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Preliminary Models for a New Urbanism

Potlach #30 (15 July 1959)

Translated by Gerardo Denís

ON MAY 4, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam opened an exhibition of some thirty spatial constructions by Constant. These constructions sum up experimental developments over the course of several years. The most recent constructions in this chronological series are, in the fullest sense of the term, models for a unitary urbanism; the middle structures were models for separate monuments, while the initial structures led to an extreme form of sculpture.

These initial experiments by Constant do no more than state the problem of unitary urbanism. Nevertheless, this exhibition could mark the turning point, in the modern world of art production, between self-sufficient merchandise-objects, meant solely to be looked at, and project-objects, whose more complex appreciation calls for some sort of action, an action on a higher level having to do with the totality of life.