Model/Scale


New Babylon is an architectural project made by Dutch artist, Constant Nieuwenhuys, in 1960s. The word ‘Babylon’ came from the Protestant tradition, it means a cursed city that transformed itself into the city of future.

Figure 1. Constant’s New Babylon model

New Babylon, also known as situationist city, is a mega-structured city that investigates strategic role of space in social life. His work (Figure 1) visualises a series of linked or interconnected interior sectors that float above the ground.

This floating building allows traffic to rushes underneath it. This huge multilevel of interior spaces reconstructing the atmosphere endlessly and can be controlled and reconfigured by people so that they can have creative play role in their environment. People would have unlimited space to do things whatever or whenever they desire, by adjusting it. So his project for New Babylon intends to give minimum conditions for behaviour that remain as free as possible.

With this technique, I recreated UTS blue building and The Quay Haymarket by connecting these two buildings and lift it up above the ground. These are the first 5 iterations (Figure 2) before making the final one.

Figure 2. Five first iterations

Within these process work, I managed how to make the layout, how to raise the main structure and put the supporting poles and how to make the floors movable by slipping it between narrow gap (last picture).

The last iteration still had lots of core poles, therefore I fixed the structure by reducing the pillars to make it looked more ‘floating’. This final work presents the building with floors that can be adjusted freely and the layers are connected with movable stairs and it’s hanging above the ground so traffic can flows underneath it.

Figure 3. Final model of New Babylon

Reference List:

Unrecorded. ‘Constant — New Babylon’, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, viewed 26 August 2017, <http://www.wdw.nl/en/our_program/exhibitions/constant_new_babylon>

Wigley, Mark. 1998. Constant’s New Babylon: the hyper-architecture of desire. Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Wigley, Mark. 1999, ‘Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon’, Issuu, viewed 26 August 2017, <https://issuu.com/drawingcenter/docs/dp_3_constant_new_babylon>

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THEORY: ORIENTATIONS

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