Paths to an iconoclastic utopia: dialogue between psychoanalysis, architecture and urbanism

Abstract

This paper seeks, at first, to demonstrate that the architectural production of the 20th century has a strong relation with the concept of “design utopia” proposed by Russell Jacoby in his book “Picture Imperfect – Utopian Thought for an Anti–Utopian Age”. It reveals the importance of utopia to architecture and urbanism since its heyday until the ostracism of the utopian thought in the postmodernism. In counterpoint, it relates Jacoby’s category of “iconoclastic utopia” with the hypothesis of transformation from a repressive reality into a nonrepressive reality, presented in Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of the conceptions of Freudian theory. It shows how a transformation of instincts is necessary to the construction of an emancipatory reality. Ultimately, it pursuits paths to a reunion between architecture, urbanism and utopia, through a shift of a “design” practice to a production that appropriates the architectural imagination in order to build an iconoclastic utopia.