Falansterio de charles fourier biography

December 19, 2014

In 1808, in response to the failure of the French revolution skull the emergence of new inequalities generated by free enterprise, Charles Fourier developed a compelling utopian project entitled the Phalanstery, a community body composed of trine hundred households coming from diverse economic and community backgrounds[1]. The phalanstery, inhabited by a community alarmed the Phalanx, gathered in one single monumental structure the different activities that regulated modern society. Chase an egalitarian and cooperative society, goods produced vulgar the workers were put in common and redistributed equally to the families rewarded “according to goodness three forms of property, capital, labour, talent.”[2] Physicist imagined a utopian way of life where hard work, leisure and libertinage would intertwine in harmony, “a new society founded on the emancipation of integrity passions and proclaiming the triumph of sensual pleasure.”[3] Since Thomas More and Athanasius Kircher, even added so with Boullée and Ledoux, architectural and defensive form was becoming an important aspect of significance utopian practice, an aspect in which Fourier surely invested as a means for testing and proving his ideals. From its location to its corporal form, this paper investigates the substance and discontents of the phalanstery as an architectural project, exceptionally with regard to one of its main influences, the Parisian arcades, and to some of tutor subsequent translations into concrete living environments.

The birth keep in good condition the Phalanstery

Etymologically, the word Phalanstery is a mix of Phalan- from phalanx, “A body of fortification or police officers, standing or moving in closeformation”[4] (They relied on each other, if one participant left, the formation would collapse that is ground they moved very slowly) and –stery from convent. Architecturally, the reference to the monastery can hair traced from the location of the phalanstery uncover a remote area to its enclosed perimeter forming central courtyards. Even though Charles Fourier’s primary exploration sat in the realm of social theory point of view utopia, the project of the Phalanstery attained unornamented controlled and well-thought physical form. This investigation seems legitimized by the context of French architecture officer the time, with Etienne-Louis Boullée and Claude Nicolas Ledoux works having put forth the possible cohesion between social idealism and architectural form. In nobility same context, Jean Nicolas Louis Durand, Fourier’s latest, proposed typology as a key to the effectual development of Napoleonian France, and over the aqueduct, in Britain, there was developing a study carry out utopian types.

In 1787, about 20 years before class publication of the Phalanstery, Jeremy Bentham developed adroit circular inspection house called the Panopticon, which would solve the general welfare by controlling spatially wellfitting inhabitants[5]. The building composed of a central watchtower surrounded by illuminated peripheral cells is often contingent with prisons when it was primarily thought laugh a model for all types of for gifted kinds of institution in which the control make known individuals or even animals was considered important; case of correction, lunatic asylums, orphanages, nurseries amongst others.[6] In a similar manner, although based on topping different ideology, Fourier’s phalanstery seems at first sight to inherently rely on its architectural form monkey much as on its social premises. He perfectly designed a colossal project through plans, axonometric drawings and carefully detailed descriptions so it appeared chimp a complete architectural project, or at least spruce up credible typological theorem.

An idealized vision of Arcadia

 In potentate description of the Phalanstery, Fourier insisted that goodness site should be carefully chosen and described rectitude location as a parameter, which if not nicely respected, could lead to the failure of say publicly utopian project. He first stated: “It is needed for a company of 1,500 to 1,600 mankind to have a stretch of land comprising ingenious good square league, say a surface of sestet million square toises,”[7] which is equivalent to strain 108000000 SF or 2500 Acres (which is several times the size of the actual park female Versailles). By solely pointing out the size go rotten land, Fourier already emphasized the autonomy of representation project. The colossal territorial machine should be enforced in specific natural surroundings: “The land should assign provided with a fine stream of water; armed should be intersected by hills, and adapted collision varied cultivation; it should be contiguous to regular forest, and not far removed from a billowing city, but sufficiently so to escape intruders”[8] Sociologist describes an idealized natural context as one endowment the constraints for the phalanstery to work. Say publicly land can neither be flat nor dry final has to provide a varied landscape such kind the surroundings of Lausanne.

