The Simulacrum of Utopian decay

(Image:  Chaoyang Park Plaza, China.  MAD architecture)

We have looked at some of the structural aspects of cities, be it the monuments that transcend time, and its creation of architectural imprints that not only represent a functional building, but outline its intention as a beacon of design and longevity.  To the Doomsday buildings that within their purpose have been designed to withstand a nuclear attack or the ferocity of nature, which in most cases harbor machinery that lies within its distinct purpose – to protect, whilst at the same time destroy human biology.   The other aspect in this series, is the study of the dreamers, the idealists of structural design. The so called Italian radicals, who originated from a time in the early 1960s to the late 1970s, as a testament of radicalizing architecture prior to the hyper consumption of the 1980s took hold, was an idea, that started as a graduate concept of socialist post modernist design.  Which on paper looked like a possible structural entity, but in reality ended up no more than an art piece.  As its devised rhetoric, towards the end, the idealist eventually backlashed on his or her own grandiosity, wrangling with the idea of what consumption actually entails and how it could be worked as a concept with both capitalism and socialism in mind.  Which became its own paradox and for many who ventured into this diversion in architectural design.  Ensured that it was a beginning of the end of its radical ideas.

Yet, our cities, now within the 21st Century, have sociologically continued on into what maybe deemed as a cultural template, perceived today in its pharos of innovation, social and environmental awareness.  This evolving towards the modern city, I feel was not orchestrated as such by the city planners,  but more from the wishes of a society, in its global connectivity, to attain a Utopia.  And when studied, something very interesting has occurred over the last three decades.  More so from the onset of the internet and the digital communication links, the freeing up of international trade agreements, the opening of China, a stern central planning economy to become a consumption engine for the Western economies.  An investor into cities throughout the world, to which the West has heavily invested into the Chinese mainland industries. All in line to assist China's desire to grow and become a modernized urban aesthetic.  Never before in history has such an ability of instant inflows and outflows of cash, the liquidity that drives the economic engines of a city has been so readily available, it is an unprecedented aspect of globalisation.   But, this vade mecum has actually occurred before.

In 1949, America, not only began to imprint itself as a nuclear super power, it also created something very unique for a country that built itself on capitalism as a ideology of production, that occurred after decade of depression and a global war, to which American infrastructure remained intact, but its economy had suffered.  A baby boom began in 1947, attributed also throughout the West with an average of 3 babies born per woman, there was of course the stability of post war recovery, particularly in America, where jobs were plentful.  Yet, this hyper consumption, was also referred as 'Pragmatic Spending', in a period of 1945 to 1949, Americans bought mostly the necessities for family life, refrigerators, stoves and cars.  This is, under a modernist template, very much embraced the family values, over any excesses of opulence. There was a fear, very similar in sentiment to what was occurring in Communist Russia at the same time, that over indulgence would lead to a societal decadence.  However, the difference was split between the two ideologies, one faith based, via the American Christian ethos, the other as paranoia that a society will see itself purely as a commodity based product.  This maybe simple in its basis of retrospection and observation of consumption, when it is regulated by, either an ideology or moral Christian belief, the reality was the statistics of what was consumed at that time.  So, when the model of 1950s consumption is studied, there is something very curious in its reflection. A similarity of  a society now.  And as we progress along into the 21st Century.  There has been an reemergence of the nuclear family concept of mass consumption which is also seen in the way our cities have grown, construction and property markets have all synchronized in their boom of the last two decades.  There is however a dispositional spike in birth rates,  while the pace of newborns per capita is growing.   Not in par with the 3 babies per couple as it was in light of the 1950s baby boomers.  Consumption has mirrored the same everyday products which were bought in earnest all those years ago, risen in its reflective sentiment within this new century at an exponential spike. 

In the decades that followed the 50's, began the discourse against the modernist lifestyle and nuclear family concept, it in turn gave rise to what we may look now, from a novelty perspective of the counter culture, that simply does not exist on the scale of what was perpetrated from the 1960s to the 1990s, eventually collapsing into a rhetoric of fashionable aesthetics.  There is a surreality to all this, on one hand we have this what appears to be cohesive society, within the realms of capitalism, there are free and open markets, on the other hand there is the socialist idealism of central planning and government intervention, that has infused with a two types of consumers within our cities, what is deemed as the pragmatic middle class consumer of the 1950s ethos and the luxury consumer, that originates from the Chinese engine of consumption.  A Communist country. Despite the paradoxical social and political indifferences to the concept of global markets and the cities that have become a center piece of integrated collectivism - which is this digital age. We need to look at another part of our history, the 1800s and the concept of a Utopian vision, an interlinked and structured society.  That may offer a reflection of what is occurring on a global scale today.

Through these two significance aspects in our history of centering and maintaining a city structure for a society that lies within, we may have ended only creating a structural world that could be deemed as the Simulacrum of Utopian decay.