Chloé Docherty

What is the ideal city? There are many ways in which the ideal city has been imagined in architectural discourse. Thinkers and architects of the Renaissance interpreted it with perspective artwork, theatre and staging. The ideal exists in the imagination. It has no tangible place in reality. It is a utopia.

Public consciousness and perception of reality are synonymous with the image of the city. In Renaissance Italy, theatricality and the architecture of theatre greatly influenced the public image of the city. The imaginary ideal could be experienced by the city inhabitants within the theatre where stage sets were a representation of the surrounding cityscape. Similar perspective sets-like compositions appeared in painted artworks which explored the relationship between viewer and scene, public and city.

Cumbernauld New Town has a polarizing effect on the public imagination. Throughout its life it has been both idolised and criticised, but in recent years increasingly negative images have been projected onto the megastructure. The local authority propose a new, more ideal, town centre to replace the seemingly unfit current monument , but what is the ideal new town centre? This thesis explores the representation of the ideal and city image through art and architecture and applies these ideas through a project, staging Cumbernauld New Town as the image of an ideal city.