The Phantom Utopia

While conducting research on the city of Maubeuge, I became interested in the existence and disappearance of a hangar that housed airships in the early 20th century.

Built around 1912, it housed several airships over the years. It disappeared at the end of World War II, though it’s unclear exactly how—it was likely dismantled. A high school was built on the site in the 1960s, followed by the Maubeuge university campus; today, there are no traces left of the building. The aerostation center is a distant memory.

But this memory piques my curiosity and serves as the starting point for my research. Archives and newspaper articles, encounters and anecdotes gradually add to this mysterious story. The project quickly found its name: “The Phantom Utopia.” It will explore the echoes of this ghostly story in our present-day landscape and set out in search of traces of this failed utopia.

Thus, the project seeks to connect three locations: Maubeuge and its now-demolished hangar; the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget, which houses this piece of aviation history; and Tropical Islands in Germany, a massive water park built inside a former airship hangar. What emerges is a narrative that blends different time periods and landscapes—from the disappearance of a building to the construction of this narrative at the museum, all the way to the repurposing of our failed utopias in this airship hangar, now transformed into a gigantic amusement park.