Utopian Sections. Visionary Architectural Drawings from Early Approaches to the Contemporary Era

Starting from the Piranesian visions of the Carceri (1745–1750), through the drawings of Pantheon by Francesco Piranesi (1790) and the fantastic paintings by Nils Ole Lund as The house in the cliff and L’éléphant dell’étoile by Charles-François Ribart (1758) up to the Utopian Urban Machines by Le Corbusier and the incredible perspective sections of Paul Rudolph (Art and architecture building, 1963), it is visible how the section is gradually becoming a fundamental tool for adequate parameterisation of the human being in space and in the city, whether in the real or imaginary world. Thanks to the examples cited and an imaginative vision, which wants to go beyond boundaries of what is achievable, we reach the projects of contemporary visionaries such us Julio Lafuente with the hotel on the cliff in Gozo, Malta (1967), Lebbeus Woods with his ‘sectional’ hybrid architectures, Gordon Matta Clark with his Home Cuts and Stefano Boeri with his Milano Animal City (MAC). These dreamers produced ‘utopian sectional architectures’, regarded as such only because they were not built at all, even if they are potentially feasible. Through a careful analysis of some significant examples, it is possible to perform a historical reconstruction of the role in the utopian architectures and drawings section. The final objective of this survey is the reinterpretation of the creative and design value of those seemingly unattainable visions, in the light of the newest technolo- gies and achievable possibilities of contemporary design.