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Prof. Dr. Simon Sadler is Professor of Design and Chair of the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis.\u00a0 His research and publications focus on the histories, theories, and ideologies of architecture, design, and urbanism since the mid-twentieth century. His published work includes studies of the Archigram group, the Situationists, and countercultural design.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Interviewed on 22 February 2021 By Dulmini Perera<\/p>\n On page 44, you write: What is the relevance of Maldonado\u2019s definition of the word \u201ccritical\u201d to the current environmental discourse in architecture?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n On page 49, you write: This paradox of arguing for a concrete utopia while ending up with something speculative is perhaps why Maldonado’s work has never reached a broader audience. Nevertheless, do you think that his inquiry’s paradoxical nature can help emerging architects think of utopia or the term \u2018utopian\u2019 in another way?<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”83968″ media_width_percent=”100″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row row_height_percent=”0″ override_padding=”yes” h_padding=”2″ top_padding=”3″ bottom_padding=”3″ overlay_alpha=”50″ equal_height=”yes” gutter_size=”4″ column_width_percent=”100″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ el_class=”inverted-device-order”][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ position_vertical=”middle” gutter_size=”3″ overlay_alpha=”50″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ shift_y_down=”0″ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83835","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83835"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84120,"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83835\/revisions\/84120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/criticalecologymatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2018In short, he boils ecology down to another politics\u2014another moment in modernism\u2019s history of reform. He introduces the word \u201ccritical\u201d not in the systems-analysis sense of Fuller (as the sequence determining the minimum time needed for an operation\u2014see, for instance, his book Critical Path of 1981) but in its dialectic sense, as he analyzes the merits and faults of design.\u2019<\/p>\n
\n\u2018Of outstanding importance to Maldonado is Bloch\u2019s description of the \u201cconcrete utopia.\u201d \u201cAbstract utopia is fantastic and compensatory\u201d (in Ruth Levitas\u2019s summary), whereas \u201cconcrete utopia…is anticipatory rather than compensatory. It reaches forward to a real possible future and involves not merely wishful but will-full thinking.\u201d Maldonado prioritizes the concrete over the speculative, as, surely, does any designer. And yet the book ends with nothing concretized, a sleight of hand that, if anything, deepens the book\u2019s legacy because it remains open.\u201d<\/p>\n