Brasilia, the capital of Brazil (mentioned in the article) was built by disciples of Le Corbusier. It is a horrible place, a totalitarian technocracy modeled as a city, a place that forgot that humans exist. But it is also a very interesting failed experiment.
back
3 comments
I lived there for some years. It's not nearly as bad as you say. The main inconvenience is that it is very car-centric, but the consequence is that you get to walk around in nice green surroundings if you don't want to drive/take the bus. Other than that, it's a pretty nice place (I'm comparing it to other cities in Brazil, not to Paris).
Brasília is basically this:
https://eugene-kaspersky-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2014/...
http://www.domusweb.it/content/dam/domusweb/en/news/2010/04/...
edit: Just to mention that the buildings in the photos are all residential buildings.
Le Corbusier and followers are responsible for quite some ghettos in France and Belgium, and still he's seen as a hero by many architects.
As a consequence, instead of starting over, money is being poured into preservation and restoration of these monstrosities .
An example from Leuven: http://www.cvaa.be/en/project/social-housing-project or Antwerp: http://www.standaard.be/cnt/tp2cvh63
you can find many more
These aren't even monstruosities. Compared to actual social-architectural catastrophies they're cute.
There's a few stuff that went very very bad in this era of urban growth, and Le Corbusier was only part of it. If you look at his first big 'bar' in Marseille, cite radieuse, it was an acceptable concept, spacious hallways, carefully designed flats, with good lighting, good thermal thinking. Then you have national projects that took the idea of 1000s of people in a small land surface and removed all the actual individual value and beauty. It was all cramped and low-cost. Industrialization of social structures, that went sour pretty fast. Even though, based on the ads of the day, they truly believed in doing good and being correct in their proposal.
Doesn't them being ghettoes mainly have to do with them being occupied by poor people, not the architecture? Europe also has ghettoes in a number of other architectural styles. And in the other direction, Manhattan is packed full of International Style modernism, and yet not considered a ghetto... because it's full of wealthy people.
It might be that his constructions resulted in ghettos but it's not his exclusivity (or that the fault lies exclusively due to his way of building stuff)
Yeah, some should be conserved (maybe for historical purposes) but sometimes it would be better to start over
Architects are not wizards. Few things have intrinsical value. What one generation values is not necessarily what the next one will. To complicate the situation, individual values might not even be aligned with collective values/interests within that generation. For some time american suburbs were not even questionable as the best lifestyle that you could get, nowadays people are not sure anymore. Values change continually.
Large developments involve a lot of resources so they must be politically defendable. The architect has to distill reality and ideals to propose (bet) on something.
But there is more to it than that.
Le Corbusier has to propose something that makes people say "classic corbusier" or something like that. No name architects have to propose something weird if they ever wish to be remembered by anybody. Bad rock star architect probably makes lot more money than good no name architect.
Politicians actually making the decision are playing with someone else money. In most cases nobody remembers them in any way. Only if the building comes famous for looks or budget, the politicians get anything out of it. So again incentives for eccentricity.
If you would let regular people to vote on architecture, you would likely see incremental changes. And the system would be lot more like you described.
In general democracies are not great for architectural experimentation in large scale. There are too many veto players and experimentation must be aligned with investors short-term values/interest (AKA public or private money will only be spent if somebody will get fast gains from that investment, being it cash or advertisement).
In pro-totalitarian regimes, ideals are the most important. If architects don't diverge from that ideals, they have carte blanche to experiment.
E.g. Frank Gehry eccentricity is chosen mostly for the advertisement that will bring to the development. Even so, FB headquarters amount of experimentation is minimal. High level of experimentation is costy, risky and the potential reward would be minimal.
I really think representative democracies are almost as good/bad at public works than pro-totalitarian regimes. Veto players are as relatively likely to veto moderate approaches, because nobody has real interests considering the actual functionality of the building. It may be more towards cheap eccentricity than expensive eccentricity, but anyhow you aren't guaranteed to have anything beautiful.
Private business playing safe is not really surprise to anybody. Also completely private houses play safe most of the time too. When somebody actually has something to gain from architecture, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
My point is that some form of direct democracy would calm down public works. Which only seems fair. If million eyeballs have to see a building daily, why do you let ten decide on it?
To simplify and agilise the process.
As an architect, I would say that it is exactly the main privilege of this job: being able to influence the decision of what will be built ;)
I didn't realize I was talking with an architect. Sorry if I come off too aggressive. :)
I honestly think that there would be big loads of cash to be made in architecture if somebody would take strict back to the roots + science approach.
If you could contact CEO of general electric and show him proof that his employees are 10% more productive in a workplace you designed than what is industry standard at the moment, budget is no real constraint anymore. You could do that, psychology is lot more quantitative these days than ever before.
The result would probably not be "WOW" architecture. It's probably lot about windows. And you have to take interior, exterior and surroundings into account at the same time. Probably quite traditional and boring building. But possibly lot more interesting than this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/GE_Schen...
You would not get your name on architecture magazines. But you would make lives better. Happy employee is productive employee.
I hope you are not offended. This is nothing personal. I'm just frustrated with so much outright ugly factories and offices everywhere, and architects are juggling around Guggenheim. What works in art doesn't work in buildings, because we have to live with the crap that never would have gotten out of studio.
Productivity gains imply that the architect must know the workflow in detail. Stories about students living in a hospital for some weeks to acknowledge the subtleties of the workflow are rather common in academia but in the real world things are hard to put in practice: time constraints, work-life balance, squeezed budgets (in most industries) and subjectivity (hard to quantify productivity/happiness gains before building it) make change very hard. R&D in architecture is already fueled by architecture interns working pro bono.
Normally the higher you go in an hierarchy the more conservative it gets till you get answers like:
I completely agree with you but without an open layout how do I control my employees?
With an open layout I can put more people in less space.
This is what most business people think. All the rest is poetry.
edit: best office concept I know: http://www.angelinthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Gl...
