Arch: New Babylon Reconsidered (2)

He spent the last four years of the project showing the horror of what it would be like to live in New Babylon. He’s the only architect – or let’s say quasi-architect – I’ve ever known that spent not just one image but four years’ worth of images to show how horrible life would be in his own city.And if you look at Constant’s New Babylon, you never see a single person in it. He’s not going to show the people of the future, because he doesn’t know what they’re going to look like. He says: that’s what we’ll do, we’ll design our own bodies, even. But then he brings the people in, in the last four years – and they’re basically dying, and killing each other, and there’s a huge amount of blood.

BLDG BLOG interviews Mark Wigley April 2007