{{short description|French sociologist and urban planner}} {{Infobox person | name = Hubert Tonka | image = <!-- just the filename, without the File: or Image: prefix or enclosing brackets --> | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1943 | birth_place = | death_date = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} or {{Death-date and age|Month DD, YYYY|Month DD, YYYY}} (death date then birth date) --> | death_place = | known_for = ''Utopie'' magazine | occupation = Sociologist }} '''Hubert Tonka''' (born 1943) is a French sociologist and urban planner who edited the ''Utopie'' magazine, and was one of the leaders of the ''Utopie'' movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.{{sfn|Utopia Deferred}}
==Career==
For family reasons, Tonka had to start work at a very young age. In Paris around 1960, he was taking night classes for a diploma in urban planning while working in the day, where he met other members of what would become the ''Utopie'' group.{{sfn|Colomina|2010|p=197}} He worked as a plasterer during the day.{{sfn|Harris|Berke|2011|p=34}} He became the assistant of Henri Lefebvre, who was a professor at the University of Paris's institute of urban planning.{{sfn|Stanek|2011|p=24}} He was an aesthete and a refined typographer. By the end of 1966, he was a member of the editorial committee of ''Melp!'', the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts student association's review, along with Jacques Barda, Roland Castro, Pierre Granveaud and Antoine Grumbach.{{sfn|Dessauce|1999|p=52}} ''Melp!'' helped to articulate the dissatisfaction of students in the lead-up to the protests of 1968.{{sfn|Colomina|2010|p=100}} Tonka was co-founder of the Vincennes department of urbanism.{{sfn|Damamme|2008|p=228}}
The ''Utopie'' group originated from a meeting at Lefebvre's house in 1966. It included the architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann and Antoine Stinco, the landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste (his wife) and the sociologists Jean Baudrillard, René Lourau and Catherine Cot.{{sfn|Utopia Deferred}} ''Utopie, review de sociologie de l'urbain'' first appeared in May 1967, with Tonka as managing editor.{{sfn|Genosko|1994|p=166}} Tonka created L'Imprimerie Quotidienne, which printed the magazine.{{sfn|Colomina|2010|p=352}} Tonka edited and promoted collections of Baudrillard's essays, helping to draw the attention of the public to his views, which were at first Marxist but later moved towards the centre.{{sfn|Stewart|2011|p=2}}
Tonka became a Director at the French Institute of Architecture (1987) and a professor of architecture and contemporary art in Bordeaux and Angers (1994).{{sfn|La Librairie Dialogues}} In the 1990s, Tonka and singer, songwriter and author Jeanne-Marie Sens founded the publishing house Sens & Tonka. Tonka and Sens co-authored and published several books on architecture.
==Views==
Tonka gave life to the Pneumatic concepts of the ''Utopie'' group, which advocated ephemeral, inflatable structures.{{sfn|Dessauce|1999|p=52}} Tonka held extreme left opinions, close to the anarchists, that could be traced back to Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin.{{sfn|Dessauce|1999|p=38}} Talking of the intellectual roots of the ''Utopie'' group, Tonka said:{{sfn|Dessauce|1999|p=41}} {{blockquote |I have a whole culture which comes from Batavian Marxism, that is to say Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter, and it has nothing to do with French Marxism. I discovered this culture in working in the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam... I discovered "secrets" from Lefebvre, who did not want to widen that membership ... there was also Archigram, there was also the Situs [situationists], and then there was everything that was around and that we saw: there was ''Arguments, Socialisme ou Barbarie''...}} In a 1971 interview, Tonka said, "To imagine ... that it is possible to act politically through urbanism, architecture, and the detournement of either is a dream." He believed that only a revolution could change society, and this could only happen in spite of architecture, which is by definition repressive.{{sfn|Stanek|2011|p=245}}
