Essay on Zaha Hadid: Making Utopia a Reality in Architecture

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them”, Thomas More, Utopia.

According to Merriam-Webster, Utopia is an imaginary place where laws and social positions are perfect. William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954 and shows that anyone who decides to be a leader must be fair or their society will fail. Through the novel, it is shown that a true Utopian society can not exist because names are forgotten, corruption occurs after creation, and you can get lost in thoughts and dreams.

It takes an artist to identify an artist, and Zaha Hadid was nothing short of pure genious. People who are into the contemporary designs and architecture, would acknowledge the eminent loss the world has suffered of the Iraqi-British architect who left the world a little more fabulous than when she had entered it, on 31st March 2016 at the age of 65. In 2008 she was ranked 69th on 'The World's 100 Most Powerful Women' list of Forbes. Every building, artifact or installation crafted by her screamed of her identity through them. The bold shapes, asymmetric designs and lots of curves were her signature style. Breaking the barriers of the contemporary architecture of her times, Hadid became the first Muslim women to win

Frank Gehry’s deconstructivism evolution is showcased by the use of non-traditional materials, conscientious detail to the building’s intended use which elevates his architecture into

An impractical scheme for social improvement. This is the third definition of the word utopia in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary. Anatole France says it best with this quote regarding utopian societies, „Without the Utopias of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians that traced the lines of the first city· Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.„ The world has been constantly changing over time, new ideas pave paths that lead to better living. Most of the ideas are expressed through science fiction stories written by authors looking to change the world in some way or another. Authors begin with an idea, and then move towards placement of thought and scheme into somewhat of a reasonable reality. Authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Octavia Butler use the stories they write as ways to express their problems that they have with the present world. Advances in the present day world can only be reached through dreams and desires. These dreams and desires come to life as authors present their ideas on paper.

The idea of a ‘Utopia’ is captivating to many people. Utopia is defined as a “perfect society”, where there exist no flaws between relationships, economic standards, political standards, and more. Many stories feature caricatures of utopias, such as Harrison Bergeron.

Each person has their own vision of utopia. Utopia means an ideal state, a paradise, a land of enchantment. It has been a central part of the history of ideas in Western Civilization. Philosophers and writers continue to imagine and conceive plans for an ideal state even today. They use models of ideal government to express their ideas on contemporary issues and political conditions. Man has never of comparing the real and ideal, actuality and dream, and the stark facts of human condition and hypothetical versions of optimum life and government.

Utopia is any state, condition, or place of ideal perfection. In Ursula LeGuin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" the city of Omelas is described as a utopia. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" presents a challenge of conscience for anyone who chooses to live in Omelas.

Moshe Safdie is an architect who really examines how a building can shape an area. Not only how the space may look but its functionality, impact on the environment, and impact on the surrounding community. He seeks to engage and enrich the communities making unique and inviting spaces to fit the needs of each project. (Safdie Architects)

The concept of utopia is one which has many differing connotations and is therefore also one which cannot be confined to one interpretation alone. The term is commonly used to represent a community or society that, in theory, possesses highly desirable or near-‘perfect’ qualities; however, these encompassing ideals, which arguably place emphasis on egalitarian principles of equality, are implemented in a number of ways and are subsequently based on varying ideologies, thus insisting on varying views of morality. The word itself, which was first coined by Sir Thomas More in the early sixteenth century and used to describe a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean, was taken from the Greek οὐ (‘not’) and τόπος (‘place’), literally translating

The word utopia originates from Sir Thomas More’s novel of the same name, Utopia. Sir Thomas More created the term as an intentional homophone of the word “eutopia”, which is a Greek word meaning “good place”. (Sterling, 2015) “Utopia”, on the other hand, means “no place”, which implies either an impossibility of existence or the results of attempting to bring about such existence. The reasons why a utopia is so destructive to societies are that each person has their own vision of perfection and it is impossible to make everyone agree; if everyone made their own utopias there would be conflict between their objectives. Also, human nature is flawed and cannot accommodate perfection.

Utopia was a radical idea that was introduced to the world and the word has been well debated through the centuries. The word ‘utopia’ originated from either two Greek words: u-topia, meaning no-place, or eutopia, meaning good place. “The city of today is a dying thing because its planning is not in the proportion of geometrical one fourth. The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition; The result of repetition is a standard. The perfect form.”(Le Corbusier) Le Corbusier is the most

The word utopia is, in origin, a pun. Commonly thought to be derived from the Greek eu-, meaning good, and -topos, meaning place, the prefix of the word is actually derived from the also Greek ou-, meaning no. In short: the meaning of the word utopia is no place. Utopia does not exist. Works of dystopian fiction such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium, and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange seem to revel in this fact, creating dystopian worlds born with the intent of being utopias, but falling short in one crucial area or another, driving home a common theme: an ostensibly utopian society cannot be achieved without the sacrifice by the masses of some vital aspect of human nature.

The book consists of twelve chapters that propose this idea that designers should explore the nature of our senses’ response to the spatial built forms that people invest their time in. It tries to cover a specific topic in each chapter that in order to deconstruct the book, it is necessary to cover each chapter individually.