Visionary Cities: Utopian Urbanism and Science Fiction – Terminkalender

IKA Lecture Series Winter Term 2015|16
Visionary Cities: Utopian Urbanism and Science Fiction
Nic Clear | Endowed Professorship for Research in Visionary Cities

Lecture 01
Introduction: A Strange Newness

Monday 12.10.2015, 19h
IKA Lecture Room, R211a, 2nd floor
Institute for Art and Architecture | Academy of Fine Arts Vienna | 1010 Vienna, Schillerplatz 3

Visionary Cities: Utopian Urbanism and Science Fiction
When discussing Science Fiction and Architecture it is usual to look at the architecture ?in? Science Fiction and in particular the architecture in Science Fiction films. In this series of five lectures that relationship will be reversed and it will be the Science Fiction in Architecture that will be discussed. The lectures will map out an alternative reading of a number of architectural movements and projects where the work will be viewed explicitly ?as? science fiction.
The definition of Science Fiction that is being used relies on Darko Suvin?s conception of the ?novum?. Suvin contends that Science Fiction should contain an ?exclusive interest in a strange newness, a novum? that distinguishes it as ?an alternative to the author?s empirical environment?. The intention of these lectures is to make an explicit connection between the genre of Science Fiction, as a system that uses conceptions of newness and alterity and examples of visionary architectures and will attempt to re-theorise 20th century architectural production through the lens of the ?novum?. A lineage of visionary architecture will be explored in relation to texts, films and artefacts that operate within a much more familiar territory of the science fiction genre.
Starting with Futurism and Constructivism and developing through the concepts of the Industrial City, post war technological utopias and ending with the neoliberal architectures of late capitalism which appear to have expunged the concept of a celebratory form of architecture production for the supposed necessities of the market.

Nic Clear is Head of Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, where he also teaches a postgraduate design unit that specialises in the use of film and animation in the generation, development and representation of architectural spaces. Nic is particularly interested in the intersection between architecture and Science Fiction. He edited an edition of AD titled Architectures of the Near Future and has written the Architecture section of the Oxford Handbook to Science Fiction.

Lecture Series Winter Term 2105|16

12.10.2015 | Lecture 01
Introduction: A Strange Newness

09.11.2015 | Lecture 02
Science Fictions of the Avant Garde

23.11.2015 | Lecture 03
The Industrial City and Its Antithesis

07.12.2015 | Lecture 04
Post War Utopias

11.01.2016 | Lecture 05
The Architecture of Late Capitalism and Beyond