomodations, housing and meals were provided free. Influenced by the ideas of enlightenment and the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) for Equality and Justice, Ledoux attempted to realize his vision for an autonomous self-sufficient ideal city, secure and pleasant for the workers and their families. He persued to achive a proper easthetical outcome as an equivalent to a heavy industrial function following the demands of labor and productivity. Eventually, the city at Saline-les-Chaux failed to floorish due to adverse working conditions (fatal accidents and absence of security) disproving all hopes. ‘’…in these charming landscapes everything provide pleasure, love is spread all over, man still manifest his innocence…’’

New Harmony

Robert Owen, 1771-1858 (1824), New Lanark-1798

18 -- 19

In the year 1798, Robert Owen, while director of a textile factory at New Lanark, Scotland, advanced to apply innovative radical changes regarding the working conditions and the social life of workers. He initially increased wages, reduced working hours and managed to implement strict production division to boost productivity. He founded schools for the workers’ children keeping them away from labor. The most famous foundation was the Institute for the development of Ethos (personality). Owen advanced to improve the collective social life of workers, their dietary patterns, their quality of dwelling and hygene, demanding their approval to a set of disciplines. Along with the social reformations at New Lanark factory, Owen, enriched and promoted ideas for an ideal rural-industrial cooperative society composed of autonomous, self-directed communities forming Confenderations where the worker’s involvement to decisions would lead all production to the ethos of total welfare. Even though his radical ideas didn’t affect fellow industrialists, in 1824 he bought land in Indiana U.S.A. and activated his plans for a new community called New Harmony.

New Harmony consisted of a constellation of villages. Each village followed the shape of a rectangular, sheltering a population of 1.200 people, encircled by gardens, agricultural areas of trees and vegetables. A ring road circumscribed the community indicating the limit of the village and the beginning of the perimeter where farms and industrial fascilities were situated. Public buildings were standing in the interior dividing the square in oblong shape quarters hosting the communal kichen, the school and the library, the assembly halls and edification rooms. The living residences for families with two children were located at the three sides of the rectangular. At the fourth side stood the dormitories for children, the apartments of supervisors, guest houses and the community hospital. These self governed cooperatives are self-sufficient. All members considered equal receiving the proper amound of goods produced in common. The most importand social policy was the education of the young beyond the elementary and basic studies to meticulous technical subjects regarding agriculture and the thorough knowledge of machines. Despite the progressive ideas leading to a utopian social philosophy the endeavor of New Harmony lasted only for the next four years. In 1828, not long after Owen’s leaving, successive management difficulties led to its end. «..in order to radically change the living conditions and social behavior of the deprived, we have to isolate them from this place which causes them devastating influence and relocate them to appropriate ideal locations suitable for human vocation…»

Le Phalanstere

Charles F.M. Fourier, 1772-1838 (1822)

20 -- 21

In 1808 Fourier first presented his ideas for the social condition in his book ‘’La Theorie des quatre mouvements’’. According to his theory, humanity will reach a blissfull ideal state, “Global Harmony”, when and if it will radically reform the social fabric to achive cooperation and collectivity in coordination with the right of every human being to express and exersice its difference and passions. These creative acts and interactions of passions presuppose a brand new form of society and a typology of living. The ideal society will be constituted of harmonius associations of people creating and directing new vibrant istitutions for self-reliant communities integrating urban and rural features. These fresh functional social units entitled Phalansteries barracked to a collective house, the Phalanx. The plan of the building follows the shape of the Greek letter Ω (omega) engulfing a central inner court and multiple smaller long shaped atriums. At the center of the building stand the main public services, the religious and administrative functions. At the basement of a wing stand the workshops, the education rooms and the kindergarten. At the opposite wing stand the meeting rooms and the entertainment halls. All along the front of the basement there are wide covered walkways for comfortable circulation despite weather conditions.

The buildings are three storey high with a mezzofloor and attic. All living quarters for the young are situated at the mezzofloor. On the first floor stand the administrative and public relations and higher on the second and third floors are the quarters for the elders, the guest rooms and a huge water tank for extinguishing.

