Constant's New Babylon

by Mark Wigley

The New Babylon Project was a project that consisted of a vast, layered, sheltered structure, supported by pillars and covering the entire earth. Human labor is rendered superfluous. Dwelling, work, recreation and transportation take a back seat to that which drives Homo Ludens, creativity. Constant was proposing an alternate society and along with it, an alternate architecture. Not just for those with architectural concerns, but for anyone who thinks.

Genres: Architecture, Art

236 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 1999

About the author

Mark Wigley is Professor and Dean Emeritus at Columbia GSAPP. He served as Dean from 2004 to 2014. Wigley has written extensively on the theory and practice of architecture and is the author of Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (1998); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1995); and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (1993). He co-edited The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationalist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (2001).

In 2005 he co-founded Volume magazine with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman as a collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO (Rotterdam), and C-lab (Columbia University). Wigley curated the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at The Museum of Modern Art, and others at The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam.

Mark Wigley was awarded the Resident Fellowship, Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (1989), International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism (1990) and a Graham Foundation Gran (1997). He received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

wicked

[Kruip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Constant' zijn manier van denken over de mens en zijn omgeving blijft fascinerend. Het mooie in zijn werk is dat hij in staat is om in een imaginaire kleine uitvoering van zijn zelf door zijn eigen creaties te lopen en zich te verwonderen. Tegelijkertijd gedraagt de "grote" Constant zich als een haast scheppende god. Zijn plan om dit land zodanig te verbinden dat iedere inwoner een mooi uitzicht heeft. Het "groene hart" is in zijn plan veel groter en overal aanwezig. Dit plan getuigt van visie, is in feite het mooiste planologische manifest wat ooit geschreven is.