==Selected bibliography== {{Refbegin}} * {{cite book |title=L'Hôtel industriel Berlier, Paris 13e arrondissement, France, de Dominique Perrault, architecte |author1=Jeanne-Marie Sens |author2=Dominique Perrault |author3=Hubert Tonka |author4=Georges Fessy |publisher=Pandora |year=1991 |pages=56}} * {{cite book |title=Là & ailleurs: Massimiliano Fuksas : vingt-cinq années d'architecture en Italie, en France, et en Allemagne |author1=Jeanne-Marie Sens |author2=Massimiliano Fuksas |author3=Hubert Tonka |author4=Doriana O. Mandrelli |publisher=Pandora |year=1991 |pages=104}} * {{cite book |title=Locus & Beyond: Massimiliano Fuksas : Twenty-five Years of Architecture in Italy, France, and Germany |author1=Jeanne-Marie Sens |author2=Hubert Tonka |author3=Massimiliano Fuksas |author4=Doriana O. Mandrelli |publisher=Pandora Editions |year=1992 |isbn=9782742100248 |pages=104}} * {{cite book |title ="Le bateau ivre" de Jean Nouvel: immeuble Cartier, 261 boulevard Raspail à Paris |isbn=9782910170547 |author=Hubert Tonka |author2=Jean Nouvel |author3=Sens, Jeanne-Marie Sens |publisher=Sens & Tonka |year=1994 |pages=95}} * {{cite book |title=Une maison particulière à Floirac (Gironde) de Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal, architectes |author=Hubert Tonka |publisher=Sens & Tonka |year=1994 |isbn=2910170152 |pages=44}} * {{cite book |title="Rouge & noir": le stadium à Vitrolles de Rudy Ricciotti, architecte |author1=Hubert Tonka |author2=Rudy Ricciotti |author3=Jeanne-Marie Sens |publisher=Sens & Tonka |year=1995 |isbn=9782910170127 |page=70}} * {{cite book |title=Les ateliers du parc: école d'architecture de Normandie à Rouen de Patrice Mottini, architecte |author1=Jeanne-Marie Sens |author2=Hubert Tonka |publisher=Sens & Tonka |year=1997 |isbn=9782910170264 |pages=70}} * {{cite book |title=Dominique Perrault: morceaux choisis : exposition itinérante, 2002 |author1=Brigitte David |author2=Jeanne-Marie Sens |author3=Hubert Tonka |author4=Dominique Perrault |publisher=Sens & Tonka |year=2002 |pages=141}} {{Refend}}
==References== ;Citations {{Reflist |colwidth=30em}} ;Sources * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9z_zrQLuY3kC&pg=PA197 |title=Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196x 197x |first=Beatriz |last=Colomina |publisher=ACTAR Publishers |year=2010 |isbn=978-8496954526}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OK2RtTLkUakC&pg=PA228 |title=Mai-Juin 68 |first=Dominique |last=Damamme |publisher=Editions de l'Atelier |year=2008 |isbn=978-2708239760}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pGzZYJd4BmwC&pg=PT53 |title=The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in '68 |first=Marc |last=Dessauce |publisher=Princeton Architectural Press |year=1999 |isbn=1568981767}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AofPjTZZhXcC&pg=PA166 |title=Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze |first=Gary |last=Genosko |publisher=Routledge |year=1994 |isbn=0415112575}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hli5J3R77MAC&pg=PT34 |title=Architecture of the Everyday |first1=Steven |last1=Harris |first2=Deborah |last2=Berke |publisher=Chronicle Books |year=2011 |isbn=978-1616891206}} * {{cite web |ref={{harvid|La Librairie Dialogues}} |url=http://www.librairiedialogues.fr/personne/hubert-tonka/87933/ |title=Hubert Tonka Biographie |work=La Librairie Dialogues |access-date=2012-05-21}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJAsBHN02nwC&pg=PA24 |title=Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory |first=Lukasz |last=Stanek |publisher=U of Minnesota Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0816666164}} * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e5erLSkdKKgC&pg=PA2 |title=Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences |first=Jon |last=Stewart |publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. |year=2011 |isbn=978-1409434900}} * {{cite web |ref = {{harvid|Utopia Deferred}} |url = http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10974 |title = Utopia Deferred |work = The MIT Press |access-date = 2012-05-20 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120129112734/http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10974 |archive-date = 2012-01-29 }}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tonka, Hubert}} Category:French sociologists Category:Living people Category:1943 births Category:French urban planners Category:French male writers