Unbuilt Utopian Cities 1460 to 1900: Reconstructing their Architecture and Political Philosophy

Tessa Morrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138573307
• eBook ISBN: 9781317005551
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Bringing together ten utopian works that mark important points in the history and an evolution in social and political philosophies, this book not only reflects on the texts and their political philosophy and implications, but also, their architecture and how that architecture informs the political philosophy or social agenda that the author intended. Each of the ten authors expressed their theory through concepts of community and utopian architecture, but each featured an architectural solution at the centre of their social and political philosophy, as none of the cities were ever built, they have remained as utopian literature. Some of the works examined are very well-known, such as Tommaso Campanella's Civitas Solis, while others such as Joseph Michael Gandy's Designs for Cottages, are relatively obscure. However, even with the best known works, this volume offers new insights by focusing on the architecture of the cities and how that architecture represents the author's political philosophy. It reconstructs the cities through a 3-D computer program, ArchiCAD, using Artlantis to render. Plans, sections, elevations and perspectives are presented for each of the cities. The ten cities are: Filarete - Sforzina; Albrecht Dürer - Fortified Utopia; Tommaso Campanella - The City of the Sun; Johann Valentin Andreae - Christianopolis; Joseph Michael Gandy - An Agricultural Village; Robert Owen - Villages of Unity and Cooperation; James Silk Buckingham - Victoria; Robert Pemberton - Queen Victoria Town; King Camp Gillette - Metropolis; and Bradford Peck - The World a Department Store. Each chapter considers the work in conjunction with contemporary thought, the political philosophy and the reconstruction of the city. Although these ten cities represent over 500 years of utopian and political thought, they are an interlinked thread that had been drawn from literature of the past and informed by contemporary thought and society. The book is structured in two parts:

Chapter 1
Introduction

From a twenty first century perspective, a utopian city is a city that is ideal in its living conditions and is generally delineated by sublime architecture—a paradise on earth. There is a sense that a utopian city is either ethereal or born from human hope and folly, but either way, Utopia is most likely unobtainable. Yet this is far from the original concept of a utopian city. When Thomas More published his famous novel Utopia in 1516 he was exploring different political and societal solutions to the social problems of his day. Utopia has a great deal of ambiguity in the text; nevertheless, More was exploring new approaches and ideas of what society was and the structure it should have. Utopia creates the fictional dialogue that gives its name to a body of societal and political thought, and its literary device of a shipwreck or equivalent to discover a new ideal city has been replicated for over 500 years.

Utopia was written in two books: the first outlines the problems of society in Henry VIII’s England, while the second tells the tale of the society that could be the solution to these problems. The first book is a dialogue between More, his close friend Peter Giles and a veteran sea traveller and philosopher, Raphael Hythloday. Hythloday noted the futility of hanging thieves for stealing food for their own survival. He claimed that as the English Commonwealth was founded on property this would continue to perpetuate injustice in the community in the interest of the owners of that property. Their discussion on the justice system of the day was broad-ranging, but Hythloday claimed that there was an alternative system of government. In the second book, Hythloday described an island called Utopia where there was no private property and the citizens lived satisfying, good and content lives and where justice and equality ruled in a spirit of cooperation. There were 54 cities on the island of Utopia; all were similar in size and appearance. Hythloday described one of the cities, Amaurot, but not for any particular distinguishing features as it was the same as the other cities. Amaurot was described only because it was the seat of the Supreme Council. The cities were comfortable and well-resourced, the houses were uniform so that the streets looked like one large house, and each house had a large garden. The cities were fortified, and Amaurot was supplied with fresh water from the Amaurot River that ran for 80 miles to the city. Every city was divided into four equal areas, and in the middle of each quarter was a marketplace.

Each citizen was instructed in agriculture from their childhood, and every 20 years each family had to stay and work in the country for two years before they returned to the city. However, every man also had a trade, such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, blacksmithing or carpentry. All trades were held in equal esteem. The trades worked together in a cooperative manner. Hythloday’s description of the system of trades would have been familiar to his sixteenth century audience as it was the corporate spirit of the craft guilds. In 1502, the London Leather Sellers amalgamated with the Glovers-purses. In a petition to the Court of Alderman they expressed this ideal corporate spirit; the petition stated that those who work together on a daily basis would:

be knitted together in true almighty, charitable and kindly dealings, of which not only growth [will be] such please to God but also [to] the Commonwealth and prosperity to all [of] them that in such wise dealings so always will they say dealings be put and set under due good and ordinate rules.¹

In the early sixteenth century the guilds attempted to play a significant role in legislating for their guild and products by putting pressure on the municipal authorities. However, they also played an important secondary role—the social welfare of members. The guilds helped ill and destitute members, assisted the widows of members, contributed towards hospital and funeral costs, promoted educational programmes and did charitable work. A guild member lived their social life as well as their business life with other members of his guild. This cooperative spirit of the guild is clearly represented in Utopian society.

