Diagonal Futures: Remarks on a Contribution to Utopian Thought by John Hejduk

This paper comments on John Hejduk’s introduction of a diagonal method to city design. It does this by analysing a previously unpublished manuscript sheet by Hejduk from the 1960’s. The paper also speculates that the formal opening offered by Hejduk’s use of the diagonal, and the notion of peripheral tension applied to the urban condition, can be seen as a contribution to utopian thought in architecture. Hejduk’s approach, it is argued, results in a kind of freedom different from that found in other architectural models of utopia. Characteristics of city morphology, space, and time as revealed in Hejduk’s drawings and notes are proposed as distinguishing characteristics and composition devices. A transcript of the manuscript sheet used in the analysis is provided in an Appendix.