By Dogma

With contributions by Amid/Cero9, Aristide Antonas, Behemoth, Dogma, Didier Faustino, FORA+ Beth Hughes, MAPOffice, Alex Maymind, Microcities, Miniatura, Philippe Morel, and Raumlabor.  In 1971, Superstudio published their twelve Ideal Cities, “the supreme achievement of twenty thousand years of civilization, blood, sweat and tears”. The Superstudio piece was less about imagining the Future than it was about re-imagining Architecture as a form of knowledge and as a platform for thinking rather than mere practice. After 44 years, Black Square and Roman gallery CAMPO asked twelve groups of architects to give their own answer to the original brief. The Ideal City genre insinuates the possibility that space and bodily presence might not matter anymore in the future, while at the same time providing an ironic commentary on the architect’s curse: our need to be projective and optimistic by default, even (or maybe especially) when civilization seems in fact to have come to an end. While Superstudio's response was intentionally dystopian, there might be other ways to interpret today the same brief: in The Supreme Achievement, a group of contemporary architects try to put forward not only ideas for new forms of life, but also new possibilities for our political imagination.

This title is rare and out of print.