However, there were many things in Utopia that a sixteenth century audience would not have recognised or approved of. For instance, before marriage, a bride was presented to the bridegroom naked to demonstrate that she had no defects;² there was no private property and everything was provided for;³ both sexes would wear the same clothes without any distinction between the sexes and the fashion never altered.⁴

More’s description of Amaurot was vague. It was a market town, with open green spaces, communal halls, egalitarian housing for no more than six thousand families, with between 10 and 16 people in each family. The few details given in the text do not provide a clear impression of the layout of the city. Late Medieval and early Renaissance cities were dominated by a magnificent cathedral or palatial palace, but in Utopia there were neither. More described the structure of the government, which consisted of elected Syphogrants (magistrates chosen by 30 families), Tanibors (magistrates in charge of 10 Syphogrants) and a prince, and operated though an assembly and a senate. Although they required a significant and spacious building to house proceedings, there was no defined and lavish court, as the Utopians despised pomp and displays of wealth. There was no need for a building for the treasury, as gold and silver were cast into chamber pots so the Utopians would retain their contempt for such riches.⁵ There was also no need for an armoury, since the Utopians despised war and if war was forced upon them they would use mercenaries from other countries. There was no need for a Guildhall, which was one of the dominant buildings of London in More’s time,⁶ since there were no individual guilds and everything was regulated through the senate. There were a few temples in each city that More described as magnificent, nobly built and spacious. However, they were unadorned and dark inside, and the only features described were the priests’ gowns, which were decorated with the plumes of several birds that were arranged in a sacred pattern. The essence of Utopia was simplicity in its clothing, housing and its lack of luxurious display. One of the most important features of the cities was the gardens, which were not only beautiful, but useful.

The political institutions that constitute a typical city of the time were absent in Utopia. The cover page of Utopia shows the cities of Utopia with crenellated walls and large central palaces, a style of city that would be suitable for a powerful king or a feudal estate, but not a commonwealth such as Utopia (Figure 1.1). Hans Holbein produced the woodcuts for the cover plates for both the first edition in 1516 and the Basel edition in 1518, and More was pleased with the images.⁷ The style of the cities depicted would have been familiar to both More and Holbein, yet these images of the cities contradict the text.

The 54 cities were divided into four equal quarters, with a market in each quarter. Markets were an important urban feature of medieval cities as they played an important economic, social and cultural role.⁸ However, what need was there for a market in Utopia as there was nothing for sale? A set of stores dispersed around the city would have been far more convenient for the citizens. Also, More replaced the social and cultural need for the marketplace with communal halls where the citizens gathered for dining, entertainment and lectures. The marketplace was a suitable urban plan for the mercantile economy supported by the guilds system, but in Utopia they had no role to play and it was clear in the text that More struggled to give them a defined purpose.⁹ The plans of the cities in Utopia, although incompletely defined, were not conducive to supporting the political philosophy proposed by More.

In Thomas Aquinas’s advice to a ruler in Re Regimine Principum (On the Government of Rulers) he claimed that the city was like the cosmos and must be ordered and planned. Aquinas stated that once a suitable site had been selected then:

1.1 Cover page of Thomas More’s Utopia

Source: Drawn by Author from More 2008.

It is necessary that the one who founds the city or kingdom distinguish the parts of the chosen place according to the exigencies of those things which the perfection of the city of kingdom requires … if the work of foundation is for a city, it is necessary that the one who founds it decide what place should be appointed for sacred matters, what for handing down the law, what for individual artisans … Finally, one must provide for necessities to be at hand for individuals according to their individual constitutions and states; otherwise, the city or kingdom could never last.¹⁰

From More’s limited description, he was describing a city that would be suitable for a mercantile economy and for a powerful king or a government with a merchant class. Perhaps his emphasis on the cooperative spirit of the guild system led him to the assumption of the need for a market. Nevertheless, the acknowledgement that the political philosophy of a government and the plan of the city were inextricably linked had been clearly established 50 years earlier in Leon Battista Alberti’s Decem Libri de re Aedificatoria, completed in 1452, but not published until 1486.

