New Babylon (Constant Nieuwenhuys)
Encyclopedia
New Babylon is a Utopian anti-capitalist city designed in 1959-74 by artist-architect Constant Nieuwenhuys
. Henri Lefebvre
explained: "a New Babylon -- a provocative name, since in the Protestant tradition Babylon is a figure of evil. New Babylon was to be the figure of good that took the name of the cursed city and transformed itself into the city of the future." The goal was the creating of alternative life experiences, called 'situations'. Sarah Williams Goldhagenp, explained:
Constant's New Babylon, and his 1953 work For an Architecture of Situation, were based on the idea that architecture itself would allow and instigate a transformation of daily reality."
Constant Nieuwenhuys
Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch painter, and one of the foremost innovators of Unitary Urbanism. In 1941, he became deeply interested in the work of Paul Cézanne, Cubism and German Expressionism....
. Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
explained: "a New Babylon -- a provocative name, since in the Protestant tradition Babylon is a figure of evil. New Babylon was to be the figure of good that took the name of the cursed city and transformed itself into the city of the future." The goal was the creating of alternative life experiences, called 'situations'. Sarah Williams Goldhagenp, explained:
[In 1950s, Constant] had already been working for years on his "New Babylon" series of paintings, sketches, texts,and architectural models describing the shape of a post-revolutionary society. Constant's New Babylon was to be a series of linked transformable structures, some of which were themselves the size of a small city--what architects call a megastructureMegastructureA megastructure is a very large manmade object, though the limits of precisely how large this is vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building....
. Perched above ground, Constant's megastructures would literally leave the bourgeois metropolis below and would be populated by homo ludensHomo LudensHomo Ludens or "Man the Player" is a book written in 1938 by Dutch historian, cultural theorist and professor Johan Huizinga.It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society....
--man at play. (Homo Ludens is the title of a book by the great Dutch historian Johan HuizingaJohan HuizingaJohan Huizinga , was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.-Life:Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his...
.) In the New Babylon, the bourgeois shackles of work, family lifeFamily LifeFamily Life is a magazine published by, and primarily for, the Old Order Amish. The publisher is Pathway Publishers of Aylmer, Ontario, Canada. Unlike some Amish publications, Family Life is printed entirely in English rather than Pennsylvania Dutch or German.The magazine was founded in 1968 and is...
, and civic responsibility would be discarded. The post-revolutionary individual would wander from one leisure environment to another in search of new sensations. Beholden to no one, he would sleep, eat, recreate, and procreate where and when he wanted. Self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction were Constant's social goals. Deductive reasoning, goal-oriented production, the construction and betterment of a political community--all these were eschewed.
Constant's New Babylon, and his 1953 work For an Architecture of Situation, were based on the idea that architecture itself would allow and instigate a transformation of daily reality."