Design Yearbook 2017

Spectres of Utopia and Modernism
Nathaniel Coleman
Students excavated indwelling ‘ghosts of modernism’ in surviving Rotterdam examples of heroic modernist architecture from the 1920s and
1930s, and in orthodox post-war modernist buildings constructed between 1945-1960. In quarrying for ghosts of modernism, students also
chased spectres of Utopia, harbouring the potential for tragedy and the promise of better ways of being at the same time.
The modernity students resuscitated is one of near infinite possibilities, bound up with re-enchanting the world; not the spent modernity of
technocratic excess. The Utopia pursued was as a method for shaping desires for better ways of being – not the catastrophic totalising Utopia
of convention.
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Top - Alex Blanchard
Bottom, left to right - Adam Hill, Jessica Goodwin