Technology, Morality and Modern Ideal Cities: Arcadia and Science Fiction
The threads of this thesis are several theoretical issues of modern urban ideals. Modern architects and urban designers conceived their individual artifacts, which assumed to be laid out on the new settings totally different from the existing urban fabrics derived from inherently medieval ones. In the discussion of modern ideal society, the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment was a pivotal point. Innovations in technology and expanded living territories since the double revolution have been critical factors in the evolution of new ideas of urbanism. The tremendous success in science and technology led a way to the 'science-fiction' environment as a destined apocalyptic world. The dream, whether it was socialist or in any other believes, to a pastoral utopia beyond the capitalist society was represented through the ideal cities, which were modern versions of arcadia in the other approaches. Two sides of revolutionary ideas are presented as a futurist city and a garden city, which are on the separate notions but co-existed or overlapped in a single urban project such as in Le Corbusier urban schemes or even Tchumi's recent work, Parc de la Villette. Urban ideas in the twentieth century are based on urban naturalism, the notion of which was consistant from abbe Laugier to Le Corbusier, as well as machine aesthetics interpreted in terms of archeological research and modern technology.