The Shapes of Utopia

Harvard GSD

“… you speak of that city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only, for I do not think there is such a one anywhere on earth...” —John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (1874)Utopia’s fall from grace in the modern period is crucially tied to architecture's failure in giving shape to dreams of a new society wrought from social and political transformation. Its memorable articulations appear in a venerable philosophical and literary tradition, which includes Plato's…