Civilia: Utopia in the Age of Photomechanical Reproduction. Architectural (Photo)copy as (Re)invention

Abstract

In June 1971, <em>The Architectural Review </em>featured the culmination of Townscape, a campaign that the issue’s author, as well as the magazine’s editor and owner, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, promoted for decades. <em>Civilia, The End of Suburban Man </em>was a monograph that described a fictional English New Town, illustrated through an extensive collection of views of its urban scene made from hundreds of photographs of buildings, many of which had appeared in the pages of the different publications of the Architectural Press in the preceding decades. Civilia did not manage to provoke the debate that Hastings desired, remaining a mere curiosity wrapped in a spectacular visual apparatus that has hardly been analyzed. However, the striking <em>vedute </em>of Civilia hide an elaborate exercise in the generation of architectural form. Its collages include an extensive catalog of architectural strategies and forms in which buildings are appropriated through their photographic images, to engender a series of distorted copies, new architectural personae which simultaneously alter our perception of the originals by either enveloping them in new narratives or revealing their hidden qualities.

En junio de 1971, <em>The Architectural Review </em>acogía en sus páginas el monográfico Civilia, <em>The End of Suburban Man, </em>concebida como el colofón de la campaña alrededor del concepto del <em>Townscape </em>promovida durante décadas por su autor, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, editor y propietario de la revista. El número describía una ficticia <em>New Town </em>inglesa, ilustrada por medio de una extensa colección de vistas confeccionadas a partir de cientos de fotografías de edificios aparecidos en las páginas de las diferentes publicaciones de la <em>Architectural Press </em>en las décadas anteriores. <em>Civilia </em>no conseguiría suscitar el debate que Hastings deseaba, quedando como una mera curiosidad envuelta en un espectacular aparataje visual que apenas ha sido analizado. Las impactantes <em>vedute </em>de Civilia esconden sin embargo un elaborado juego de generación de forma arquitectónica. Sus collages acogen un extenso catálogo de estrategias y formas arquitectónicas en el que las obras son apropiados, a través de su imagen fotográfica, para dar lugar una serie de copias distorsionadas, nuevos sujetos arquitectónicos que a la vez alteran la percepción de los originales, envolviéndolos en nuevas narrativas, alterando su percepción, o desvelando cualidades ocultas.