Metabolism: the last modernist utopia

Metabolism was the last manifestation of the modernist belief that design has the ability not only to create a better city but more importantly a better future society. To this aim the Metabolists imagined the city as a flexible, self-perpetuating and non-centric organism. This urban organism was designed to accommodate emerging realities such as; increasing mobility of people, goods and information; population growth and overcrowding; the important role but ephemeral nature of modern technology; and their projections towards the future. The Metabolists believed that giving shape to these developments could bring about the rebirth of the city in a new form that predicated a new society.