Tufan OREL

Consultant in Design Management, France

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Abstract
This paper is divided into two parts. In this first part I propose to re-contextualize some of the design policies of today in Utopian literature by the means of a fictional dialogue, in order to witness their genesis. In a sense, my fiction can be considered as a “reverse scenario”, especially when compared to other studies on Utopia, for example the study of Victor Margolin, (The Struggle for Utopia), which deals directly with Utopian elements used in design practice today. To illustrate my point I have chosen Utopia of Thomas More (1478-1535) and The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The fictional dialogue is constructed around the idea of three days of conversation between the protagonist of Utopia and the protagonist of The New Atlantis: i.e. Raphael Hythloday (a philosopher of Portuguese origin) and The Reverend Father (a scientific worker of “The House of Solomon”). For the sake of the scenario I symbolise the origins of social design policies within the arguments of Raphael, and the origins of the market policies are represented by the Reverend Father. In the second part of this paper I will try to present an idea of Utopian design, which is more in coherence with the design practice of today. To illustrate this point, I will consider the Utopian element in design not as a passage from an idealist discourse to practice, but as a crossing from one sphere or “universe of design” to another.

Keywords
Fiction, Utopia, The New Atlantis, Utopian Design, Design Policies, Dialogue on Design