Alexandru Sabău

Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Alexandru Sabău is a licensed architect from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He is a founding partner at sfera arhitectura and is an assistant in the second-year design studio at FAU Cluj – UTCN. He completed his doctoral studies in 2020, with the thesis called “Paper Architecture. Alternative forms of architectural creation in 1980s Romania.” The topic of his doctoral thesis is rooted in his interest in unbuilt architecture, graphic representation, and drawn discourse. His articles have been published in scientific journals such as sITA (Studies in the History and Theory of Architecture) Bucharest, IN FOLIO Palermo, Wolkenkuckucksheim | Cloud-Cuckoo-Land | Воздушный замок (W|C|B) and Transsylvania Nostra.

To Know Your Future Dystopian City You Must First Know Your Past Architectural Avant-garde. Case Studies of Fictional Dystopias Depicted in Film and Video Games.

Keywords: dystopian architecture, video games, animated film architecture, fictional architecture

Abstract: The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana’s aphorism, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” can be twisted to serve some artistic purposes. My intention is to analyse portrayals of dystopian cities and architecture through their relationship to real avantgarde currents. The ruined aphorism would be: those who know their past architectural avant-gardes can imagine future dystopian cities. There is great beauty in utopian/dystopian ideas, especially if we try our best to keep them fictional. Be it Antonio Sant’Elia’s concrete La Città Nuova from the 1910s, the metabolist dreams of Kenzo Tange and Kisho Kurokawa or Paolo Soleri’s arcologies from the 1960s, these large-scoped brave new futures always seemed cold and inhumane, in contrast to their optimistic intentions. And they are fascinating. These visions have served as references and influences for beautifully twisted cityscapes in literature, film and video games. This article intends to present several case studies and analyse the conceptual premises and the narrative that speculates architecture as a complex character rather than a simple background or frame of action. This analysis is considered in relation to certain avant-garde architectural currents. Professor Cedric Watts argues that “Fictions tell us about realities, and realities are laden with fiction. It’s no wonder that the terms ‘history’ and ‘story’ are both born from the same word: ‘historia’”. The truth of fiction, be it literature, film, unbuilt architecture or video game stems from our delight for narrative, but can also serve us, architects, as cautionary tales.

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