Edutopia

The core of utopia is the desire for being otherwise, individually and collectively, subjectively and objectively. Its expressions explore and bring to debate the potential contents and contexts of human flourishing. It is thus better understood as a method than a goal – a method elaborated here as the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society.
Ruth LevitasUtopia as Method
At any rate, the Utopian text is accordingly not to be seen as a vision or a full representation, but rather as a semiotic operation, a process of interaction between contradictions and contraries which generates the illusion of a model of society.
Fredric JamesonArchaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions
First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.
Michel FoucalutOf Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias
Ever since, utopia has been located not in the afterlife but just off the map, across the ocean, over the mountains, in the future, on another planet, a livable yet unattainable elsewhere. Every utopia since Utopia has also been, clearly or obscurely, actually or possibly, in the author’s or in the readers’ judgment, both a good place and a bad one. Every eutopia contains a dystopia, every dystopia contains a eutopia.
Ursula Le GuinUtopiyin, Utopiyang
In relation to history, utopia is like a train journeying each day from one point to the other. Different passengers get on and off. They differentiate the journey, for the vehicle and its route remain the same. Science, transforming the secrets of nature into its laws; class, reducing vertical bonds to horizontal ones; feminism, asserting a wider citizenship against domestic subjection; the human soul, emerging from its battle with original sin into the conditioning of the unconscious; these among others may be seen to get on and off at varying points, illuminating their own history in the process but in relation to utopia only again demonstrating its potentialities and limitations. As a vehicle of the mind, utopia remains with us.
J. C. DavisThe History of Utopia: The Chronology of Nowhere
Utopia is a discourse, but not a discourse of the concept. It is a discourse of figure: a particular figurative mode of discourse. It is fiction, fable-construction, “anthropomorphized” narratives, “concrete” descriptions, exotic, novel, and pictorial representation: these are all of its nature. It is one of the regions of discourse centered on the imaginary, and no matter how forceful or precise, how correct or coherent, are its theses, utopia will never become a concept.
Louis MarinUtopics: Spatial Play

Project Summary

Edutopia is a research project  hosted at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb. The project explores the experimental, interdisciplinary, and utopian dimensions of architecture and their potential to address contemporary socio-spatial challenges. Situated within architectural education, Edutopia develops innovative methods for design studios that foster a new generation of spatial practitioners capable of creating transformational change. Combining insights and approaches from diverse creative disciplines, the project applies these methods in pedagogical and practice-oriented settings, enabling students to critically engage with complex socio-spatial issues. Through an intersectional, holistic, and interdisciplinary understanding of the (un)built environment, students are encouraged to imagine and articulate diverse futures. By promoting a model of spatial practice that extends beyond building, the project aims to stimulate broader conversations about the necessary shifts in spatial education and professional practice, helping to better equip us to imagine and shape better collective futures.

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Activities and Outputs

An overview of recent Edutopia  activities outputs, from research, papers, projects and more

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Updates

News, updates, and glimpses into the progress of Edutopia.

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