Homage to Michel Ragon
FRAC Centre, Orléans, 19 September 2014 – 22 February 2015

Architects: Dominique Jakob, Brendan MacFarlane
Text: György Szegő
Photos: Diane Arques, Nicolas Borel, György Szegő

A philosophical concept 2,000 years ago, the idea of a planned city has been more like a literary utopia in the past 500 years. Since more than a century it has also been an architectural vision too. In the 1950s, under the climate of the cold war, Western architects broke away from functionalism and the dictates of socialist utopias, and initiated a radical redefinition of the concept of a city. They made in-depth research into the social mutations of the contemporary capitalist world in order to project and organize Western lifestyle and the global system with an appropriate „urban model”.
The historic section of the exhibition includes works by Pierre Székely amongst other authors such as Peter Cook, the Archigram’s chief figure, Architecture Principe (Claude Parent – Paul Virilio), Archizoom Associati, Chanéac, Haus-Rücker-Co and Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Aldo Loris Rossi, Paolo Soleri, Iannis Xenakis as well as Superstudio or Zünd up. In the section representing the present and the future we can see designs by Jean Nouvel, Hani Rashid, Dominique Perrault, Foster + Partners, Sou Fujimoto Architects, BIG, Delhi 2050, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, OMA, The Petropolis of Tomorrow, SNØHETTA and the utopias by Urban Think Tank, amongst many others.