This huge building was designed to function as a city interconnected with a network of corridors-galleries always full of activity, the most functional unit of the Phalanster. Each Phalanx numbers 1600 people using appropriately an area of land. The primary function is agriculture while industrial production depending on labor division and huge scale production is considered secondary. Fourie described his idea for the grouping of workers to productive units while at the same time asks them to choose the work they like frequently rotating to multiple tasks in order to be protected from the monotony of a working schedule they might dislike.

Land management and production means should be the responsibility of all Phalanx members who own everything and participate in full in the production schedule. Private ownership is allowed and every member-citizen is given a certain amound of goods, products and services in case they were not working. ‘’…What is happiness if the experience of fulfilment and satisfaction of that tremendous measure of disastrous passions? This will be the destiny of human beings liberated from civilized, barbarous, primitive condition. Their passions will be many, so many. Fiery and diverse. Leading the plethoric man to a life of constant frenzy…’’

Le Familistere

Jean Baptiste Godin, 1819-1888 (1858)

22 -- 23

In 1859, inventive French industrialist Godin desided to shelter all workers in the iron industry of Guise by allocating his revenew from the factory to build Fourie’s Phalanstere.

The endeveour following Fourier’s syntagmatic principles regarding collective partnership was called Familistere. The main structure of Familistere composed of three buildings four storey high providing residential fascilities shaped in the form of an oblong square covered with a glass iron roof. A variation of the covered public road was proposed by Fourier. The complex was given to use in 1870 shortly after additional buildings for social use were constructed, propably from plans drawn by the Fourierist architect Victor Calland. Schools, Theater, Medical unit and a cooperative association. Each family was provided with an apartment with exceptional fascilities regarding hygeine and comfort (running water, heat, private wc and waste unit) total airing and lighting due to full facing of every appartement both to the street and also to the inner courtyard. Godin left aside Fourier’s proposition for a communal living and described an organic shell for social integration based on family.

Thus, came the title Familistere, instead of Phalanstere (Phalanx=organized team). Godin’s thory was extensively described in his books ‘’Solutions Sociales’’ (1871) and ‘’La Richesse au service du people – Le Familistere de Guise’’ (1874) (Wealth in the service of the People – Familistere of Guise) where he writes ‘’…to put the workman’s residence in a palace, the Social Palace of the Future…’’. He promoted the principles of common management and mutual distribution of wealth coming from industrial instead of agricultural production. He delivered to the worker’s cooperative the management of he factory and the Familistere shortly before his death. The Guise example for social reformation is still operational represent all ideal principles of Fourier’s model. ‘’…what I have created is not a Phalanstere. In the Familistere springs the desire of the attractive and creative labor. The Familistere does not representing the very essence of blissfulness. It is the realization of my purpose to ease the violence experienced by the labor class. I have tried to orientate the wealth spring from labor to their natural and moral well being…’’

In 1880 the community of the Familistere transformed the company to a production cooperative. The labor-production wealth was used primarily to finance all necessary social bedrocks, mostly the relief funds, and the remain distributed to the workers in proportion of work provided. The workers are now receiving a surpluce bonus proportional to the profit.

Voyage to Ikaria

Etienne Cabet, 1788-1856 (1840)

24 -- 25

Cabet was involved in the political scene of France from his early youth. He was active in the struggle against Monarchism as a member of secret revolutionary societies. He was convicted for treason in 1834 and sentenced to five years exile in England where he studied the works of Robert Owen, Thomas More and Charles Fourier. He was dedicated to philosophical and economic studies to comprehend the connection between the structure of the state (political structure) and the living conditions (welfare society) expressed in history. In 1840 he wrote and published the book Voyage and andventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria. A charismatic depiction of a Utopia, a communist society, standing on a governing body of citizens and the family unit. Marx indicated the content of the book and referred to Cabet as the founder of Utopian Socialism. He restarted editing his newspaper Populaire highly known among the workers in France. Between 1843-1847 he published multiple editions of his vision influence thousands of people who follow the ideas of the Icarian School. Cabet attempted to realize his ideas for an alternative economic and social community or a constellation of communities. He led hundrends of followers to the United States of America in 1848 where they established a constellation of egalitarian communities in Illinois, Texas, Iowa, Missouri and California. The last community voluntarily broke off in 1898.

