New Babylon (Constant, 1963)

The Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920-2005) was involved for years in the development of a city and utopian culture; New Babylon, where men, freed from physical labor, could dedicate themselves to the exclusive development of creative activities. All this work was captured in a series of architectural models, paintings, sketches and texts, which reflect what this revolutionary civilization would be like.

Below, I have tried to put together in a few lines what are the main ideas of this interesting project.

New Babylon is governed by some preconditions:

-The automation of all “useful” and repetitive activities releases human energy that from now on it is used for other activities.

-Collective ownership of land, means of production and consumer goods they favor the transformation of this energy into creative activity.

-When productive work disappears, schedules stop making sense, and the masses will have plenty of free time.

-Independence with respect to the workplace leads to independence with respect to the place of residence, so individual mobility increases.

The whole of New Babylon is presented as a network of large meshes, with different levels (floor-circulation, sectors and roofs-terraces) whose structures are in constant transformation. The means of transport cease to be a work tool and they become instruments of a game. 

The sectors are something like large sociocultural centers. It is a macrostructure that leaves maximum freedom for the permanent construction of the interior space. The macrostructure, which extends to a surface of ten or twenty hectares, about 15 or 20 meters above the ground, presents various horizontal planes overlapping.

Inside, one or more fixed nodes group together a technical center and a supply center (health, school, storage, etc.). The other part is a social space with articulations mobile phones, the playground for homo ludens. Sectors are constantly changing form and atmosphere depending on the activities that take place in them.

Managing to live our own life means creating and recreating it endlessly. When the fight for survival is no more than a memory, man will be able to freely dispose of the duration of your life, give your existence the shape you want. To create your life you must create your own world.

The most essential thing about Neo-Babylonian culture is the play with the elements that make up the environment, which is possible thanks to the conscious creation of this and the technical control of the elements architectural elements, climatic conditions and psychological elements. However, the interventions do not have a long duration, since each intervention is a provocation that does not remain unanswered.

In a collective culture, the individual act is confused with social activity, it does not carry a mark, it is the composition of all creative forces that offers the individual himself an inexhaustible material of inspiration. The individual act is lost, but the result is much richer and more varied.

In a society in which the fight for survival ceases to exist, competition disappears, as do borders, promoting a mixture of populations that leads to fusion into a new world race; that of the Neo-Babylonians. New Babylon does not stop anywhere, it knows no borders, all humanity is fluctuating and any place is accessible. Life is an endless journey through a world that transforms so quickly that every moment seems different.

The Neo-Babylonians wander in search of new experiences, and are fully aware of their power to transform and recreate the world. The creative act is a direct intervention in the social, which provokes an immediate response in others. At every moment of his creative activity, the Neo-Babylonian is in direct contact with his fellow men. All his actions are public, so any action loses its individual character. The interventions generate chain reactions, which reach a climax in an authentic collective creation.

Technology and telecommunications are essential instruments for collective creation; they become an important system of recreational social behavior, thanks to the participation of numerous people in the emission and reception of images and sounds.

Constrictive social relationships between people are replaced by more changing emotional bonds. Mobility, as well as the disorientation it causes, favor contacts and chance encounters between people. Bonds can be strengthened or relaxed without any difficulty, allowing absolute openness in social relationships.

Disorientation favors adventure, play, and creative exchange. It is not about getting lost in the sense of getting lost, but about finding unknown paths. The entire space is subject to unpredictable influences, which vary according to the individuals who visit the space; a dynamic labyrinth. The constant creation and recreation of behavior requires endless construction and reconstruction of its scenarios; unitary urbanism.

The author comments at the end of the work that, currently, he does not see any culture that one can be a part of, and that is why he opts for the preparation of a future culture, desirable, although it cannot yet be achieved come true: The New Babylon.

What do you think? Would it be a good model of society? We read you on comments!