The Situationist City

by Simon Sadler

Simon Sadler searches for the Situationist City among the detritus of tracts, manifestos, and works of art that the Situationist International left behind. From 1957 to 1972 the artistic and political movement known as the Situationist International (SI) worked aggressively to subvert the conservative ideology of the Western world. The movement's broadside attack on "establishment" institutions and values left its mark upon the libertarian left, the counterculture, the revolutionary events of 1968, and more recent phenomena from punk to postmodernism. But over time it tended to obscure Situationism's own founding principles. In this book, Simon Sadler investigates the artistic, architectural, and cultural theories that were once the foundations of Situationist thought, particularly as they applied to the form of the modern city. According to the Situationists, the benign professionalism of architecture and design had led to a sterilization of the world that threatened to wipe out any sense of spontaneity or playfulness. The Situationists hankered after the "pioneer spirit" of the modernist period, when new ideas, such as those of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, still felt fresh and vital. By the late fifties, movements such as British and American Pop Art and French Nouveau Ralisme had become intensely interested in everyday life, space, and mass culture. The SI aimed to convert this interest into a revolution—at the level of the city itself. Their principle for the reorganization of cities was simple and let the citizens themselves decide what spaces and architecture they want to live in and how they wish to live in them. This would instantly undermine the powers of state, bureaucracy, capital, and imperialism, thereby revolutionizing people's everyday lives. Simon Sadler searches for the Situationist City among the detritus of tracts, manifestos, and works of art that the SI left behind. The book is divided into three parts. The first, "The Naked City," outlines the Situationist critique of the urban environment as it then existed. The second, "Formulary for a New Urbanism," examines Situationist principles for the city and for city living. The third, "A New Babylon," describes actual designs proposed for a Situationist City.

Genres: Architecture, Theory, Nonfiction, Urbanism, Philosophy, Urban Studies, Art

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simon Sadler has written a fascinating book on Urban living via the thoughts and writings by the Situationists. What is interesting is that cities are becoming a large playground for leisure. NYC for instance is one big shopping mall of sorts, and the same for Los Angeles, which has 3rd Street, Hollywood & Highland, etc.

In theory consumers can just move into the new shops. I see this happening in Hollywood at the moment. The bulk of Situationist thought on urban life came from the era of the 40's through the 60's. At the time the future was thought about - but now the future is here - and what do we exactly have here?

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third section on New Babylon was the most interesting to me. Even though Constant was just pursuing unreasonable delusions of grandeur, looking to basically make a floating city of scaffolding over existing ones, with enough weird and disorientating architecture to make you feel like you were on LSD—though the easier route to this would just be taking the drugs. He admitted eventually that it was impossible to build.

That Debord and SI kept the concepts of "drift", the "construction of situations", "unitary urbanism", and "psychogeography" quite vague, poetic, abstract, and of the imagination fits into the idea that the original SI more aligned with art than politics were more Romantics, Bohemians, and Artists than revolutionaries, activists, and academic political theorists. Even the 2nd political wave of SI that rejected all art and would not like Marx imagine even what a post-revolutionary utopia would look like was pretty bohemian, idealistic, and yes more transgressive, but ultimately like all avant-garde utopians doomed to fail to make their imagined dreamworlds a reality. After all it was all just a game that were playing as advocates of "permanent play" and the voluntary poverty rallying cry of "never work", and afford your basic means by writing, art, rabble rousing, mooching, and welfare: which is fine by me, but realizing your ideal reality is not the one working class people who suffer no matter how much you idealize their "authentic" lives should be made clear in pursuing a sociopolitical movement to actually change people's lives. Otherwise it's just self-aggrandizement disguised as social change.

[Cassidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing view of urbanism through the situationist lense, combining both the functionality of a planned utopia and the avant garde of the grand reimagining.

[mahatmanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

saya pengen punya ini karena membaca henri lefebvre yang oleh kebanyakan orang disebut-sebut punya hubungan dengan para situationists.
siapa mereka? nah, semula minjem dari perpustakan yayasan seni cemeti, kemudian beli sendiri, used [lagi! he.he..].

[surfurbian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure I want 16-yr old drug addicts designing my city but there might be good lesson in there for us. Do not expect the "gubmint" to do much for you. Sometimes you gotta get out there and build what you want yourself.

[Ridgely]

There's some seriously awkward sentence-structuring and diction, and it's definitely inside baseball, but it's very informative so far.

I recommend Debord's Society of The Spectacle before you start on this one.

[Hugo Serra · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are dozens of books on the situationist ideas and history. This book is tremendously easy to follow on the impact of the IS on the fields of architecture and urbanism. I also recommend Sadler article "the Indeterminate Utopia" in the AD June 2001 "New Babylons"