Architecture and Utopia

The Israeli Experiment

Michael Chyutin

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351957373
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Architettura
• Categoría: Pianificazione urbana e paesaggistica

There are more than 450 Moshavim settlements and about 270 kibbutzim in Israel. While there is a range of communal and cooperative kibbutz movements, all with slight ideological differences, they are all collective rural communities, based on an ideal to create a social utopian settlement. Placing the kibbutz within the wider context of utopian social ideals and how they have historically been physically and architecturally constructed, this book discusses the form of the 'ideal settlement' as an integral part and means for realizing a utopian doctrine. It presents an analysis of physical planning in the kibbutz through the past eight decades and how changes in ideology are reflected in changes in layout and aesthetics. In doing so, this book shows how a utopian settlement organization behaves over time, from their first appearance in 1920 on, to an examination of the current spatial layouts and the directions of their expected future development.

Chapter 1

Social Utopia and the Ideal Settlement

1.1 Social Utopia and the Aesthetic Ideal

Social organization is an outcome of the recognition of the individual’s limited power as compared to the advantages present in the power of cooperation. The existence of a society is contingent upon its individuals’ consent to accept a behavioral code, a body of laws, enabling collective life. The individual who chooses to live in cooperation relinquishes a little of his personal freedom in exchange for social protection. Aristotle wrote that ‘… the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life’.¹

From the moment that the basic existential advantages have been achieved, the search commences for the social system capable of realizing the goal of ‘the good life’. The definition of the essential quality of ‘the good life’ and the system of social rules enabling its attainment constitute the main topic of discussion in Political Science. Human history testifies to the existence of myriad assorted systems of government intended to serve the interests of various population groups so that they might achieve ‘the good life’.

The Hebrew Bible recounts early discussions or quests for the optimal form or model of government. The anarchy and the lack of social and private security experienced by the Israelite tribes during the period of the Judges was explained by the fact that ‘there is no king in Israel, each man does as he deems fit’ (Judges 17.6). In response to the people’s complaint and their request for a king, Samuel, in his speech about ‘the king’s law’ (1 Sam. 8.11), assailed the monarchical system. The prophet Ezekiel, living in exile at Babylon, formulated religious and social principles for the future state to be established after the Return to Zion, where governance would be divided between priests from the House of Zadok and a king from the House of David.

Greek philosophers, in their search for a superior model for a social organization with practical prospects of realization, dealt extensively with various forms of government and their ramifications. Plato and Aristotle defined and evaluated governments and the characteristics of their ramifications and variations. The search for ideal forms of government and the attempts to realize them did not die with ancient Greece, and continue to this very day. The history of models of government is full of intellectual formulations of proposals for the best social order and its system of organization, or utopias, as they are called after the famous book by Sir Thomas More, and of attempts to bring them to fruition.

Some of the thinkers who strove to realize their ideas in practical terms accompanied their social theory with a description of the spatial layout of the settlement they had conceived. They regarded these spatial layout principles not only as the practical expression of an ideal design, but also as an auxiliary tool and instrument contributing to its realization, an ideal form of settlement for the utopian society. In the present discussion we will use the term ‘ideal’ in the formal context of the physical layout of a settlement, and the term ‘utopia’ to refer to the type of social framework and organization proposed by social visionaries.

The yearning for a utopian state is interwoven with the experience of constructing ideal settlements. Prophets, philosophers and statesmen have created visions of utopian societies and attempted to describe their metaphysical forms. Artists and architects have envisaged ideal cities and attempted to describe their physical layout. Just as the utopian social thinker seeks a world combining clear and unmarred social order and balance, so the ideal-oriented architect seeks to find the ideal geometric order capable of expressing perfection and balance. The traditional design of an ideal settlement for a utopian society entails two categories that serve different purposes: the aesthetic ideal, and the social utopia.

The aesthetic ideal accepts the existing or proposed social order and aspires to strengthen and signify it through an orderly visual design of the physical environs. The social utopia strives to create a new social order while simultaneously designing the physical environs in the spirit of the social ideology so that the environmental design may serve and fortify the survivability of the social idea. Some social utopians relate to the social significance of the settlement’s physical design. Plato referred to the connection between the social ideal and its realization in the layout of the ideal, or, in the terms we are using, the utopian state;² so too have other utopians, such as Ebenezer Howard in his design for the garden city.³ The planners of the kibbutzim and of the workers’ and cooperative settlements in Israel also addressed the reciprocal influences of the social ideal and the physical environs. The two outlooks – the social utopia and the aesthetic ideal – represent a world in which perfect balance is the law and the way of life

The vision of the ideal city depicts a static situation, an attempt to turn a city into a perfect work of art, to arrest time, to prevent momentum and growth: an image that cannot be changed. Hermann Bauer defined the utopian description as a perfect image entailing ‘a carefully considered artistic theory or attitude towards art integrated with a fully developed political and social structure conceived of as extant in a locus independent of time, place, history or accident’.⁴

Since a utopia is an optimal state, it is therefore final and is not subject to change, supplementation or reduction. Thus, it represents a way of life that is impossible in a dynamic and changing world which combines inventions and the discovery of new processes, as well as infinite and unsatisfied creative inspirations. Robin Marris wonders: ‘I have a formal difficulty about the concept of Utopia, that is to say a society so perfect that any future change (improvement) is inconceivable. Or is Utopia dynamic, a state to which we are continually aspiring but never reach because it itself is continually changing, moving ahead of us? I cannot subscribe to the static version, for its assumptions are inherently absurd …’⁵

Despite the fundamental static assumption of both the social utopia and the aesthetic ideal, we witness many practical historical attempts to realize utopian plans. All of these utopias either breached the real and mental walls surrounding their utopian boundaries, or withered and were erased from the face of the earth. To quote Colin Rowe: ‘Utopia becomes increasingly compromised as it becomes increasingly acceptable’.⁶

1.2 The Geometry of the Ideal Settlement

When an architect or urban planner endeavors to express a perfect world through geometric shapes, he naturally tends to opt for perfect shapes: a circle, square, rectangle, hexagon or octagon. This was the custom of the scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers of ancient times when striving to present models of the cosmos. Each culture created its own model of the universe.

The ancient Egyptian model, as represented in the hieroglyphic symbol of the universe, is a cube shape in which heaven and earth are square disks connected to four corner poles (Figure 1.01).⁷ The biblical model of the cosmos is also a cube or square prism with four sides and supporting poles in the heavens (Figure 1.02).⁸ In the Mayan-Aztec culture, the model resembles two square pyramids depicting the upper and lower worlds with a square layer for the world of the living sandwiched in between.

According to Herodotus, the Greeks of the Homeric era believed that the world consists of a heavenly half-sphere, which shelters the earth, a round disk encircled by the Oceanus River....