BUCLEY, CRAIG / VIOLEAU, JEAN LOUIS
The short-lived grouping of architects, sociologists, and urbanists known as Utopie was active in Paris from 1967 to 1978. The groups collaborative publications included the work of Jean Aubert, Isabelle Auricoste, Jean Baudrillard, Catherine Cot, Charles Goldblum, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Henri Lefebvre, Rene Lourau, Antoine Stinco, and Hubert Tonka. Offering a militant alternative to professional urban planning journals, these writers not only formulated a critique of the technocratic and administrative rule over a disabled and alienated urban society but also projected an ephemeral urban poetics. Utopie makes the groups diverse body of theoretical work accessible in English for the first time, offering translations of more than twenty key texts. Designed in a facsimile format that follows the innovative graphic layouts of the journals, pamphlets, posters, and articles produced by Utopie, the volume not only provides the first thorough overview of the groups activities but also seeks to capture Utopies linkage of architectural and urban theory to radical publication strategies.
