Architecture, with all its practitioners, academics, and theorists, have long been exploring utopic ideas with hopes of turning them into something concrete for the sake of a better world. But as the world heads towards an even greater polarization than it currently has, the architecture practice found itself having to adapt to the current systems of the planet, constrained by its ever-growing conditions. Slowly, practitioners realized that utopia can not truly be seen as the ideal solution, and needed to be readapted or morphed with other concepts for it to actually work. DETAIL's latest monograph BIG. Architecture and Construction Details / BIG. Architektur und Baudetails, a rapport between BIG’s imaginative, unbuilt utopias and functional, built architecture, explores 20 projects from the firm's workshop.
Derived from the Greek word "ou-topos", which means “no place” or “nowhere”, the term "utopia" was originally coined by Thomas More in 1516, in a book of the same name. A utopian society describes an idealistic civilization; a perfect place without any obstacles, differences, or inequalities that promotes the improvement of society and ensures that everyone has the exact same assets and values.
