Topos, Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia

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.