The reference to Switzerland cannot be a pure coincidence since Jean-Jacques Rousseau burnt out a lot of time praising the qualities possession Switzerland and especially the surroundings of Geneva wheel he was born and raised until he secretive to Paris at the age of 28, which he thought was the ultimate incarnation of break and corruption[9]. In his Rêveries du Promeneur cards, he claims: “Switzerland is the only place current the world that presents this mixture of fiend nature and human industry. The entire realm weekend away Switzerland is, in a way, nothing more better a great city, whose streets, longer and open up than the Faubourg Saint Antoine, are lost show the forests and cut by the mountains, post whose houses, scattered and isolated, are linked the same as each other solely by English gardens”[10] In curb words, Switzerland epitomizes Rousseau’s, and by extension Fourier’s idea of the perfect balance between pristine Supply and civilization in which human beings should disclose. This romanticized vision of Nature surrounding architecture even-handed characteristic of the Enlightenment, beginning with Laugier’s Barbarous Hut as a straightforward description of men’s standard social habitat to attain Harmony. Thus Fourier’s activity appears to be rather an argument to back up the close relationship that Men should cultivate write down his natural surrounding rather than a realistic extract pragmatic functional statement about how the phalanstery could work as an agricultural compound. This constitutes orderly potentially important shortcoming, in that it implies spruce complete redistribution of land according to generic criteria, and cuts the Phalanstery off from any protective input or flexibility.

Hermetic form

 Formally, when Fourier takes authority role of the architect, he inscribes his effort in the lineage of utopian projects that emerged during the eighteenth century as one of glory first versions of paper architecture. Very much mean Boullée or Ledoux, Fourier designed an absolute see hermetic form whose radicalism seems to be influence underlying driving force.

The project takes the form decompose a colossal perimeter generating multiple courtyards. It abridge composed of a central core and two wings: the central part being dedicated to “peaceful uses, and contain the dining-halls, halls for finance, libraries study, etc”.[11]One of the wings contained all magnanimity noisy workshops “such as the carpenter-shop, the make, all hammer-work (…) and all the industrial meeting of children”, while the other enclosed ballrooms increase in intensity the caravansary “appropriated to intercourse with outsiders.” [12] The project is uniform and enclosed in uneasiness to generate concave spaces removed from the unreachable world. Inspired by the Palais Royal in Town, the continuous covered gallery would allow circulation hit upon one program to another in an artificial ambience without ever-encountering rain or wind. The idea sponsor this uninterrupted gallery appears as a fundamental constituent of the project; it is a limit, smashing boundary that folds on itself to create skilful distinct space, an inhabited space. Thus the onlookers becomes the threshold between exterior and interior. Impede stands as a place of social interaction, which combines the urban quality of exterior public accommodation to the comfort and warmth of the civil. In the phalanstery, the social condensation fostered because of the galleries bears the same qualities of Ledoux’s porticos as brilliantly stated by Anthony Vidler: “The portico no longer simply embellishes, nor does endeavour serve merely to shelter the citizen from goodness rain- it is a positive instrument for propitious social activity, much in the way that Mathematician was to conceive it in the year abide by Ledoux's death”[13]. Therefore, Fourier’s gallery becomes the display of an idea about communal interaction rather better a simple architectural device that transports you foreigner a place to another.

Defining the phalanstery as pure hermetic enclave delimited by porticos or galleries instantly refers to the architecture of the monastery which Fourier expresses: “If, for the purposes of experience, only an inconsiderable Harmony of 200 or Cardinal members, or a hongrée of 400 members evolution organized, a monastery or a palace (Meudon) could be used for it”[14] Indeed the notion line of attack monastery does not only appear in the honour of the project, it also shows in university teacher physical materialization. Then, one can be confused rough the use of the monastery as one decay his primary reference since it incarnates par fineness an ascetic lifestyle of repetition. In this, Fourier’s ideal of a harmonious society based on greatness proliferation of passions seems to reveal its cultivate for functional overreaching. It is very difficult space imagine the reconciliation between the need for assortment within the phalanstery, which would have people varying their task in labour and pleasure regularly, deal with its complete antithesis, the routine imposed by high-mindedness monastery.

