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Build It and They Will Come

Can utopian visions for living ever reconcile the tension between the group and the individual, the rules and the desire to break free?

Utopia has been imagined in a thousand different ways. Yet when people try to build utopia, they struggle and very often fail. Art historian professor Richard Clay asks whether utopian visions for living can ever reconcile the tension between the group and the individual, the rules and the desire to break free.

Travelling to America, he encounters experimental communities, searching for greater meaning in life. Richard visits a former Shaker village in New Hampshire and immerses himself for a day at the Twin Oaks eco-commune in Virginia, where residents share everything, even clothes. He looks back at the grand urban plans for the masses of the 20th-century utopian ideologies, from the New Deal housing projects of downtown Chicago to the concrete sprawl of a Soviet-era housing estate in Vilnius, Lithuania. He also meets utopian architects with a continuing faith that humanity's lot can be improved by better design. Interviewees include architect Norman Foster and designer Shoji Sadao.

59 minutes

Clip

Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:40

    Joe Meek & The Blue Men

    I Hear A New World

  • 00:44

    Brian Eno

    The Big Ship

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Richard Clay
Production Company ClearStory Ltd
Producer Russell Barnes
Director Russell Barnes
Assistant Producer Alex Brisland
Production Manager Clare Burns
Editor Dermot O'Brien
Composer Richard Farnsworth
On-line editing Tristan Lancey
Researcher Sabrina Scollan
Re-recording mixer Phitz Hearne
Director of photography Pete Allibone
Sound Recordist Adam Prescod
Colourist Tim Waller
Sound Recordist Tom Redhead
Camera Operator Will Churchill
Camera Operator Tim Platten

Broadcasts