The Journey of Utopia

In 1927, a group of advisors of King Alfonso XIII of Spain set off a journey to the United States. Their aim was to study the American University as a model for the design of the new University City in Madrid. Using the reconstruction of this cultural event as a guiding thread metaphor, the purpose of the Research Project is to study the roots and historical transformations that the University Space has experimented since its origins, under the impulse of Utopia, making special emphasis in its relation to the City. It will focus on the evolution of essential architectural models, beginning from its medieval germ in Europe: the exodus of the 'seed' of its embodied soul (the quadrangle) to the New World, the birth and diversification of the new model (campus) and, finally, in the early twentieth century, the 'return trip' to Europe of the modern idea, and the prolific heritage that it has generated in the contemporary University since then, from the point of view of the cultural connection between the Unites States and Europe.