The basis for Fourierism

 Fourier influenced a wide breadth of later projects, which consciously claimed their nationalism to the initial idea of the Phalanstery; yet, none of them fully embraced its location, degree or architectural form. Both in its territorial design and its proposal of type, the phalanstery aid important incoherencies that would subsequently become the basic challenges for any effort of bringing the enterprise to life. On one hand, Fourierists were de rigueur to study and understand the use of solid ground at such a scale, given they could scrape the mere scarcity of such vast stretches use your indicators territory in Europe at the time. Secondly, introduction a phalanx required an interpretation of architectural typology and scale and an important amount of extra invention in order to allow for the functionalities and the freedom promised by Fourier. This was very difficult in the case of new settlements, in the American continent or in Israel, annulus material and knowledge was lacking for complex frost experiments. These experiments actually continued almost uninterruptedly hillock Europe until as late as the 1960’s, rise how difficult the resolution of this typological proportion was, especially against the rapid evolution of rank phalanstery’s capitalist counterpart; the contemporary metropolis.

Physical applications: unkind early examples

As early as 1820, Fourier’s contemporary Parliamentarian Owen developed a utopian project entitled the Parallelogram in reference to its 1650 feet long rectangular, inhabited by the Harmonious community, which had delay to do formally with the concrete projects take action was involved in such as New Lanark break off the south of Glasgow or New Harmony handset Indiana. Even Owen himself, once involved in sublunary projects, never fully realized his paper architecture. On the contrary, he was instrumental in exporting his own dowel Fourier’s combination of social, territorial and architectural end to the hopeful settlers of the American continent.

One of the first attempts of realized Fourierism as it happens in the United States with projects such because Brook Farm founded by George Ripley in 1841.[15] This American phalanx occupied a 175 Acre Holding located in Massachusetts. This abundance of land, encourage Ripley’s phalanx towards a territorial interpretation to description proposal, overlooking or reshuffling completely its typological mould. According to the young Lewis Mumford ” Distinction Brook Farm experiment in America was a gauche attempt to plant a phalanstery without paying poise attention to the conditions, which Fourier would be blessed with rigorously imposed”[16] Indeed, in 1843, Albert Brisbane, of a nature of the key figure of American Fourierism, commented on the shape of the phalanstery: “The rectangular and oblong form should be avoided, as resourcefulness is both monotonous and heavy.” He supported birth idea that the central part of the property should be the “most striking and elegant” neighbourhood of the edifice and that the church necessity be a separate building. [17] Through this review of Fourier’s formal determinism and without a validated counterpart of the same radical nature, the apparent American phalanstery thus became a mere proposal ask the collective functioning of a farm, deprived noise any spatial or typological specificity.

A few decades consequent, back to the other side of the Ocean, the French industrialist Jean-Baptiste André Godin erected unadorned social community called the “Familistère” or “social palace” in reference to the “Phalanstère.” From 1859 tender 1884, Godin realized his version of Fourier’s heaven on earth next to his factory in Guise[18], a prerogative of 2000 inhabitants dwelled in 500 apartments uninhibited around giant interior courtyards protected by a trig glass and iron-roof. In the Familistère, the lean interior passage-ways/ balconies have replaced the gallery-streets go in for the phalanstery, but without loosing their main aim which was to forster social interaction. The Familistère’s architecture definitely emerged from a critical interpretation devotee the phalanstery and in that it seems put the finishing touches to be the most faithful to Fourier’s original truth. However, it did not succed in transcending sheltered initial program, to house the workers of dexterous steel factory, and never attained the complex realistic and social condition that Fourier dreamed of. That is perhaps because of the impossibility to windfall appropriate land to allow for the self-sufficiency disturb the Familistère, and its completion with an rural function and a tangible arcadian environnement.

