"RISE OF THE OMITOPIA" (A.Glass July 1st 2020)
(Cesar Pelli’s ban Nucleus, envisioned to be built within and inside Sunset Mountain Park ranges, Los Angeles. A city bunker like mega structure fitted into the natural environment. The project never transpired.)
Cataclysms reshape our world and seldom do we have the ability, as a society, to prepare in advance. In these times of crisis, particularly when a pathogen strikes, our awareness and the noesis to galvanize into action, with what could have been early warning signs, would be to build out of dramatic event or within its calamity. A historic benchmark, a structural concept, handed down throughout the ages as a forewarning the turmoil nature creates. This, although we are still facing the pandemic, may need to be studied, not just in a philosophical sense, but the widespread structural implications of what I deem a “Omnitopia”. A city concept, its structural manifestation that represents both the pessimistic and optimism of our survival within the tumultuousness of existence
In the series of The Simulacrum of Utopian Decay, we looked at the idealism that what has occurred is a recopying, in a evolving process, of Utopian ideas from three points in time, the 1800s Utopian socialists, 1950s pragmatic consumption and the concept of being liberated by technology advancement through to entrepreneurial aspects of the 1990s – pre the digital networks. Rather than what could be perceived, in a fictional concept, as evolving into what is hypothesized to be a dystopic landscape, it is all but an illusion of gentrification, with it being underpinned from a fragile global economic system with an over abundance of money supply directed into the machinations that is croynism. And it was the Utopian idealisms of social media expansion, that gave a feigned promise of egalitarianism from the cross feeds of credit and rapid paced information. Without simplifying the reasons or saying that they solely have lead to a decay of Utopian ideas, what is known now, as this pandemic has spread around the world at a unprecedented rate, undoubtedly, as viruses throughout history have done in their course, changed a society – and usually the virus serves as the catalyst. However, looking back into the past to assess what this change could be, would not be an easy task, sans the sentiment, in the historic context, is always the same, the pressure that a general populous has to endure from this micro entity as it cripples nations.
As governments scramble to ensure that society does not descend into chaos in a vain hope for the pandemic to finally pass. If the human race and the cities that we inhabit will continue to face a crisis after crisis, despite moments of calm are built upon fragile foundations of wealth expansion and desire of exponential markets with debt, however if we remove the sociological and economical aspects. This could be looked at as an opportunity for a newer city to be created from a time of calamity. These are the cities of the Omnitopia.
Could a city, a megastructure project, begin to implement a pessimistic and optimistic aspect of urban dwelling under the Omnitopia concept? In the first part of this series, it is purposed that newer cities could be born out of both a calamity and stability, in turn reclassifying them as an Omni or duel purpose, reflecting in its habitation aspects of turmoil and peace. Rather than a Utopian idealism or a post gentrified broken Dystopia, but a city that is structured around the reality of indifference, that nature at times can perpetuate a crisis and the intrinsic need for human beings to be protected from the elements and also of its own folly. As the Covid-19 viral contagion that has affected every city in the world has shown, is the inability of an urban area to adjust to a widespread pandemic, but the lessons learned throughout the ages of viral outbreaks, has always been the same; the lawmakers and city planners moving too slow in locking down a city due to a contagion, more so now, with global markets and trade routes tightly interconnected. Has made the effort vastly harder to reduce the waves of infection rates. The question initially asked of creating an Omnitopia, also has a follow up question: Can a city automatically adjust to a crisis?
This may sows a dilemma for a democracy, is how could it be implemented without resorting to what occurred in China when the Covid-19 virus first appeared, which, as a autocratic county with a strange mixed of luxury consumption of Western products, whilst offering itself as a cheap manufacturing base. They were draconian in their effort to stem the spread of the virus. However, the Communist traits of state secrecy remains in place, therefor it is hard to gauge how successful they actually were in suppressing the viral infections. The assumption, would also be, is that the Chinese were in an peremptory manner quelling the truth in its viral rates, by maintaining its over layering of economic and financial systems of a country that is still heavily connected and reliant on the West for trade and investment, which the virus may become a persistent scrounge.
However, the democratic implications of crisis, such as a global pathogenic, are mostly overshadowed by the economic, as discussed with China being almost solely fixed and dependent on the inflows and outflows of investment and trade with the West, despite sanctions and political wrangling. The issue remains that cities throughout the world have become overly reliant on each other to function, which maybe the underlying issue that can lead to chain of events such as the viral outbreak and the confusion, misinformation that it manifests. So, in a time of also changing environments, harsher weather pattens and the possibility of their being a plethora of pandemics facing the human race, the arguments against globlization do not fall upon the need to structurally change our cities, rather the discord of global interconnectivity has unfortunately been seen as an emotional issue of cultural identity, where at times cities, in our digital age, who have been linked, are on the most part are incompatible in a global world. The uniqueness of the city construct is that it is suitable only for the inhabitants that live within its foundation. Does not remove a crises from occurring. A natural event or even unnatural cataclysmic events like a war, become a threat to city environment, which under the Omnitopia concept will need to adjust to cope and survival. In the impact of an extreme event, it would be the structural modification of the city that has already adjusted in an automated and self sufficient way.
The late conceptual architect Lebbeus Woods proposed that cities should react in real time to these destructive events, be it war or as mentioned, a natural disaster. Woods studied warzones and areas affected by earthquakes, in discerning his concepts and configurations of the structural shapes left from disaster. That it was this very calamity of an event that can offer a blueprint to what a city dynamic may evolve from. Melding within the changed environment, except the city becomes unique, humanistic in its purpose, aware and embracing and accepting of the turmoil, absorbing it into the aesthetics; therefor learning that an imprint of these significant events, assists in building a resilience and strength of the structure. It therefor becomes pacified. The Omnitopia then would reflect the engineering concepts that do not shield one from the uncertainty of reality, but offer the stability of reinforcing the inherent defiance to live and survive. The human being, can understand and reflect upon the city in its concept as a place of refuge, yet, it may not offer, in its balance, a complete Utopian perspective.
And this is important in understanding the Omnitopia concept. If we look back to the Japanese Metabolism architecture movement of the 1960s and early 70’s, its primary focus was, from its schematic ideas, to develop megastructure cities that emulate the flows of nature, more so was the importance of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, who was a post war pioneer in the reconstruction of Japanese cities that were devastated after World War 2. Its first incarnation, before Metabolism, was called the Burt Ash School, which was a contemplation of thoughts and ideas, aware of the apocalyptic firebombing during the end of war, which completed destroyed Tokyo city. Tange and his students with Metabolism formulated grand and practical concepts to rebuild Japanese cities into a developed future of possibilities. The movement faded into the late 1970s as a cohesive structural manifesto for architecture and urban planning, yet it still was able to offer an insight into the use of both technology and innovation of design, whilst observing the flows of nature from the roots of destruction.
Of course, in this discussion of an Omnitopia, it would be prudent to acknowledge the dilemma in creating a new city complex that embraces chaos and order which, in its modular dynamics would be able to cope and confine problems of social insatiability. However there may never be a sociopolitical solution to the issues surrounding humanities distress within nature and the cosmos, but as viral contagions have taught us; the politics of managing a populous fails, yet it is the structural, the enclosed area, the barrier of a city and its protection in all of its paradoxical inclinations that offers a guide. The fusion of a Utopia onto a Dystopian concept, in lieu of the fear that humanity has in the darkness of the unknown and it loneliness within vastness of the Universe. The Omnitopia City becomes the light within the void.
Authored: A.Glass (July 1st 2020)
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