There are forms of imagining the future which have not been fully explored. This is one of them :
” This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical
basis of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until
experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities
specifically established for this purpose, cities bringing together-in
addition to the facilities necessary for basic comfort and security buildings
charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing
desires, forces and events, past, present and to come. A rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis,
into architectural expression becomes more and more urgent
as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
“Everyone will, so to speak, live in their own personal “cathedrals.”
There will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and
houses where one cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring
to travelers.
“This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary assemblage
of castles, grottoes, lakes, etc. It would be the baroque stage of urbanism
considered as a means of knowledge. But this theoretical phase is
already outdated. We know that a modern building could be constructed
which would have no resemblance to a medieval castle but
which could preserve and enhance the Castle poetic power (by the conservation of a strict minimum of lines, the transposition of certain
others, the positioning of openings, the topographical location, etc.) .
The districts of this city could correspond t o the whole spectrum o f
diverse feelings that one encounters by chance i n everyday life.
The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS
DRIFTING. * The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next
will result in total disorientation.
“Couples will no longer pass their nights in the home where they
live and receive guests, which is nothing but a banal social custom. The
chamber of love will be more distant from the center of the city: it will
naturally recreate for the partners a sense of exoticism * in a locale less
open to light, more hidden, so as to recover the atmosphere of secrecy.
The opposite tendency, seeking a center for intellectual discourse, will
proceed through the same technique.
“Later, as the activities inevitably grow stale, this drifting will partially
leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation.”
Ivan Chtcheglov, 1953