#utopian architecture

BodysIsekKing

For the architect Claude Parent drawing always meant adventure and the exploration of uncharted territory: his drawings, even more than his built work, represent his expansive imagination and function less as impressions of an ongoing project but more as ascertainments of his own visionary creativity. Utopian in character they evoke images of film architectures or the endless universe that seem to point beyond our earthen existence. The book "Claude Parent: Visionary Architect", edited by the architect's daughter and grandson Chloé and Laszlo Parent and published by Rizzoli in 2019, collects some 160 of Parent's striking drawings from his entire career. One of the key elements of both his architectural theory and his drawings is the oblique function which favored the sloped plane over the horizontal. With it Parent wanted to create surfaces that enabled a broader range of use and stimulate the individual to be more receptive and willing to engage in participation. But beyond these more concrete drawings there also is a wealth of utopian (or dystopian depending on the reader’s point of view) drawings that imagine futuristic cities and worlds that in the true sense of the word are fantastic. They create a faraway and somewhat limitless future.

Raimund Abraham

Universal House

1967

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Aldo Loris Rossi, Casa del Portuale, 1.