In recent decades, literary and cinematographic fiction seem to offer us almost exclusively negative and frightening visions of our future. Climate change, geopolitical tensions and internal conflicts in society have been reflected in the creation of a dystopian imaginary, a negative and caricatured distortion of the problems that affect our present. However, the fundamental element of Western political thought has been to know how to positively project the future of humanity and improve the living conditions of the inhabitants through the design of cities, one of the main concerns of utopias.
The conference will briefly reconstruct the history of utopian cities and the more recent emergence of dystopia through literature and film, instruments that allow us to reflect critically on the uses of technology and anticipate the conflicts that lie ahead.
Lecture within the framework of the Barcelona Smart City Week.
Free entrance until complete capacity.
Daniele Porretta
Architect and external lecturer at Elisava, Barcelona. Graduated from the Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”. Lives in Barcelona since 2001, and investigates about the contemporary city. Doctor in Theory and History of Architecture from ETSAB-UPC with a thesis on the evolution of the image of the city of the future during the first half of the 20th century, from technological utopias to social control dystopias. He has been a member of the ETSAB research group Archivo crítico del Modelo Barcelona. He has directed numerous cycles of cinema and conferences on architecture and the city in institutions such as the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, the Caixaforum or the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona. A regular contributor to the Institut d'Humanitats de Barcelona, he has directed the courses La ciudad y el imaginario de la destrucción (2011), Casa(s). Miradas sobre la idea de habitar (2015), La ciudad del futuro: utopías y distopías (2016), Futuros posibles. Utopias y distopías para el siglo XXI (2017) and Marte: la otra Tierra (2019).