Bath-time in Blue
The Thirteenth City is a critical response to Super Studio’s Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas, a short composition of writing and images first published by the group of radical architects in 1971. Within the work, twelve distinct models for utopian cities are proposed, each imbued with its own political commentary either on the state of architecture at the time or society as a whole. The Thirteenth City is intended to be the final utopian proposal and a mechanism infusing the prior twelve for the purpose of expressing two distinct notions of its own. The first intention is analytical; unlike Super Studio’s twelve constructions, the final utopian city is never explicitly described. Rather, a floating mechanism above the city is conceived. This mechanism does not produce spaces for lifelong inhabitation, but produces the inhabitants of the spaces bellow via a variety of architectural conditions. By being removed from the city, it gets straight to the point; describing a utopian human, which is what each of the twelve cities achieve through their distinctive architectures. The second intent is to illustrate the continued relevance of Super Studio’s manifesto. Utopia was effectively used as a mechanism for social, architectural, and political commentary. These commentaries often pointing to the mindlessness of a population encapsulated by technology, the Thirteenth City suggests that they might continue to apply as accurately today as Super Studio satirically predicted over forty years ago.
Ultimately, this is only the beginning of what might become a manifesto in itself, where additional elements of the construction can be described and the human further dissected as the product of its environment, figuratively constructed above the contemporary city.
THE THIRTEENTH CITY
The city of tomorrow looks like the city of today.
The designer has been radicalized.
They design their precedent via a product;
They design their client, with a mechanism.
P1
The Thirteenth City is a million ton floating machine in the shape of a revolved section. Composed of four vertically separated discs, each rotates at a distinct speed, with a proportional centripetal force that acts parallel to the surface of the Earth as a form of artificial gravity. Its product is humans.
P2
Humans are conceived at the top of the construction and one enters the world in a vegetative state. Here, each person’s mind is permeated with educative dreams. But with education also comes evaluation. Mistakes are allowed but bad students are released into the central abyss of the mechanism. A mind unfit for the perfect city doesn’t deserve a body in it either.
P3
After basic operative abilities are achieved, each individual is exposed to the least comprehensible force known to humanity; another human. Competition is the driving force on this disc. The strong descend, while the weak mindlessly walk the disc’s face until death. This fierce competition is perfect practice for passive aggressive interactions on the buses of the perfect city bellow.
P4
In the last stage before release, the manufactured individuals are provided their final test; spatial predictability. A mass of description-less organic material is injected with champion individuals from the previous discs and progressively carved from the inside out. Walls and floors blur together and bend to the wills of their inhabitants. Each person, while in complete isolation, can move as they please; their space expands as they walk and the surrounding mass dissolves where their gaze demands. But the distinct cavities of each individual never touch; the intentions of each individual are too well designed to overlap. A minimum wall thickness of 1’ 8” is maintained everywhere. Each cell maintains complete spatial and sensory seclusion.
P5
The product is produced and released. It makes the city bellow; designs it by itself. All individuals are slightly disproportionate due to a discontinuity between the artificial gravity of the Thirteenth City and the gravity of the Earth. But who could care in the perfect city?