Cabet described an isolated and blissfull communist country where everything is communicated under the principles and ethos of total equality. Icaria is split into one hundrend counties divided to ten communities. The capital city, Icara, is build following a circular plan. The river crossing the city form a circular island where a tree-lined square is build in connection with the central administrative building and the huge statue of Icarus. Icara’s urban design is a collection of sixty neighborhoods depicting the architectural style of the most importand cities in the world. Fifty avenues cross the city horizontally and vertically following the river, forming identical urban blocks. There are sixteen residential units to each side of the square and in the middle a public anministrative building. Cabet kept on improving the networks of hygiene and water sewage built underground and the attachment of slaughter houses, byres and hospitals removed at the outskirts. Vast pedestrian lanes and wide roads allow the smooth circulation of citizens and vehicles while enjoying the city.

Gabet described a vast collection of ethical rules and behaviors. The variety of living disciplines followed by modern people in his times were critisized and forbitten in the fictional world where details of everyday social life met a close scrutiny by experts. Every aspect of social communal living was designed and functioned within multiple acting typologies constituting a strict central programming. This fundamental statism extented in the matters of economy and social planning. All citizens in Icaria were social workers, organized in labour armies and profession branches, oriented to function by the state. Gabet’s ideas met tremendous response. In 1848 a group of followers found the first community in a vast land bought by Gabet in Texas. The progressive breaking off of that first community, followed the creation of new communities smaller in scale.

The Icarian community lasted till 1895.

News from Nowhere

Williams Morris, 1834-1896 (1890)

26 -- 27

William Morris, a designer, craftsman, architect and painter, was one of the pioneers of the socialist theory and the worker’s movement in the United Kingdom. Following the philosophical principles of Raskin regarding the aesthetics of Romantisicm and the validity of craftsmanship, he participated in a union of artists that gave birth to the Arts and Crafts Movement. While experiencing the social economic conditions of capitalistic alienation in 19th century he protested publicly for the restoration of the direct bond between the worker and product of his work. The right of man to the joy of a creative flourishing labor in contrast to the discipline imposed by the industrial mass production ordinance. Arts and Crafts Movement frequently confronted to the consequences of industrial revolution and progress.

Morris’s book “News from Nowhere” (where nowhere stands for the consept Utopia), a hybrid-fusion of Marxism and romance tradition, published in consecutive chapters in the newspaper of the Socialist Club is a criticism to the emerging industrialist city. It was written in 1980 following the form of a novel describing life in 1952. Morris’s vision is the report of a regenerated England where the huge urban centers along with their suburbs have long been replaced by multiple scattered farm-fabric pockets of autonomous communities in the countryside. Mass production has already been abandoned and communities produce the exact amound of goods needed. Private property and the monetary system are no longer active but the operating trading system depends on goods-exchange between neighboring agrarian communities. This abandonment of profit desire orientates labor to a wishful fulfilling act, a bedrock for the emergence of multiple handcraft disciplines and the redefinition of correspondence between society and technology.

Morris stands against the existence of a central core of power (state) and proposes the self-determined decentralised communities. He stands against the state institutions of court, army and police. Morris’s socialist-anarchist stochastic endeavor aims to complete peoples ideological persuit for personal and collective freedom. “…As we recall the past, our common history, we comprehend that the major power for a social change is the desire for freedom. Equality. This unstoppable desire is similar to the irrational passion of a lover… it is beyond doubt that the suppressed social classes are not capable to comprehend contentedness of a free living… gradually they understood the political expressions and material bonds of suppression derived from the class in power and rationally comprehend they can continue living without them… although not knowing the way to realize it…’’

Garden Cities of Tomorrow

Ebenezer Howard, 1850-1928 (1902)

