#constantn

[fan-of-everything-and-nothing]

A big fuck you Constantinopel everyone

Good that his name isn’t Pro-stantinople, because that’s just not him

[silencederaisonnable]

NEW BABYLON

Courtesy by Moskito film

Dutch architect named Constant, is one of the distinguished theorists of unitary urbanism that is a unique practice opposing many existing city planning theories. It also was a conceptual platform that helped to overcome modern city alienation and give people back control over their own existence. Fundamental strategies as “situation construction” and «Dérive» were declared a part of Situationist International program and were supposed to be fulfilled in cityscape in order to undermine the basics of existing political and social order; they are impossible to imagine within Constant’s artistic plans.

New Babylon project was central in the author’s career; he was working it out for many years, creating multiple sketches, decoys and schemes. Being initiated by a popular work of the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, and study of gypsy bands structure, the New Babylon was supposed to become a new dimension of life, place of unlimited interaction, where a person could replace labour experience with an endless act of his or her creative self-fulfillment through a game.

The merger of multiple horizontal sections (real life spaces that were to be located over existing cities) into one city called New Babylon was meant to start a new era of urban development and this idea was borrowed in practice many times, at the same time remaining one of the most challenging theoretic projects in city planning.

New Babylon directed by Victor Nieuwenhuijs, a son of Constant and Maartje Seyferth, is a thorough analysis of New Babylon project, involving an audience into the world of the famous Dutch architect’s innovations. Shots of many project sketches and chronicles like interview with the architect talking about his New Babylon, use the language of moving pictures to reinstate the question on the necessity of existing city planning principles.