Utopia Realized?

Big-name architects and urban planners, hedge fund billionaires, paranoid right-wing patriots, anti-establishment Marxists, and the 99%—just about everyone seems to be obsessed with the concept of utopias. And for good reason. Utopias allow us to envision a more perfect version of the world we inhabit, especially when times are looking rather grim. For architects in the early 20th century, utopias often included unbounded levels of development and huge solutions for societal woes—visions that existed in theory but never in implementation.

Big-name architects and urban planners, hedge fund billionaires, paranoid right-wing patriots, anti-establishment Marxists, and the 99%—just about everyone seems to be obsessed with the concept of utopias. And for good reason. Utopias allow us to envision a more perfect version of the world we inhabit, especially when times are looking rather grim. For architects in the early 20th century, utopias often included unbounded levels of development and huge solutions for societal woes—visions that existed in theory but never in implementation.
However, while Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse and Antonio Sant’Elia’s La Città Nuova remain on the drafting table, a new exhibit at the AIA New York Center for Architecture finds utopian ambition in the super-tall towers, megablock structures, and transit-based development projects that have made the building boom in Asia over the last two decades a constant presence in news headlines.
Kicking off Archtober, New York City’s month-long festival of architecture and design, Practical Utopias: Global Urbanism in Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo explores a diverse range of buildings that have impacted their surrounding urban environments, environments which are constantly under the microscope of architects and planners from abroad. Conceived by Jill Lerner, the president of the NYC American Institute of Architects and principal architect at Kohn Pederson Fox, Practical Utopias sees these recent works as models for possible solutions to the problems caused by rapid, unprecedented urbanization and growth.
For the exhibition, Lerner and curator Jonathan D. Solomon, AIA chose nearly 300 diverse, recently-constructed buildings that share common goals: improving the quality of life within these cities and establishing distinct regional identities that make these areas international destinations. “What’s fascinating about these buildings is that their clients had great aspirations; they wanted to move their economies forward and put their cities on the map, they want to be seen as good destinations for fun,” says Lerner. These projects also address local issues, like expanding business districts, improving access to public transportation, and increasing public spaces for leisure, making them catalysts for city-wide regeneration.
The projects in Practical Utopias are categorized as one of five themes, based on the architects’ desired outcome—connected, dense, green, thick, and fun—and the exhibition walls are painted in bold colors to indicate each project’s category. “The exhibition is very colorful and very graphic. Even projects by commercial developers still engage the public,” says Lerner. Kohn Pederson Fox’s Lotte World Tower (an upcoming mixed-use skyscraper in Seoul that includes cultural facilities, commercial spaces, roof gardens, and an observation deck) is united in blue with Gensler’s Shanghai Tower (featuring vertical gardens and a glass-floored observation space) under the theme of “dense,” as both projects aim to fit a maximum of uses within a minimized urban footprint.
Even within cities and within themes, a diversity of ideas abounds. “Singapore wants to be a very green city,” says Lerner, which is highlighted by projects like Wilkinson Eyre’s Gardens by the Bay, an extremely popular waterfront park that stands on 250 acres of reclaimed land. Simultaneously, Singapore also wants to be “a center for education”—a desire highlighted by projects like Perkins + Will’s Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise. These buildings bring variation to the city’s economy—expressed by exhibition quotes like “there is more to do than just business in Singapore”—while also functioning as part of a network of utopian progress happening across eastern Asia.
The sheer number of projects presented in Practical Utopias calls into question why so many international firms with high-level agendas have flocked to these five Asian cities. The economic downturn in America and Europe made cities with financial surpluses in the ’90s and today, like Shanghai and Singapore, increasingly attractive to western firms. Lerner also recognizes an increased cultural exchange of ideas between the East and the West, amplifying desire for the skills and image offered by larger firms. “These are big name architects, yes, but their quality of construction is a large part of it,” says Lerner. “Their projects are an intersection of local ambitions combined with the execution of international expertise.”
The opposite effect of this international exchange is also highlighted in Practical Utopias. Many of the recent developments in New York City, like the Atlantic Yards and World Trade Center site, were built by architects who previously worked in Asia. Lerner sees this back and forth as beneficial to both Eastern and Western cities. The Cheonggyecheon Chongae Canal restoration project, which transformed a stream in downtown Seoul into a massive public space, provided inspiration for similar renewal projects in New York, such as the High Line. Lerner quotes Sean Rasmussen, Associate AIA and Co-Chair of Emerging New York Architects (ENYA), when she says, “Those experiences [in Asia] can inform the work that is done in the US, but it can also help us change how our profession is perceived in US society.” Lerner hopes that this cross-cultural dialogue helps all architects and city-dwellers think critically about how we can improve our own urban environment.

Of course, the projects in Practical Utopias have not found universal success, and one has to wonder if this internationally-charged desire for development has made these cities into test sites for Western architects. Over the last few decades, international firms have built the equivalent of New York City’s square footage in Shanghai, sometimes transforming once quiet neighborhoods into havens for super-tall corporate structures. “With this kind of development, there are going to be mistakes,” Lerner admits, but “the benefit is a feedback loop to see what went wrong and what can be learned from it locally.” Since the featured buildings are all recent—with some still in progress—what remains to be seen is how the success of these grand visions will be measured, and what their long-term impact on local populations will be. “In 20 years, have you created places that people still gravitate to and still want? Have their maintained their relevancy?” Lerner asks. “These are things that are going to really mark these cities and projects in years to come.”
Practical Utopias: Global Urbanism in Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo runs from October 1, 2013 – January 18, 2014 at the Center for Architecture. For more information, go to the exhibition website.