28 -- 29

Ebenezer Howard, as a young immigrant in the United States in 1870, start learning and soon reacted to the emerging identities of the evolving industrial cities. As soon as he returned to England he studied economics, Kropotkin’s essays on Anarchism, and major theories of contemporary utopian socialists. The perfect example of his thought expressed in the book ‘’Tomorrow: a peaceful path to social reform’’ written in 1898, where he proposed the GardenCity as a model to organize common living. Howard thought of the phenomenon of constant flow of people from the country to the cities as a magnetic (powerful) attraction. Cities are forcefully attracting people in the same way that countryside does constituting a bipolar field of antagonism. The idea of Garden cities introduced in this process of fundamental social transformations a third core of attraction combining advandages of both cultural living typologies.

Garden city occupies 2.400 acres. 1/6th is supposed to serve all urban fascilities. The rest is the productive territory for agriculture. The city will be surrounded by a belt of gardens for vegetables and plants. The city complies with a sircular planning rule with a huge public park in the center and all pyblic buildings. On the outskirst stand all industrial and trade fascilities and the railway network. The ring road, dividing the residencial area, sustains all major public operations such as schools, playgrounds, churches. Six huge avenues divide the city heading from center to the outscirts producing autonomous districts. When the number of citizens exceed 32.000 a new core city emerges following the same structuralpolitical principles. Thus a network of orbital garden cities evolves around the main city.

Howard’s financial program was based mainly on the strengthening of regional self-governance and the idea of time-limit land property (99 years). The proprietor of land is the community holding all rights, not allowing any purchase. Surplus value feed the common fund for public welfare. In 1899 Howard constituted the Garden City Association. In 1904 started the building of Letchworth which was gradually completed but functioned for as long as the fundamental planning and directional principles correspond with the collective land ownership. ‘’…The city and the countryside can be seen as lovers attracting population… from their antagonism a new hybrid living entity will emerge drawing properties from both…’’

SEASTANDING Floating Eutopias

30 -- 31

Thousands of years after the proposal for the ideal number of people to constitute a functional political body to govern a city, the ideal philosophical and aesthetical-technical bedrock to ensure a thriving urban evolution, cities exceeded all environmental and administrative limits. Industrial revolution triggered expansion through 19th and 20th centuries and the cities growing in the mainland, by the coasts and river banks, centers of wealth and political power, nevertheless core generators of massive environmental destruction, became the prime territories of philosophical-political malfunction.

SEASTANDING is a proposal for a long period collective living on floating cities. There are multiple critical properties attached to the concept and its popular narration of how it can be realized. The most popular organization for research and communication on this initiative is the Seastanding Institute for autonomous floating communities operating in the international waters or in high seas where no political authority can intervene. A floating city, paradigm and model of autonomous community, will be the result of a combined inter-disciplinary scientific expertise: aquatic building engineering, architecture, sea biology, aqua farming, blue-green energy, applied socio-political tactics, economics, to achieve coastal nations.

Each Seastanding community, proves and accelerates the idea of a startup nation. Emphasizes and declares the colonization of the oceans. For people of science and research.

A political shelter to a new wave of immigrants flowing smoothly between governments.

The mechanical aesthetics and the structural engineering are long before achieved because of applied building knowledge of cruise ships and offshore drilling industries. Thus providing an emerging market, depended on high end, peaceful, even luxurious, short or long term autonomous communities.

Therefore it is reasonable to imagine a gradual transition of million people from land to the endless territories of oceans and open seas on seastanding self-sustain communities either by the coastline following a specific administrative regulation system within a time frame or in the high seas where no political authority can apply. Miniature nations that can temporarily combine/join for a common research or political program, a philosophical or aesthetical virtue, to a specific set of coordinates for as long agreed and separate to follow another venture. The vessels carrying such politically orientated communities should be the result of exceptional ecological design. Providing artificial islands, following the principles of sustainability functioning as closed circuits of material flow exercising an economy of zero waste/pollution. Producing and storing abundance of renewable energy, providing a superb political government environment to sustain multiple incubators of living disciplines.