Alberti distinguished the plan of the city ruled by a tyrant and the city ruled by a republic. Both represent a different ground plan: the tyrant must control and contain his subjects while protecting the tyrannical government, remain in a quarter, and abandon the centre. In a republic, the public buildings and the government are more central and accessible to all. The trades would be laid out in an organised pattern that would be appropriate to the workability of the trade in a system of zones that would be convenient for the citizens. Although Alberti was the first to consider an urban plan that defined the link between political philosophy and the plan of a city, he did not provide a full plan of his city. However, other architectural theorists, such as Filarete, Francesco di Georgio and Sebastiano Serlio developed the idea of trade and industrial zones.

Alberti’s architectural thesis reached England in 1487 only a year after it was published in Florence.¹¹ It is possible that More knew the work. However, Utopia is an enigmatic work; at the end of the work More stated that Hythloday was both learned and had obtained great knowledge of the world, but that he could not agree with everything he said in his tale. ‘However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our government’.¹² Additionally, throughout the text More utilised humour with his use of Greek names. The word ‘Utopia’ is generally translated as ‘nowhere’ or ‘no place’, ‘Hythloday’ is an ‘expert in trifles’ and ‘Amaurot’ is a ‘foggy city’ or ‘evanescent city’.¹³ Perhaps the marketplace in a non-mercantile economy was part of that humour. More’s meanings are always multi-layered; the word ‘utopia’ from the Greek

plus

has a double meaning: ‘no place’ but also ‘place where all is well/an idealistic place’,¹⁴ leaving his meaning open to interpretation.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries new worlds were being discovered and strange tales of different civilisations were being published. Christopher Columbus’s four journeys of discovery to the New World between the years 1492 and 1502 were recorded in a large number of letters and dispatches that were widely circulated.¹⁵ Amerigo Vespucci described his four voyages in an appendix Quatuor Americi Vesputi Navigationes of Cosmogaphiae Introductio, originally published in 1507. The new continent was inhabited by unheard-of and unthought-of races with lifestyles that were never before known to the ‘civilised’ world. Amerigo found people living a life very similar in many respects to More’s Utopia. They had no property, but held all things in common and lived according to nature. He claimed, ‘gold, jewels and pearls and other riches, they hold as nothing, and although they have them in their own lands, they do no labour to obtain them nor do they value them’.¹⁶ Amerigo also described a shipwreck on his fourth voyage. The republican city-states and city league were also known in More’s time; for example, the Hanseatic League, the Swiss Republic and the Republics of Venice and Florence, together with the well-ordered prosperous cities of Holland. The reader of the new discoveries of Columbus and Amerigo must have believed that the existence of Utopia was more than a distinct possibility. To enhance this illusion of reality, Hythloday claimed that he had been with Amerigo Vespucci in the three last voyages to the New World that had recently been discovered.¹⁷

Utopia was published in Latin in 1516, and had enormous success: within three months it was being reprinted; this was then followed by a Paris edition in 1517 and a Basel edition in 1518. By the mid-sixteenth century Utopia had been translated into six vernacular European languages: Germany, Italian, French, English, Dutch and Spanish. In several of these translated editions Book I was excluded, and in one case there was a much abbreviated translation of Book I.¹⁸ Utopia has generated 500 years of scholarship and is considered the most prominent Christian conception of an ideal society,¹⁹ despite the fact that the Utopians were not Christian. More stated that he was influenced by Plato’s Republic, although it was more likely that he was indebted to Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, at least in its narrative. Nevertheless, the book was unique at the time. Utopia anticipates that the solutions to social problems are sought in well-designed legal and institutional adjustments, and not from moralistic condemnation of the consequences of the problem, which was the prevailing attitude of the Church and society of the day.²⁰

Utopia was highly influential: it brought a Humanistic approach to the problems of society. Although Plato had introduced the concept of an engineered political structure in the Republic, by considering the definition of justice, order and the character o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Colour Plates
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword: Space, Ideology and the City by Professor Michael J. Ostwald
• Preface
• Introduction
• Utopian Cities of the Renaissance: From the Ideal City for Craft Guilds to the Mixed Agrarian and Trade Society
• Utopian Cities of the Industrial Revolution: From an Agrarian Society to Cooperative and Industrial Cities
• Bibliography
• Index