This contribution focuses on the relation between architecture and utopia as it is articulated in Paul Scheerbart’s 1913 sci-fi novel Lesabéndio and Walter Benjamin’s reading of it. After briefly introducing the complex relation that ties architecture to utopia by drawing on Manfredo Tafuri’s work, I will propose a reading of the way in which this relation is articulated in Scheerbart’s novel. In particular, I will bring to the fore the tensions that traverse Lesabéndio’s utopia and its mysticism. In the second section, I will then explore Walter Benjamin’s reading of the novel and put it in dialogue with his own understanding of the (non) relation between technology and utopia - one that suggests a radical alterity between the two. To conclude, drawing on the works of Frédéric Neyrat, I will propose the notion of cosmo-architecture as a signifier capable of naming an architecture that does not repress the radical alterity that the discipline is confronted with in the geological era of the Anthropocene.
J. Igor Fardin (Tue,) studied this question.