Hubert Tonka
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Hubert Tonka | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1943 (age 82–83) |
| Occupation | Sociologist |
| Known for | Utopie magazine |
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.[1]
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.[2] He worked as a plasterer during the day.[3] He became the assistant of Henri Lefebvre, who was a professor at the University of Paris's institute of urban planning.[4] 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.[5] Melp! helped to articulate the dissatisfaction of students in the lead-up to the protests of 1968.[6] Tonka was co-founder of the Vincennes department of urbanism.[7]
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.[1] Utopie, review de sociologie de l'urbain first appeared in May 1967, with Tonka as managing editor.[8] Tonka created L'Imprimerie Quotidienne, which printed the magazine.[9] 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.[10]
Tonka became a Director at the French Institute of Architecture (1987) and a professor of architecture and contemporary art in Bordeaux and Angers (1994).[11] 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.
