Tonight is the kick-off event for This is Tomorrow: Urban Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia. Ute Meta Bauer, Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program, will introduce the series followed by short lectures by Yvonne P. Doderer, architect, urban researcher and Visiting Professor in Visual Arts, and Jesko Fezer, architect and coeditor of AnArchitektur. “This is Tomorrow” was a ground breaking, trans-disciplinary exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 that involved key artists, architects, musicians and designers who evaluated “habitation” through the human senses. Now, fifty years later, how do we imagine co-habitation, alternative communities and the societies of the future? Can alternative communities such as the Feminist and the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender be considered “other” and heterotopian? How do these communities interact and participate in a diverse and heterogeneous urban environment. How can architecture relate to the conflicting dynamics of social realities? What would it mean for a design practice to fully embrace the vitality of daily life as a countervailing reference point to the inherently dominant issues of economics and visual representation in architecture? The speakers will address these questions and others regarding communities and imagination.

Tags: architecture, community, imagination, urbanism