New Babylon replaces the architectural object with a continuously modifiable environment in which social behaviour, mobility, technology and spatial production become inseparable. Conceived between 1956 and 1974, the project was developed through models, maps, collages, paintings, films, texts and lectures rather than through a single definitive plan. Its central operation is environmental rather than compositional: spatial structures are conceived as sectors, labyrinths and fields capable of continuous intervention by their inhabitants. The door labyrinth makes the proposition concrete. Efficient movement from A to B belongs to static space; in New Babylon, losing one’s way becomes the discovery of new paths, and complexity multiplies the possible uses of space. Architecture is therefore not a container for already defined activities but a platform for behavioural invention. Its wider contribution lies in demonstrating that representation, social hypothesis and spatial organisation can form one research system, turning an unbuilt city into an operative model for thinking collective life.
URBANISM MEETS ART