CHAPTER TWO

Urban Impacts of Modernism

modern origins of urban planning= a social movement for urban reform as a reaction against the
disorder of the industrial city. 19 C

what drove the desire for planning?

• Many visionaries of the period sought an ideal city.

• practical considerations of adequate sanitation or cleanness
• movement of goods and people
• provision of amenities
• balance the conflicting demands of social equity, economic growth, environmental sensitivity,
and aesthetic appeal.

The Development of Urban Planning

Early examples of efforts toward planned urban development include:

• orderly street systems that are rectilinear and sometimes radial.

• division of a city into specialized functional quarters.
• development of commanding central sites for palaces temples, and civic buildings
• advanced systems of fortification, water supply, and drainage.

The physical form of medieval and Renaissance towns and cities followed- pattern of the village,
spreading along a street or a crossroads in circular patterns or in irregular shapes (new ones=
rectangular).

Streets were a medium for communication than for transportation and even in major European cities
paving was not widely introduced.

In much of the world, city plans were based on the concept of a centrally located public space. The plans
differed, however, in their prescriptions for residential development.

*Courtyard-style domiciles characterized the Mediterranean region.

*Compounds of small houses fenced off from the street formed many African and Asian settlements.

The era of industrialization

In both Europe and the United States, the surge of industry during the mid- and late 19th century was go
together with by:

• rapid population growth

• unfettered business enterprise
• great speculative profits
• public failures in managing the unwanted physical consequences of development.
 ➢ Giant sprawling cities developed during this era, exhibiting the luxuries of wealth and the
meanness of poverty in sharp juxtaposition.
➢ The slums, congestion, disorder, ugliness, and threat of disease provoked a reaction in which
sanitation improvement was the first demand.
➢ Significant betterment of public health resulted from engineering improvements in water supply
and sewerage, which were essential to the further growth of urban populations.

efforts to improve the urban environment emerged from recognition of the need for recreation- parks
and playgrounds.

New York’s Central Park- designed by architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Its
contributions were:

o the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic,

o the creation of a romantic landscape within the heart of the city,
o a demonstration that the creation of parks could greatly enhance real-estate values in their
surroundings.

Concern for the appearance of the city had long been manifest in Europe.

In Paris during the Second Empire (1852–70), Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann, became the greatest
of the planners on a grand scale, advocating straight arterial boulevards, advantageous vistas, and a
symmetry of squares and radiating roads.

Urban Form of Modernism

Zoning and subdivision controls

policy makers perceived a need to sort out incompatible activities, set some limits upon building size,
and protect established areas from despoilment.

Zoning- They set maximums for building breadth and height and designated acceptable configurations
of structures within demarcated areas (zones).

Although zoning protected residents from adjacent noxious uses, it had the less desirable further effect
of forcing long trips to work and increasing routine travel.

New towns
After World War II several European countries, especially France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the
Soviet Union, undertook the building of new towns (comprehensive new developments outside city
centers) as governmental enterprises.

The Scope of Planning

European governments became directly involved with housing provision for the working class, and
decisions concerning the siting of housing construction shaped urban growth.
 Most known Urban Approaches of Modernism
a. Postwar approaches
• High-rise structures separated by green spaces prevailed in the developments built during this
period.
• Their form reflected both the need to produce large-scale, relatively inexpensive projects and
the architects’ preference for models that exploited new materials and technologies and could
be replicated universally.

• Government involvement in housing development gave the public sector a more direct means
of controlling the pattern of urban growth through its investments, rather than relying on
regulatory devices as a means of restricting private developers.
b. Planning and government
today, private developers must obtain governmental permission in order to build.

Competing models

The primary goal of city planning in the mid-20th century was comprehensiveness /inclusiveness/.

An increasing recognition of the interdependence of various aspects of the city led to the realization
that land use, transport, and housing needed to be designed in relation to each other.

Changing objectives

In particular, economic development planning, especially in old cities that have suffered from the
decline of manufacturing, has come to the front.

A late 20th-century movement in planning, variously called new urbanism, smart growth, or neo
traditionalism, has attracted popular attention through its alternative views of suburban development.
this movement has endorsed new construction that brings home, work, and shopping into proximity,
encourages pedestrian traffic, promotes development around mass transit nodes, and mixes types of
housing.

