Utopia as a practical approach to urban chaos: towards a meaningful design process in architecture

César Canova

doi:10.20919/exs.10.2020.250

Abstract

Utopia and design might together oppose chaos as they can provide an appropriate sense of place and an accurate translation of environmental meaning, explicitly because chaos has no recognisable order unless when partially analysed. Chaos can hardly be developed or imagined with intention. Chaos has no meaning unless when defined as the opposite of order and Architecture can assist the imagination of such order once we establish what a “balanced” architectural practice means.

Highlights

Chaos refers to a state of disorder
Meanings can be drawn from those patterns by perception and translated into physical cues, such as narrow streets being more walkable, taller buildings giving the feeling of control or the notion that a park is a place of encounter
A utopia – or a design – would keep the aspects that are common between this particular neighbourhood and other places and elaborate the images of new space to suggest transformation

Summary

Introduction

Chaos refers to a state of disorder. Within urban design practices – such as Architecture – chaos indicates an absence of recognisable spatial rules. The prefix ‘meta’ would indicate greater adaptability than in a model and greater specificity than in a type; this idea still needs formalizing aspects (Vassão, 2010) In this sense, we can infer that the design process will only succeed when “meaning is not something apart from function but is itself a most important aspect of function” well integrated with the problem and the project The design process should help translate the structural stabilities and fixedfeature elements found in the urban reality into an architectural meaning, whether in the constitution of the problem, in the organisation of the program, or the spatial suggestions of the project. We suggest an analogy between utopia and the design process to properly imagine environmental meaning in a contextual setting

The analogy between the Design Process and the imagination of Utopia

Discussion