Arquitectura visionaria: la utopía dibujada

Abstract

During the Age of Reason, Boullée already criticized the Vitruvian vision of seeing architecture as the art of building. For him there was a previous step: before constructing it is necessary to conceive. The architectural creation is the consequence of a poetic or projectual criticism. Thus, the goal of criticism is always the proposal of new ideas. In this way the discipline evolves. Ideas are represented through utopia, and it is which change the world, not the limited and dogmatic reality. Let’s look at the “Disparates” of Goya, or the essential non-figurative reality that Cubist artists wanted to convey to us. The drawing is a means to express very suggestive ideas that can take to the architecture to a more propitious philosophical and theoretical state. Examples of this were Piranesi with his “Prisons”, Boullée with his “Newton’s Cenotaph “, Sant’Elia with his “Città Nuova”, Chernikov with his “Architectural fantasies”. Without forgetting Taut, Archigram or Woods. They are all great visionaries who did not need to build to give great contributions to architecture. They needed to conceive and their medium was drawing. A drawing can explain a whole philosophy of thought in very few strokes.