From the floating civilizations in Asia, the Metabolism propositions to expand cities towards the sea to the idea of an aquatic Silicon Valley, the construction of solar power plants and stadiums, a dozen mega-industries discover that the idea to investigate, design and produce huge self-sufficient, carbon-negative cities-nations or self orientated societies is going to be the transition threshold to a new perspective of ourselves and the planet.

WALKING CITY

the moving δυσTOPIA

32 -- 33

60 years after the famous proposals of Archigram studio influenced by Fuller’s radical visions of the evolution of human kind within the limits of resources of “spaceship” Earth, the idea of a walking city is still a visual riddle for naive contemplation in Hollywood movies. Although this idea was well presented in Julius Verne’s novel Robur the Conqueror evoking the enthusiasm of readers for a technological outburst that will vividly transform the future it was the visual and ideological narration of Ron Herron in 1964, edition in the Archigram pamphlet that boosted discussion for the incoming future when cutting edge construction technologies and manufacturing power could realize it. The form of Herron’s moving δισ-topia emerges from a shape-outline of the notion-impression picture of the machine and the general shape typology of insects. A grotesque interpretation of Corbusier’s perception of house-machine living model. The Walking Cities where more or less parasite vessels move towards any direction to achieve autonomous long term sustainability. Inhabitants could move from city to city depending on the political orientation or simply the direction-route on Geography. Multiple cities could combine to form shortterm Metropolis and scatter when no need for such a union exists. The political association of nomads, drifting along the surface of the Earth, is placed into a future scenery of an environmental catastrophe.

The conceptual suspension of Archigram delirious fantasies include a set of ideas for total mobility, surviving technologies, time-capsules and uncontrollable consumption of resources. All these naive ideas are far from the synchronous recourses and energy consumption reality and the ongoing climate change, although the hypothesis of a superb thriving industrial capacity is correct.

The idea of ‘’walking’’ cities is realized in today’s short term massive transportation and leisure vehicles such as cruise ships, trains and airplanes. Into these high-end machines collective smooth living is autonomous for a short period of time, some ten or more hours or a week, even a month. Thus, the concept city is now a limitation of the original hypothesis both in its space and time attributes despite its social-political core meaning. Due to the industrial progress, the global digital blanket covering the planet, the new applied technologies for sustainable energy harvesting, large scale fully automated floating machines will host thousands of inhabitants for long periods of time. The idea is now going to ‘’float’’ in the vast oceans of the planet. Seastanding cities.

e-CITIES

the digital all-scale Eutopian settlements

34 -- 35

The intellectual-technical thresold towards a fully automated city, uniting human stochastic authority, the physical body-brain limitations and the digital multi-layered informational blanket, covering thoroughly the planet Earth, is founded on the ‘’internet of things’’ revolution. This on coming planetary change will uniformly function with the environmental-civilisation principles of local resource sustainability, energy harvest and consumption, collective public traffic, maintenance and communication networks, environmental highend research and monitoring networks. As the global population keeps on accumulating in mega-cities (cities de-forming to dysfunctional non-identity space-time hostile entities) it produces the crucial infrastructure pressure which eventually deteriorates each and all urban properties set two centuries ago, to establish and intensify the triumphal ideas and practices (architecture, urban planning, industry, networks, communications, commerce, agriculture) that support the dream and the reality of a peaceful, joyful, politically sufficient and operational civilization uniformly applied to every citizen. The cities deteriorate when each and all urban achievements (communal living, parks, public squares, neighborhoods, districts identities) rapidly, uncontrollably, spread destroing the surrounding environment (sea, plains, rivers, lakes, woods, crop raising) and the fertile century-long multiplicity of human urban interrelationship.

The Internet of Things metamorphosis is emerging. Supporting the new meaning of new ideal political-industrial correlation accurately based on the vast satellite layers around the planet spreading information in real time speed. Sustaining the growing and distribution of content, the fruitful existence of common mutual democratic (unlimitedly accessible) global library uniformly distributing knowledge.

