Michał Wiśniewski Concrete garden

housing estate – a grey linear The desire to build a new world was an idea Transforming themselves from engineers of The reality of Polish towns – rarely which frequently accompanied disagreement beauty into engineers of society, architects arouses positive emotions. It is most com- on the subject of the encountered reality. The of the modern era also made attempts to monly perceived as a sick whim and a great history of is full of rebel- define anew the real living needs of people. mistake of modern architecture. Alienation lion and desire to fight the social system and Full of faith in technology, architects and social pathologies lurking beneath pre- diseases of civilisation, which pushed artists sought to subordinate people’s everyday fabricated architecture have cast a shadow and builders towards a vision of a new – and rhythm, habits and environment to the log- on the rich discourse of modernism, which thus a better – world. Since the end of the 19th ic of the machine. The appearance of steel, lay at the heart of post-war mass urbanisa- century, architectural modernity has been tempered glass and reinforced concrete tion. Its motor was a utopian vision of a understood in military terms – as a heroic turned aesthetic paradigms in architec- brave new world, a Garden of Eden without struggle with tuberculosis, illiteracy, poverty ture upside down and pushed architecture wars, sickness or hunger. Unlike many and inequalities of a society based on class. towards abstraction, the simplest forms and earlier utopias, the post-war one was im- According to war logic, architects of the mod- meanings. The departure from the ‘zero plemented. Showing no consideration for ern era pushed their own statue of arbiter of point’ propagated by modernists allowed surroundings nor energy usage costs, 20th beauty off its pedestal, which – aware of tradi- construction of both the world and humans century modernists created an extremely tion and history – they themselves had erected anew. While the end of the First World War anthropocentric programme that forever with the aim of expressing higher ideas and brought about a collapse of faith in the changed the human environment. Mod- feelings. Instead of remaining in the hitherto bourgeois and aristocratic ideals of the 19th ernism triumphed throughout almost the splendour of being connoisseurs of the ideal, century, the end of the Second World War entire world with a series of monumental architects ‘descended from the heights’ to deal saw a whole generation of designers shaped complexes, with Polish ones being just one with the real current problems of everyday in a new spirit faced with the task of re- example among many, and not necessarily life, which they could almost touch in the building from the destruction caused by the the most intriguing or irritating. increasingly large and complicated towns of military cataclysm. the era of the industrial revolution.

autoportret 2 [34] 2011 | 61 A fragment of ’s letter to Jacob Berend Bakema from 5 July 1961. The drawing presents standing on the shoulders of CIAM.

This new phenomenon constituted a huge op- portunity and challenge for architects work- ing after the war. The permanent political crisis and the demographic boom coincided in time with technological advances driven by Cold War military rivalry. The development of aviation, including civil aviation, resulted in the emergence of a new building material – aluminium. The conquest of space, which began at the end of the 1950s, the increasingly fast development of motorisation and the ever

netherlands architecture institute, rotterdam − bakema archive netherlands architecture institute, rotterdam greater availability of mass media, including television, also brought about changes in the The end of the biggest war in modern history, plot – into which crime and personal tragedy way of thinking about towns and the human and a turning point in Europe, pushed a gener- are interwoven – was the symbolic expression environment. The more time elapsed from ation of pupils of the first modernists towards of a vision of youth and innocence brutally the Second World War, the more technological creation of a utopian vision of the world of the confronted with the atrophy of the world. developments were applied in construction. future. Instead of looking to the wisdom of the past – the 19th century ideal – there was a sud- Rossellini’s picture expressed the need for a The first changes were felt just after the war. den desire to discover the future and realise it new beginning (which was important in the In 1947, after a ten year break, CIAM, the In- here and now. This breakthrough moment re- post-war epoch) which was faced with the vio- ternational Congress of Modern Architecture, turned repeatedly on various cultural planes. lence of a successive conflict – this time the met again in the British town of Bridgwater. In 1948, Roberto Rossellini in the last film in Cold War – where the main victors of the fight From this moment, successive meetings of an his war trilogy, Germany – Year Zero, directed his with Nazi Germany turned on each other. increasingly large group of modern planners camera on a thirteen year old boy wandering The first nuclear explosions carried out on and architects were organised regularly every aimlessly through the rubble of ruined . both sides of the Iron Curtain now dividing two years. Post-war CIAM activities were The world in which he had grown up had just Europe added to the atmosphere of fear and characterised by an atmosphere of growing collapsed. The church, school, state, and fam- uncertainty regarding the future. Successive generational conflict. While the doyen of ily which shaped his identity had ceased to ex- Cold War crises were played out far away from the group, Le Corbusier, presented plans of ist or were no longer of any significance. Sur- Europe, mainly in former colonies, but at the the Unité d’Habitation, his junior rounded by rubble – both real and social – the same time they cast a long shadow on life in colleagues, including people who had until boy was a symbol of hope for the emergence of the whole post-war world. Almost in spite of recently been his collaborators, increasingly a new world. In the brutal image of the Italian this ominous atmosphere, and following on boldly criticised the master. The 9th CIAM neorealist, the life of the young German was from the need for a new beginning, the post- Congress, organised in the town of Aix-en- crushed by the environment, dominated by war world experienced a demographic explo- Provence near Marseille, was a watershed. the defeated and humiliated Nazis. However, sion instead of a nuclear explosion. During this meeting, the younger participants more important than the complexities of the openly criticised their senior colleagues and

autoportret 2 [34] 2011 | 62 Design of the Golden Lane Estate, Alison and Peter Smithson, 1952

ultimately caused a split in the group, leading the idea that the duty of the architect was to the setting up of a new body – Team X. to design individual houses and instead preached the need to understand a building One of the leaders of the rebellion, Peter as an element in a broad social context. The Smithson, argued that the development of focus of the architect’s creativity was to be the modernism up to that point had led archi- Habitat, the environment of human life and tects astray. Fascination with technology functioning of the community, whose shape and thinking about living in terms of an and degree of density should be dependent on industrial machine meant that although 19th availability of means of transport. century slums had disappeared, alienating

boredom, predictability and repeatability had Interaction was one of the concepts eagerly za: http://archiflux.wordpress.com appeared in their place. Architecture, in his analysed by participants in Team X; the opinion, should go further, in the direction of stimulator of social life and the generator of At the same time, the two Britons who had construction of a new human environment. identity. Peter Smithson and his wife Alison worked briefly for the London County Council, For this reason, for Smithson’s generation, also considered that architects should ask where they were involved in planning of the the key to the building of a new classless, themselves the question: ethics or aesthet- rebuilding of London, took part in a compe- democratic environment was harnessing the ics? Humans and their way of functioning in tition for the Golden Lane Estate project, a possibilities inherent in urban planning. modern civilisation, as ideas located at the vast residential complex situated in a part The core of Team X was made up of Jacob B. heart of utopia, necessitated the application of town that had suffered heavy bombing. