Utopia by Design. Contemporary opportunities for a timeless ideal

For centuries people have dreamt of ideal cities where architecture is beautiful, affordable and inclusive. Utopia has been applied to define architectures of hope and desire. Many have designed or built solutions contributing towards improving our cities.
Through a survey of European and North American housing, this research explores how the ideal of utopia in architecture has shifted through time. Selected projects showcase architectural responses to issues of the time. With affordability in housing being critical in cities around the world, a health crisis that has made us rethink how we live, and a climate emergency where the built environment accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, the challenges today for pursuing “utopia by design” have changed.
Two flexible approaches to better housing are explored: long-term flexibility, where an apartment changes throughout a lifetime, and short-term flexibility, where an apartment can change daily. Flexible engineered timber walls have been developed as a modular kit of parts, designed to be disassembled, easy to fabricate, affordable and can be placed anywhere within an apartment. We argue for a contemporary Utopia where housing is designed as an unfinished product where residents can develop their spaces, and these can be altered over time.