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The Power of Informality Or Rethinking Modernism

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The Power of Informality Or Rethinking Modernism The power of informality or rethinking modernism Hüsnü Yegenoglu Assistant Professor Department of Architecture, Eindhoven University of Technology, Post-box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Tel: 00 31 40 2474666 E-mail: [email protected] Introduction In many cities of the developing countries a significant part of the population lives in spontaneously developed settlements. Unsustainable environments and irregular spatial structures are often distinctive characteristics of these settlements. The absence of rational planning and organization is often seen as the primary reason for these poor housing conditions. [1] This argumentation apparently has a long tradition even going beyond the heroic days of modernist urbanism as I will describe in this paper. It is not surprising that a significant number of city planners and architects working in the cities of the developing countries in transition rely on concepts of modernist urban housing design developed in the first decades of the twentieth century that are very often in a sharp contrast to the traditions within their own countries. Personal observations in different countries lead me to my main question within this context. How successful have modernist urban housing and architecture really been in the past and what do they have to offer for a fast changing future? In this paper I will discuss the concept of modernist urban housing and its cultural valuation by a brief examination of the key principles of the modernist approach as well as of the criticism against it and by describing the reality of the modernist experience. Further on I will work out the relevancy of modernist and post-modernist urban housing by exploring two cases. On the one hand the Amsterdam suburb “Bijlmermeer” in the Netherlands, a country with probably the most formalized and rationalized planning in the world, and on the other “New Adapazarı” in Turkey, a country where urban planning is highly marginalized by the reality of spontaneous and informal processes. Finally, I will round off my paper with my personal conclusions. The supposed superiority of the rational approach There are two almost contrary ways of urban housing development; the first one can be described as “created housing.” It is created and planned hierarchically (top-down) according to its functions by overseeing planners and architects using scientific and aesthetic methods of design. The controlled planning often stretches from a master-plan to details like even the used colours or materials. Due to the almost scientific planning process one speaks of rational development. In the last century a great part of the urban housing in post-industrial cities of the so-called global North was developed within this tradition. The second approach can be described as “spontaneous housing,” mostly developed by informal urban housing, often constructed by the inhabitants (bottom-up) without any master plan or the involvement of designers and mainly influenced by the “passage of time, the lay of the land, and the daily life of the citizens” [2]. Due to its irregular evolution, one speaks of an organic development, barely determined by formalized spatial order or regulation through authorities. Many of the fast emerging cities of the so-called global South are developing according to this pattern. Both approaches have a long history. In the master plan for the town of Miletus, designed by Hippodamus in the 5th century BC, a genuine urban grid makes its appearance and illustrates impressively the rational organization of space with all houses and streets positioned in a geometric pattern. [3] On the other hand Bernard Rudofsky in his well-known book Architecture without Architects describes the long tradition of vernacular architecture and town development generated by spontaneous activities of its inhabitants, based mostly on irregular and small-scale spatial structures that are inhabited by millions of people who build their dwellings “according to their own inner light an untutored imagination.” [4] In Rudofsky’s view the “spontaneous city” never will achieve the same appreciation as the “created city” in spite of all its qualities. He even describes a “discriminative approach” in the “orthodox architectural history” where it concerns vernacular architecture. [5] He finds the reason for this discriminative attitude in the suggested “primitiveness” of spontaneous architecture. Within this context “primitiveness” does not represent “originality” but “backwardness” and stands for an “underdeveloped” civilization. Rudofsky strongly criticizes this definition and opposes the idea that towns and buildings that were created with a rational organization would represent a higher level of cultural development. However, the interpretation of the rational approach as being synonymous for cultural superiority is very old. In his book “The Histories” Herodotus of Halicarnassus, probably the world’s first historian, in 440 BC describes an organized Greek city that in his opinion represents the superiority of the ancient Greek civilization above the nomadic culture of the Scythes, who formed a network of nomadic tribes carrying their dwellings with them wherever they went, not having cities nor forts, houses, streets. [6] In “De architectura,” the only complete treatise on architecture that survived from antiquity, the Roman architect and theorist Vitruvius emphasizes the importance of the transition in building from an intuitive and spontaneous activity towards a well-thought approach based on rational concepts. In his opinion this process illustrates the development from a “wild and barbarian life-style towards a peaceful civilization.” [7] So according to Herodotus and Vitruvius, a highly developed civilization distinguishes itself from a primitive barbarian society by the rational organization and visible order of its space. 2 The modernist approach In my view, the belief in a cultural superiority of rational planning along with the disregard of the qualities of a spontaneous development becomes highly significant in the modernist architecture and city planning of the 20th century. According to the modernist approach, developed around 1920, city planning and concepts for urban housing should be based on scientific, materialistic and deductive methods of planning [8]. This approach was strongly expressed in the famous statement by Le Corbusier that a house should be a “machine for living in.” [9] The Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), founded in La Sarraz in Switzerland in 1928, was probably the most influential event to promote the new modernist principles all over the world. From the very beginning on, the modernist movement rejected the existing conditions of housing as found in urban areas of Europe and North-America as inferior and not suitable for the contemporary city. At the fourth congress of CIAM, in 1933, in Athens, the report of an investigation on 33 big cities showed the chaotic spatial and social state of housing that did not meet the real needs of the majority of the city population. The existing cities were considered as unhealthy and chaotic anti-models compared to the desirable housing in the utopian Functional City. [10] Various spectacular housing settlements have been developed following the modernist principles of CIAM, like for example the famous projects Westhausen and Römerstadt in Frankfurt, Germany by Ernst May. These settlements still impressively represent the powerful cohesion between the language of modernist architecture and the social engagement of urban planners and architects at that time. [11] Probably the most influential project representing the social and spatial programme as well as the new shape of the modernist city is Le Corbusier’s project La Ville Radieuse from1930. The spatial order of the Ville Radieuse is based on an orthogonal grid structure and the strict separation of commercial, residential and industrial areas. It was “dedicated to the idea that harmony could be found within industrialism by finding the right balance between individual, family, and the public order of the state; between city and nature.” [12] Although never realized, the Ville Radieuse was meant to symbolize in its aesthetics the progress and superiority of a rationalised culture. Its design shows the almost unlimited belief in the power of the hierarchical and centralized top-down organization stretching from the macro-scale of the city to the micro-scale of the dwelling, as well as the belief that housing could be planned as a “large and smoothly operating machine,” and be regulated by a smart, intelligent and efficient social engineering. [13] The transparent deductive methods of the modernist approach definitely do appeal to the imagination of architects and planners who struggle with the complex social and spatial reality of the existing city while seeking for generic tools and methods to control complex urban processes. It is not surprising that from the 1950s on the modernist principles become orthodoxy in urban and architectural planning all over the world. In the fast developing cities of the South, the modernist approach is seriously regarded and applied to regulate the huge flows of migration generating a large demand for housing in the fast growing cities. 3 Attacks on the modernist orthodoxy In the 1960s as modernist housing becomes the standard for well-organized settlements with good living conditions, the first remarkable doubts on the supposedly efficient housing planned with modernist tools already
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