Thus, the idea of the rational-functional powerful city gradually proposed, designed and applied in 19th and 20th centuries, standing on the ideal shape-form (dimensions, population, labor-employment, recreation and leisure, reproduction and evolution of knowledge, ecology equilibrium), well situated and corresponding with the natural and commercetraffic network environment, celebrating its magnificence and force of faculties over the surrounding networks of villages, lands of cultivations, and the natural bedrock, is gradually disappearing. Outplaced by the vast constellations of numerous eutopian, (number of citizens, dimensions, natural correlation, and political expression institutions) settlements, spread on the surface of the planet, the seas and the oceans. In valleys, mountains, seashores, lakes, river banks, desserts and the neighboring solar vicinity area. Sharing and protecting a unique, innovative, autonomous, self-sustaining, ecology of deGrowth oriented cells of happiness.

BABEL

Death of an ideology paradox

36 -- 37

Babel, the word-consept, connects man with a popular narration (carring a linguistic etiology) and a visual (of mythical origin) deployment of meaning aiming to consolidate a set of ideas regarding the genealogy of language (and cultures) multiplicity in spite of the origin of human expression (form-content) variants. It is contensed in multi-layered consept paintings by numerus visual technicians through history from Middle Ages forth.

The prime stochastic reasoning strategy appeared to each and all civilizations is the constand setting of questions and, eventually, the collection of limited or longlasting answers aiming to set the perfect relationship of human beings trying to correlate with the environment. Seeking and applying explanations to form guiding rituals to confront with the forceful expressions and properties of nature. The incomprehensible phenomenon of the sky spawn the exceptional mystical (unexplained) feeling of envisioning about the endless space appearance-presence at day light or night. Constituting the prime philosophical riddle for all societies to confront. Eventually, in a unique historical moment, the sky, the core essence of the unreachable empty space above, where multiple weather expressions burst and disappear, became the mythical habitat of various deities constituting a poetic hierarchy of power far stranger than man could comprehend. God, the supreme intellectual idea of power, a helpful barrier to protect the emerging societies or the ruthless enforcer of punishment, fill the conceptual gap. That needful emergence of the concept of God was tightly connected, in all pre-historic/pre-science mythical narrations, to a series of detailed obedience rituals and fearful narrative punishments preventing a possible, although eventual, destruction of each and every structure of stochastic mental correlation between civilization (science, reason) and myth. Babel was and still is the popular naïve paradigm explaining the instinctive embodied reaction of human beings attempting to reveal, scientifically sustained and criticized, knowledge leading to reason. To overpass each and all barriers confining the idiosyncratic tendency of irrepressible stochasmos exercised to explore the fundamental bond between nature and person. Far beyond the primitive representations of many visual technicians (artists) following-obeying the cruel directions of the powerful religious establishments till the reknowned paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Maurits Cornelis Escher, mankind is thriving in creating science achievements. Technology unites scientists-engineers of multiple origin and languages, using one practical language, English, to penetrate the thin layer of gas that produce and sustain the idea of ‘’sky’’ throughout centuries and extends far beyond the delusional domain of the mythical Gods. Gradually, the idea -mythos- and the symbolic bedrock -visual established ideology- of Babel disappears. The essential ideological paradox is dead.

ISBN 978-618-83884-9-9

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SELECTED WORKS digital editions upload in ISSUU and SCRIBD • The CASSINI - HUYGENS sculpture https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/the_cassini_huygens_sculpture • Ink designs and essays - full collection https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/001_ink_designs_full_collection_sm_ • POSTERS 1990 - 2020 visual syntaxis https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/issuu_posters_______________________2020 • Transporting Memories https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/_issuu_transporting_memories_2008 • BIO 2016 - 2019 https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/1_stylidis_iordanis_bio_2016-2019_2sm_ • Sculptural Mechanisms https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/001_sculptural_mechanisms_ • DEFECATORS https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/deficators_2016_issuu_ • FaceBook excavation https://issuu.com/iordanisstylidis/docs/001_facebook_excavation_2018_sm_ver

ISBN 978-618-83884-9-9