Dreaming & Dwelling
Twentieth-century utopias set out to build an architecture that demonstrated belief in the sparkling new and the grand scheme.
The frontispiece of the original edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, published in Leuven, Belgium, in 1516, depicts a small island, nearly round with deckled edges. The engraver’s hand shaded the landmass with short, neat hatch marks to suggest topography and a river. More imagined utopia as a self-contained world where communities share a common culture and way of life. This definition sets up two particular criteria: place and society. To convey these intertwined conditions, the illustrator dotted the woodblock print with buildings.
No fewer than sixteen spires on top of eleven edifices spring up from the page. In the book, society is a complex structure of labor, rest, and intellectual and cultural pursuit, yet it is visualized as architecture. More’s work is political satire, with his neologized title the most famous joke. The etymology comes from the Greek: , meaning “happy place,” and , meaning “no place.” But just because utopia is literally nowhere, that hasn’t stopped architects and visionaries from conjuring fantastic cities ready to relieve society from its
