for everyone a garden VI, from the series "for everyone a garden"

Chicago-based artist David Hartt explores how architecture both reveals—and fails to fulfill—the ideals of a given community. Titled after a 1974 book by the architect Moshe Safdie that argues for the social benefits of modular and prefabricated design, these drawings depict the inadequacies of one such project—architect Jean-Louis Chanéac’s 1962 “juxtaposable cellules,” oval pods arranged in organic clusters. On the right, a well-dressed man in a luxurious interior expresses a leftist statement that clashes with his lavish environment.

On the left, a diverse group of citizens protests under the banner of Safdie’s slogan; the subtext is that Chanéac’s spaces are only accessible to the wealthy. Hartt enlisted a professional illustrator to draft these images based on a digital collage he designed himself. He then glazed the drawings using color Plexiglas in the palette of 1960s and 1970s psychedelia, arguably another failed utopian project.