Interview with Professor Alex Josephson, Toronto, price-awarded architect and co-founder of Partisans group, an association looking for new ways in architecture. In our interview, an evergreen was addressed that came to a new life: the ideal city. The idea of the ideal city is not dead, but as an inspiration is needed today more than ever. It is about building a sustainable future for a humane life in cities, outlining different concepts of planned cities in history, from the background of the Canadian situation. Two concepts developed by Alex and his team are presented: 'Innisfil', an ideal city on the earth, as Alex said; and 'The Hearn', an ideal city in a building. These two different kinds of concepts were explained and put in context. Innisfil is based on a combination of two “classical” models: the utopian one of a concentric circle, combined with the Roman grid. Innisfil considers issues critical for city life, such as building typologies, city scale, population density, and neighbourhood. The Hearn, a former power plant that was the largest in North America, is a concept of reuse that goes in a different direction than Innisfil, the ‘ideal city on the earth’: it could become a vessel for cohabitation, like a city.

Please watch the video of this interesting interview here: https://www.idealspaces.org/podcasts/ideal-city-revisited-alex-josephson/