UTOPIA OF SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE

UTOPIA OF SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE

At the Faust Center in Hanover, the curators of the exhibition decided to draw attention to projects that have historically—or conceptually—shaped human life: the social fabric dressed in form. The project is particularly interesting as it is staged in a city closely tied to the attempt to implement the idea of the ideal garden city, developed by Ebenezer Howard in Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902).

Throughout history, humanity has always strived to organize space in order to improve living conditions, though the outcome has not always met the expectations and hopes invested in such efforts. In the exhibition, large-format posters occupying entire walls serve as a backdrop for the presented works. These posters depict examples of brutalist architecture from around the world—buildings as organisms, as machines. Their function is designed to prioritize space and structure over the individual, who becomes merely a component within the belly of the system.

This spatial organization becomes a pretext for artists to not only engage in a dialogue with urban planning but also with the broader idea of systemic organization. It is telling that the architect, the artist, the designer often aims to impose a certain order on behaviors, goals, and the very fabric of everyday life. But does this truly lead to the intended outcomes?

Once again, the SM Rk+ group takes up the challenge of confronting such assumptions with reality. They expose systems that were conceived with noble intentions as mechanisms of oppression, destruction, ambiguity, and the falsity behind the utopian idea. The hidden suffering and origins of exclusion are veiled behind a façade of harmony. The works resonate with the horror of lost dreams—like the idea of Atlantis in Radtke’s piece, or the ideal city in Klaman’s. Here, the utopian vision results in the exclusion of animals, reducing thought to pure domination—anthropocentrism—and in the destruction of oceanic flora.

In the structuring of social groups—like the Roman military camp in Mosur’s work or the refugee camp in Śmietański’s—lurks the shadow of fascism, religious intolerance, and racial and ethnic exclusion. These projects serve as reminders that in thousands of years of human history, we have not managed to escape plans made by some, for their own, and without the others.

In the era of posthumanism, these works highlight the dangers of thinking only about ourselves, and without the others. Today, “the other” no longer refers only to an “Arab” or “person of color,” but extends to the entire ecosystem—a biotope built from complex interdependencies that sustain the planet in a fragile state of equilibrium.

The artists assert that without expanding our thinking far beyond the boundaries of human society, the “utopia of social architecture” declared by the curators will always remain just that—a utopia.

Here, critical art transforms into a manifesto for the post-human era, deriving compelling form from a profound reflection on the meaning of our presence on this planet.