Unbuilding utopia

Most of the work produced by architects is unbuilt and part of the daily professional dance: concepts, strategies, options, sketches and storyboards. Architectural training places greater emphasis on the building of concepts and ideas than on the practicalities of the built object, yet in typical architectural practice, the success of an idea is most often measured against its built outcome. Of course, as our Instagram accounts attest, many built works are outstanding professional achievements of architectural beauty and some may even hold strong relationships to people, place and time. Yet a built work – even a large and significant one – is, by its very nature, a small set piece in the city, containing highly specific ideas imprisoned by and endlessly tuned to the confines of the project, the client and the budget. Built works are so specific in their successes and so dependent on project context that while they can be influential to other practitioners, their ideas are rarely able to be scaled up to address bigger issues embedded