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New Humanism
House of the Future
Palladian architecture
Exhibition – Parallel of Life and Art
CIAM and Team X
CIAM – Basic Principles/ Ideologies
The idea of Modern arch – link between architecture and economics
Economic efficiency – not max. production but min. working effort
Need for economic efficiency – impoverished economy
Most efficient method of production – rationalisation and standardisation
Rationalisation and standardisation react in 3 fold manner:
a) demand arch. Conceptions leading to simplification of working methods on the site and
factory
b)building industry – less skilled force; more specialised labour
c)consumer/ customer – revised reduced needs
maximum satisfaction of greatest number
1928 CIAM – signed by 24 architects
Emphasised ‘building’ rather than ‘architecture’
BASIC IDEA – increasing housing production and superseding the
‘craft era’.
CIAM – 3 stages of development
i)1928 – 33
1929 – Congress 1
Minimum building standards
1930 – Congress 2
Optimum height and block spacing
Most efficient use of land and material
1933-47
Dominated by Corbusier
Consciously shifted emphasis to town planning
CIAM IV – most comprehensive from urbanistic standpoint
The Functional City
The Athens Charter
Less practical but more visionary
Third and final stage of CIAM
CIAM VI – attempted to transcend the abstract sterility of ‘functional city’
But no indication that they were realistically capable
New affiliates – younger generation
Disillusionment
Restlessness
DECISIVE SPLIT – CIAM IX
-instead of alternative set of abstractions, searched for structural
principles of Urban growth
DISSATISFACTION WITH MODIFIED FUNTIONALISM AND IDEALISM
OF CORBUSIER
Responded to the simplistic model with a more complex pattern
Dwelling – green
Working – red
Cultivating body and mind yellow
Circulation - blue
Critical drive – To find a more precise relationship between ‘physical
form’ and ‘socio pshycological’ need
Subject matter of CIAM X
Last meeting – Team X
Epitaph of CIAM written by Corbusier
Unite de habitation – Athens charter in practise
Corbusier hated the street
Urban re - identification grid of the Smithsons with street as a substantial component
Doorn manifesto
Alison and Peter Smithson
About them:
-English architects
-met while studying – married in 1949, established their own practice in 1950
What they were known for:
-Deliberate lack of refinement as an opposition to high modernism
-Leaders of New Brutalism
-Social and anthropological underpinnings
-Streets in the sky
-Oppositions against simplified and reductive Urbanist traditions
-Revolt against CIAM
Built projects:
•Smithdon High School, Hunstanton, Norfolk (1949–1954)
•The House of the Future exhibition (at the 1956 Ideal Home Show)
•Sugden House, Watford
•The Economist Building, Piccadilly, London (1959–1965)
•Garden building, St Hilda's College, Oxford (1968)
•Private house extension for Lord Kennet, Bayswater, London, 1968
•Robin Hood Gardens housing complex, Poplar, East London (1969–1972)
•Buildings at the University of Bath, including the School of Architecture and
Building Engineering (1988)
•The last project the Cantilever-Chair Museum of the Bauhaus design
company TECTA in Lauenfoerde / Germany
Unfortunately, Robin Hood Gardens suffered from high costs associated with
the system selected and high levels of crime, all of which undermined the
architects' vision of streets in the sky and their architectural reputation. With
the exception of their work at Bath, they designed no further public buildings
in Britain, relying instead mainly on private overseas commissions and Peter
Smithson’s writing and teaching (he was a visiting professor at Bath from
1978 to 1990, and also a unit master at the Architectural Association School
of Architecture).
Unbuilt projects:
Coventry Cathedral unsuccessful competition entry, 1951
Golden Lane Estate unsuccessful competition entry, 1952
Sheffield University, unsuccessful competition entry
British Embassy, Brasília, Competition winning design, unbuilt due to financial
constraints, 1961
Golden Lane housing project
•1952
•London – bombed area reconstruction
•IDEA – high density , low budget – need not result in poor quality of life
•Brief – greatest possible number in terms of variety
•3 levels of streets in the air
•Each level - deck
•Each deck – 90 families – one social entity
•Streets in the air – safe streets
•All front doors open to deck – all backyards linked to deck
•Always changing backyard
dead wall effect gone
Form and tectonics –
Le Corbusier’s
Unite d’ Habitation
But streets in the air –
Sociological interpretation
Housing can multiply to form network over existing city
Wide open space near the street
2 spacious courtyards at the back
Modest community center and playground
11 storeys – 9 accessible by 3 streets in the air, 2 from ground level
Consn – 2 wings at right angles to rect block, or central block and 4 wings