Modernism in Asia
Asian architecture and design are a combination of styles, cultures, and civilizations. They are intricate
but also minimalist, and everything else in between.

influenced by Western and European elements.

Asians have successfully weaved their culture into their modern homes and structures.

the Japanese:

• are among the world leaders in innovation, they see to it that while the materials, color, and
furniture are contemporary, the form remains traditional.
• are obsessed with minimalism. Sometimes, all they need is a mattress in a room.
• The lines are always clean, and the form is always kept simple.
 • The desire for functionality and minimalism are among the reasons why the Japanese are the
modern heroes of the philosophy “less is more.”

Ancient Chinese architecture is often characterized by the use of timber framework, stone carving, arch
buildings, and courtyards.

All about balance

In modern Chinese architecture, bilateral symmetry is found everywhere from palace complexes to
farmhouses.

Asymmetry and balance are two important elements in Asian architectural design. From the lines and
the color to the furniture, everything feels just about right. These complement the traditional way of life
and the modern elements of design.

The sustainable building designs feature skylights, solar panels, energy saving elevators, efficient
ventilation systems and carbon dioxide monitoring systems. Asia is becoming more architecturally
responsible, and green structures are seen as worthwhile investments.

Constructing with natural materials

Hanok, the traditional Korean house. In accordance with strict Confucian techniques, prefabricated
wooden frame structures are assembled on location. These homes are 100% natural, biodegradable,
and recyclable.

Balinese architecture- popular Asian tropical architectural styles, is distinct for having unique harmony
with nature. Local materials are used to design homes and buildings. Thatch roofing, coconut wood,
bamboo poles, stone, and bricks are among the natural materials used in modern Balinese architecture.

The tropical atmosphere of Balinese architecture is famous.

All over the continent, architects are building green spaces by using sustainable materials, most
especially bamboo. It is known as the “green steal” of the 21st century Asian architectural design.

Asian architecture has adopted modern technologies and blended them well with natural elements.

Modern Japanese Architecture

Pritzker Architecture Prize= Nobel Prize of architecture.

Modernity and Tradition

the concepts of simplicity, honesty, and purity have guided architecture. What the rest of the world calls
modern, Japan can claim as tradition.

Simplicity and Honesty

Exploration of Culture

Modern Chinese Architecture

Modern Chinese architecture refers to everything built in China since about the middle of the 1800s and
includes a wide variety of architectural styles.

Bended Architectural Styles

Chinese architecture began to blend traditional Chinese style and western architectural characteristics.

Traditional elements held over from the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) and those inherent to the Qing
Dynasty (1644 – 1911) of the time remained prominent.
So most important buildings still featured sweeping roofs, open courtyards, screens and wooden
columns.

The Birth of Communist Architecture

Solid grey blocks and simple designs characterized many structures of this period.

The Returning to the Ancients' Period involved buildings with large roofs, while the New Communist
Buildings Period is exemplified by the Big Ten Buildings- combine Stalinist architecture, traditional
Chinese architecture and modern architecture.

Opening Up and Architectural Exploration

new architectural styles began to develop that combined element of all of the older styles while also
inventing new elements.

industrial style buildings and skyscrapers sprung up with the rapid modernization in cities.

The influence of foreign styles

From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, American and European architecture experienced
a period of change from Classic Revival and Romanticism to Modernism. Those architectural styles were
successively presented in modern Chinese architecture.

A stage of stagnation

From 1937 to 1949, affected by the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression, Chinese architecture
was entirely suspended.

After the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese architecture entered a rapid
development period. A lot of edifices were under construction, such as housing, industrial buildings,
infrastructure, and construction programs such as dams and bridges.
Architecture Boom in China

landmarks in Shenzhen

Since the 1980s, with the implementation of China’s opening up of economic and diplomatic policies,
Chinese architectural design has gradually become creative and with multiple styles.

Chinese architects attempted to incorporate traditional Chinese designs into modern buildings, but with
only limited success, and in part because the pressure of rapid urbanization throughout whole country
made demands for speedier construction of buildings.

Thus, important cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and
Guangzhou rapidly changed their appearance.

Into the 21st century

After more than three decades of sustained and rapid economic growth, China, has become a nation
that enjoys the fastest rate of urbanization.

