Utopian ideas are not fashionable at the moment. We are living in a time, when the pragmatic seems to override the idealistic.  And yet our current “pragmatic” world of free market neo-liberalism is crashing all around us. Such times of crisis provide fertile ground for the genesis of new Utopias which, in turn, become generators of new architectural and urban visions.

The proliferation of modern technology into every aspect of our lives has had profound effects on the way in which we live, yet the built environment appears resistant to change and is unable to adapt to these new contexts. Unlike the totalizing visions of the 1960’s megastructure projects, which sought to impose a radically different way of living, this utopian project seeks to recompose the urban realm in an attempt to create a hybrid place where the human and multiple virtual realms can coalesce.

No longer are traditional notions of the street, road and building able cope with the ever increasing integration of personal electronics that augment our leisure and working lives. This disjunction is evident in daily occurrences in cities; from minor frustrations of walking into others whilst engaged with a handheld gadget to other more tragic scenes. With the growing significance of the virtual realm, turning back and surrendering these new platforms of opportunity offered by technology is not an option. Increasingly careers and reputations, interest groups and leisure activities are formed through this abstract space, making it indispensable within the modern society.

Technology has the ability to change our psycho-geographies. In such a context, no longer can absolute time be used as a relative measure of distance but is replaced by a measurement in standard lengths of media. Just as time has replaced distance in the development of new forms of transport in the past, readily available media has reshaped the perception of these utopians who freely engage in the virtual realm in the event of boredom. Distance become inextricably linked to lengths of films, documentaries and clips.

This project speculates on the makeup of a business incubator established in and around the Saline Royale, France under a not too distant projected future. A future where the continuing migration of our lives into the virtual realm has reached an equilibrium. In this context, place based communities have been completely replaced by communities that shed the parameters of distance afforded by new means of communication. For similar reasons, extreme individualism is now the norm suggesting a built environment of circulation and destinations. The meticulously planned business and social calendars of these utopians no longer require public spaces that can be drifted into but rather public oases that better function individually as meeting points, areas of contemplation, places of conversation; each a purposeful retreat within a networked whole.