.... Utopianism became a term of abuse, shorthand for “hopelessly idealistic”. The rightwing philosopher Roger Scruton dismissed the “utopian fallacy”, which was “rooted not in intellect, but in emotional needs, which leads to the acceptance of absurdities”. Unlike such idealistic, escapist fantasies, the apocalyptic visions of anti-utopias or dystopias seemed to engage more with the problems of the real world. The Isokon dream had run aground; the modernist housing schemes that the Bauhaus and Coates hoped might transform society had become hotbeds of vandalism and crime, and the prevalent mood was of pessimistic nihilism. In Archaeologies of the Future (2005), Fredric Jameson would call for an “anti-anti-utopianism”, lamenting that it was now “easier to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism”. Can something be salvaged from utopian thinking, a drive that the philosopher Ernst Bloch referred to as “the principle of hope”? The utopian impulse allows us to escape the blinkers of the present and dream, telling stories about alternative futures that ask important questions about the world in which we live. The London Design Biennale will feature some of these visions, which aim to provoke real change by suggesting inspiring or cautionary futures.

“A map of the world that does not include utopia is not even worth glancing at,” quipped Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.” In the frontispiece of More’s Utopia, alongside the alphabet he invented for the nation, is a map ....