played an important part. The Provos and Kabouters in Amsterdam were also in-
spired by the situationists.^25 Many of the notions of the movement for participation
that prevailed in the architectural scene in the 1970s sound like an echo of the situa-
tionists’ appeal for participation and self-realization.^26 “Alienation” was the key word
for social criticism in this period, and architecture and urbanism were seen as crucial
fields where the self-realization of the individual could be achieved. Functionalism
was rejected because it played into the hands of alienation and nonparticipation: in-
stead of genuinely considering the real desires of individuals, functionalism was
thought to respond only to manipulated and abstract needs that did not relate in any
way to the concrete inner experience of individuals.
New Babylon: The Antithesis of the Society of Lies
After his break with the situationists, Constant continued to work on his New Baby-
lon project, in which he traced a new form of society and dwelling. Its point of de-
parture is the idea that a thoroughgoing automation of production can reach a point
where work becomes unnecessary so that people can enjoy endless free time. The
surface of the earth gradually becomes covered with sequences of “sectors,” gi-
gantic structures built on high supports that tower over a landscape used for fully
mechanized agricultural production and covered with lanes of fast-moving traffic (fig-
ure 70). The typical feature of life in the “sectors” is that people are totally liberated:
they are freed from all ties, norms, and conventions; they stay in an environment that
4
Architecture as Critique of Modernity70
Constant, New Babylon, group of
sectors, photomontage, 1971.