. At the turn of the 21st century, responding to the long-standing concern for preserving tradition,
Chinese contemporary architecture has reinterpreted traditional design in urban areas.
 The History of 'African Modernism:
Civic and educational buildings began springing up in and around cities, often as direct extensions of
presidential vision.

Ceremonial spaces rich with symbolism, like

Ghana’s Independence Square in Accra, supplanted colonial enclaves; state industry and central banks.
 Manuel Herz Independence Arch (1961) in Accra,
Ghana, by Public Works Departments Ivoire (1962–70) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire by German designer
Heinz Fenchel and Israeli architect Thomas Leiterdorf .

Few would argue that independence and modernism are clear-cut states of being, or that they are
necessarily mutually reinforcing. Modernism, meanwhile, is usually anti-local and was, as Herz writes,
“one of the very motifs that the empires used to colonize Africa during the nineteenth century.”

the architecture of this era in these countries purports to be fiercely modern and independent, but is
thick with contradiction.

BaanLa Pyramide (1973) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, by

Rinaldo Olivieri
Italian architect Rinaldo Oliveri responded by setting out to conquer the tyranny of the rectangle. . It
seeks to re-create the liveliness of the African marketplace at its base, with tapering floors shaded by
broad awnings.

The ratio of rentable space to circulation space was all wrong and the building sits mostly empty at the
center of town.

• So, the question remains: Can modernist architecture in Africa truly be considered African or is it
more European?

It can be both, Lokko concluded in her lecture, as long as it has a given purpose and direction. “There’s
so much experimentation for the sake of it,” she said. “I’m interested in a speculative, rigorous
experimentation for the continent.”

Criticisms on Modernism
How do you define modern architecture?

What is built today that is deliberately plain, anonymous, repetitive- buildings that have gone up all
over the world since 1920 in keeping with such modern dogma as “form follows function” and “less is
more.”

What were the original goals?

• creating an image of mass-production architecture to serve the needs of a mass society.

• It was all very socialist and egalitarian in spirit,
• geared toward providing each city dweller with light, space, air, sun.

Have architects fulfilled these goals?

Not very well. The modern cities that resulted have produced traumas /Shocks/ of awful nature. They
make no sense in terms of the way people live.

Best examples are: -

1. One of the most intriguing is Le Corbusier’s apartments United Habitation built in 1952 at
Marseilles, France.
The apartments are beautiful, but the children’s rooms are mere closets, six feet wide, some with
no windows. He described his works as “pure prisms raised against the sky” a beautiful image, but
not related to the way people lived inside them.
2. Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas of the “open plan” in houses and apartments where the kitchen blends
into the dining room, which in turn blends into the living room, etc.

What about modern architecture’s vision of the city?

The early modernists started with a visionary ideal of the city, which just hasn’t coincided with reality.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s basic idea was Broad-acre/hectare/ City suburban plots that would give every
family its own separate home on its own separate acre of land.
Corbusier’s was the Radiant City high-rise towers in a park, spaced very far apart.

Neither could survive without elaborate and efficient mass transportation systems, which have never
been designed.

What has been modern architecture’s biggest single failure?

Probably the skyscraper, which is the symbol of modernity. Some of them are quite beautiful But the
all-glass, skin-and-bones buildings turn out to be unbelievably expensive to build and in terms of energy
consumption.

What about the pedestrian plazas at the base of many skyscrapers?

Terribly cold in winter, hot in the summer. And because tall buildings deflect the wind, the plazas are so
windswept /unhospitable/ that people often have to form human chains to cross them.

What is at the heart of modern architecture’s failure?

When Mies van der Rohe first talked about making modern architecture possible in 1924, he said our
first consideration must be to find a new building material that would be weatherproof, soundproof,
lightweight and insulating. Then modern architecture would come into its own. But it turns out there
really is no new material that is all these things.

Modern furniture - Modern chairs are wonderful pieces of sculpture but you shouldn’t sit on them.

What trends do we find encouraging /inspiring/?

The recycling of old buildings is becoming more and more attractive. We are finding out that the most
practical buildings were originally designed to do something completely different.

What is missing in new cities?

Chaos, which is the way real life is. What’s needed are places where people can fight, love, shop, go to
theaters enjoy variety. Modern planners hate that because it’s not tidy. But life is untidy.