Place and
location are not the same thing. Location refers to a particular point on the
surface of the earth, while place refers to a relationship of person to space.
Everything in this world, and that everything in the world comes from our
perception. "Topos", a Greek term for place, defines Utopia, Dystopia
and Heterotopia.
U or EU a
Greek root means "good" or "not" and “topo” means place. As
these two roots combine it creates the term "Utopia", a good place
and not a place. The concept of utopia was introduced by Sir Thomas More in his
book "Utopia" as a perfect society that has no time, no place and
totalitarian control of society. Utopia is a perfect society with social order.
The first Utopia that we know is a Garden of Eden. According to the Bible, everything
in Garden of Eden is Perfect place. There is no one fight. There is no pain. Everything
grows well. It is timeless and placeless. Until, Eve take the apple of wisdom
so Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden. The concept of Utopia is not
physical and to make this becomes physical needs interpretation. Of course,
that interpretation comes from us, human. We are the interpreter.
Because
of us interpret the Utopia idea and physicalize it, it creates another concept
of topo, which is “Heterotopia”. Heterotopia is a physical representation or
approximation of Utopia, the space of otherness. Hetero means others. So it
also refers to the parallel relation that creates the utopia thought. To look
at it in a more simple way, we look at the city as not nature because we
compare it to forest and mountain that we have a perception of it as being
nature. One example of Heterotopia is prison. Prison is the simulation of being
ordered, being punished and being restrained. To make that needs a parallel
environment so people inside feel that they are punished.
From the
picture above is a picture for prison. The hall way is free for the guard to
walk around. The guards can walk to anywhere he wants unlike the prisoners that
are restrained in the cell. The parallel relationship between freedom and
restraint defines one and another. One concept makes the understanding of
another concept becomes stronger.
From the
reading “Of Other Spaces” by Michel Foucault, Foucault gives us the example of
mirror. A place in mirror is a utopia. The reflected world is not real. The
image in it is not real. However, the mirror image can also be the heterotopia
as well because mirror is an object. We can touch.
The last
topo is Dystopia. Dystopia is the opposite idea of Utopia although it does not
exist. Dystopia is a bad place, bad society where people kill and fight to one
another, society where things are disorder. Example can be found in many
literatures, one of them is “Machine Stops” by E.M. Foster. It talks about the
future when humans rely on too much technology to live on their own until one
day when the system shuts down. That time is the time when humans need to stay
alive and have to live on their own again.