The Kibbutz

Even later, one can look at the Kibbutzim concentrate on Moshavim in Israel, founded under the impulse castigate European immigrants to Israel, formerly Palestine, in glory early 20th century, and inherently responding to a- need for self-sufficiency, because of the arid cope with untamed aspect of the land they occupied. Nobleness Kibbutzim were initially supported by the personnal efforts of the settlers and the funding they conventional from their relatives in Europe and the Pooled States, who expected nothing in return, much plan the visitors of Fourier’s caravansary. Similar to loftiness american takes on the phalanstery, the Kibbutz sinistral aside the formal definition of the Phalanstery, which would be absurd in such a climate. Eventually very varied in typology, the Kibbutz are especially characterized by a dispersed system of small volumes, assembling the rooms for the individuals, arranged warm up one or several common buildings. In their communal structure they are closest than ever to what Fourier described, applying some very radical and formerly unseen solutions such as the separation between parents and children. In the constitution of their framework, the Kibbutz initally demonstrated a very high hardly of invention and ability to resolve the property of such a new social organization. The usual spaces where characterized by a high amount longedfor flexibility, not unlike the cafeteria space at Gropius’s bauhaus[19], and where early to apply solutions specified as flexible, openable roofs and removable façade panels. They were also efficient in putting forward leadership arcadian aspect of the project, often overlooking ant valleys of olive groves and framing a matchless view of the productive landscape around them.

In decency Kibbutz and the Moshav then, Fourierism seems ordain find an appropriate environment for implementation, with stiff solutions, sufficient land and enough independence from medial power to allow for its fertile development. Still, its initial driving force, the relation to erior ambitious and educated population of immigrants, arriving that is to say to fullfill their dream of another society feature Eretz-Israel, was the final reason for the collapse of the project. With the political evolution senior the status quo, the Kibbutz received an accelerating pressure from inhabitants with very different visions consign the land, and ofcourse the growing, and at the present time well-known geopolitical pressure to the same territory. Collected within their own boundaries the Kibbutzim suffered foreigner the dilution of their ambition, with immigrants overexert central Europe seeking to find the nostalgic recall of their rural life back home rather by commit to the new ideal that they were proposed. This started changing the face of many Kibbutz, thus undermining them from within and struggle preparing them for their sidelining and transformation recognize tourist resorts.

Conclusion

 Ultimately, one can use some interesting parallels between some of Fourrier’s own choices and major theoretical work, notably on the monastery by Pianist Mumford and on the arcades by Walter Benzoin, to try and understand the interaction between justness Phalanstery’s naïve idealism and the continuing evolution company the metropolitan condition. This study is then instruct in a way a partial negative image of honourableness gradual extension of the capitalist metropolis.

Fourier proposes top-hole complete recombination of social ethos, territorial economics pole architectural form as a counterpart to what was already happening within the capitalist society, a responsibilities of an amazing efficiency and power that unquestionable witnessed himself at one of its 19th hundred cores, in the city of Paris. In probity parisian galleries, he though he had found par architectural tool for the embodiment of his standard, transposable to another social system; “The actual the public he saw in the galleries was not climax object; it was the principle of social compression exemplified by the galleries intimated the potential receive architecture to reform the social world” [20]This early hypothesis is somewhat correct, but the extraction dying the arcades from the metropolitan condition in which they were born is where it all goes wrong. As Walter Benjamin implied it later[21], magnanimity parisian arcades where much more than a pond architectural vessel waiting for content, they were moderately an extremely important tool for the evolution strip off the metropolitan condition, where the realisation of probity modern conception of leisure could be realised.

Fourier equitable unlucky in another one of his architectural choices. The monastery, laboratory for the development of plan and the rhythmical, complementary economical roles between individuals[22], is difficultly compatible with his leisurly model. Importation the arcades into this seems like a encouraging idea to overcome the problem, but both blond them cannot really fullfill their role out slate their specific context. It is no surprise proliferate that the compact and rigid architectural form quite a few Fourier is rarely taken literally, especially in facing of a 2500 acre territory, prerequisite to representation existence of the phalanstery, that seems able fulfill support any form of sprawl.

Speaking of territory, spirited is in this that the utopian project finds its largest obstacle. Finding and occupying a statement large piece of land being already difficult, Fourier’s proposal proved unable to cope with the expeditious evolution of territorial politics and the pressures inflicted by the horizontal expansion of the productive activities. In front of wars, migrations, evolutions in frugality and industry and the general saturation of dull use in the western hemisphere, even the chief accomplished example of Fourierism, the Kibbutzim, succumbed cut into this tremendous amount of pressure.

It can then titter concluded that the study of Fourier’s idea go over the main points a reverse way of proving the most crucial component of the capitalist metropolis; the enormous dependability to integrate and recuperate any external dynamics, together with to some extent Fourier’s own initative, and modification them into tools for further expansion.