Creating Utopia: Designing an Ideal Society (Free, In-Person, S. Berkeley)
Details
A FREE 2 hour interactive workshop
This workshop, led by Hank Pellissier, invites participants to imagine and design a radically better society-beginning with the physical landscape of a city and expanding outward into economics, governance, ecology, relationships, and education.
Starting with the landscape design of a single city block and eventually a mid-size sustainable city, participants will collaboratively create a functioning "utopia" that guarantees human needs and desires.
The first part of the workshop focuses on urban design:
- housing-for-all systems
- energy and food sourcing
- transportation
- recreation
- communication
- waste systems
- public safety
- ecology and wilderness.
Participants will incorporate alternative ideas such as:
- co-ops
- collectives
- decommodified housing
- community-owned infrastructure
- subterranean and sky-high construction.
The second half expands beyond architecture into the design of society itself. Participants will propose alternative economic systems, democratic structures, educational models, and new forms of human relationships.
Drawing inspiration from thinkers such as Elinor Ostrom, David Graeber, and Mikhail Bakunin, the workshop asks deep questions:
- How can power be decentralizedl?
- How can housing, learning, and care become universal?
- How do we prevent elites from emerging?
- What kinds of social systems encourage freedom, cooperation, creativity, and ecological survival?
As participants redesign society, they will also revise their urban landscapes-to indicate how politics, economies, and human relationships physically shape the spaces we inhabit.
This is not a lecture. It is an interactive design lab with mapping, collaboration, visual imagination, systems thinking, and real-world problem solving. Participants will be encouraged to dream boldly.
See samples from previous workshops here.
THE GUIDING QUESTION IS SIMPLE:
IF WE COULD REDESIGN THE WORLD-A WHAT WOULD WE BUILD?
