FROM MOORE TO CALVINO. The stronginvisiblestrong cities of 20th Century.pdfVIP

20th Century New Towns. Archetypes and Uncertainties, Oporto, May 22-24, 2014. FROM MOORE TO CALVINO. The invisible cities of 20th Century planning Eduardo Fernandes Escola de Arquitectura da Universidade do Minho / School of Architecture of the University of Minho, Landscape, Heritage and Territory Laboratory (Lab2TP), Guimarães, Portugal Ana Carina Silva School of Architecture of the University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal Abstract The contrast between the social and urban Utopia of Thomas Moore and the English Society of the sixteenth century can be used as an excuse to reflect on the concept of Utopia as an idea that is not possible to concretize when it is proposed but can be feasible some years later. th In the planning of 20 -Century New Towns we often find a strong component of Utopia due to the inadequacy to the social and/or technical conditions of the moment. The contrast between the ideal plan and the construct results (when there are any) is often strong, allowing us to consider the existing of an invisible city that is hidden behind the actual urban spaces; it can be a utopia waiting to be concretized or a dystopia caused by an unforeseen evolution of urban spaces and social dynamics . In the 1972 work of Calvino, The Invisible Cities, we find a poetic discourse about the city that can be interpreted as a critical reflection on the ideas and results of the coeval urban practices. In this paper, we intent to present an interpretation of some of the 20th Century urban ideas based on the reading of the eleven themes of this book. The links that can be established between the various Invisible Cities (moving and combining them, like the pieces of a chess game) inspire the formulation of several assumptions that can be related to the images, forms and ideas of some Archetypes and Utopias of 20th Century planning: Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, Mies van der Rohe’s plan for the IIT