HABITAT - FROM DYSTOPIA TO UTOPIA

Ada Kwiatkowska

Abstract

Habitat is in the state of the dynamic equilibrium between man and the environment. A permanent disturbance of this equilibrium causes the devastation of the surroundings by uncontrolled human activities or the blocking of  human needs by the repressive influence of the surroundings. According to the theory of C.A. Doxiadis, the housing environment may assume different forms related to the degree of the equalization of mutual relations between man and habitat, such as: entopia, dystopia and utopia. Entopia is defined by distinguishing the boundary conditions of the housing environment, this means, the dystopian and utopian states, but only in a closed time interval, wherein one can meet  a similarity of the housing standard. The following kinds of dystopia have been distinguished: demographic, geometric - spatial, programmatic - functional, technological - physical, aesthetical and psychological - social. In the history of the utopian visions, concerning the ideas of man’s life and shaping of the housing environment, the following trends of utopian thinking have been defined: the ideal model of the society, the ideal model of the society and the cities, model of the civilization development of the society, model of the socio – spatial harmony, the model of good living conditions, the modernistic and mechanistic architectural model, the ideal model of architecture in the dimension of techno- and  ecospheres, the ideal model of interactive architecture and the virtual architectural model.

Article:

Kwiatkowska, Ada (2004). Habitat - od dystopii do utopii (Habitat - From Dystopia to Utopia), Architectus, no 2 (16), pp.55-64. (photos by Ada Kwiatkowska)

Aesthetical dystopia: Wroclaw

Spatial dystopia: Lisbon       Functional dystopia: Tokyo

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