Heterotopias

Robinson Crusoe’s Island of Despair

“...real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”

Kowloon Walled City

“...crisis heterotopias, i.e., there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis...”

By examining Kowloon Walled City and Crusoe’s homes on the Island of Despair we essentially look into a mirror reflective of our own society. These places show certain ideals that exist in a utopian world: the ability to live and achieve happiness with the bare minimums. To understand how to achieve the same ideal we must realize the absence in our reality, which separates the commonplace from the utopian world.

"A heterotopia is a fundamental disorder that silently questions the space in which we live."(Flynn)

http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html