Riffing on some lines from the inimitable Owen Hatherley:
Erase the traces.
Destroy, in order to create.
Build a new world on the ruins of the old.
This, it is often thought, is the Modernist imperative, but what of it if the new society never emerged?
![AppleMark](http://modernistarchitecture.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/maxsemakov-komissariat-agriculture.jpeg?w=1024&resize=397%2C310)
Narkomzem building, designed by Aleksei Shchusev, Dmitrii Bulgakov, Iosif Frantsuz, Grigorii Yakovlev; photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)
We have been cheated out of the future, yet the future’s ruins lie about us, hidden or ostentatiously rotting.
![](http://modernistarchitecture.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/max-semakov-commissariat-of-communications-fomin-1928-1931.jpeg?w=1024&resize=394%2C293)
NCSR, Commissariat of Communications, designed by Ivan Fomin (1928-1931); photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)
So what would it mean, then, to look for the future’s remnants?
![AppleMark](https://i0.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org/2012/08/maxsemakov-tsentrosoiuz-le-corbusier-milinis-kolli.jpeg?resize=375%2C275&ssl=1)
Tsentrosoiuz building, designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Nikolai Kolli (1928-1933), photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)
To uncover clues about those who wanted, as Walter Benjamin put it, to “live without traces�
Can we, should we, try and excavate utopia?