A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of July
Gathering Apples on High
July 21, 1920 was the birthdate of Constant A. Nieuwenhuys, a painter turned architect and one of the founders of the Situationist International.
Constant Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch artist born in Amsterdam and one of the founding members of the Situationist International formed in 1957. He is also known for his utopian project, New Babylon, on which he worked for nearly twenty years starting in 1956. Constant was one of the theoretical drivers behind the Situationists alongside Guy Debord. It was a widening gulf between their two positions that eventually led Constatnt Nieuwenhuys to leave the group in 1960.
The Situationists were an overtly political group whose critique of the alienation of capitalist society has had a lasting effect on contemporary culture. They saw modern society as a series of spectacles, discrete moments in time, where the possibility of active participation in the production and experience of lived reality were eluded.
The rift between Constant and Debord focused on the structuralist tendencies of Constant. Through his exploration of “unitary urbanism”, Constant focused not only on the atmosphere and social interactions of the Situationis city, but also on the actual production of the city as a built space. His project New Babylon is today considered and exemplary expression of a Situationist city.
Designed around the abolition of work, New Babylon was a city based on total automation and the collective ownership of land. With no more work, citizens were free to move around; New Babylon being designed to facilitate a nomadic lifestyle. Divided into a series of interconnected sectors, the city operated on a network of collective services and transportation.
Through a large number of models, drawings and collages, Constant explored the various sectors, floating above ground on stilts, interconnected with bridges and pathways. Traffic flowed above and below; while the inhabitants traveled by foot from section to section. The degree to which the details of the city had been worked out and Constant’s own discourse showed that he viewed this as a concrete proposal for a future city rather than just a polemical project.
Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon focused on the social construction of space with every aspect of the city controllable by its citizens in order that they could construct new atmospheres and situations within the given infrastructure. It was a dynamic environment that could easily be adapted and changed, allowing inhabitants to explore their creativity through play and interaction. Constant, ultimately, did not see New Babylon as a city, but rather as a design of a new culture.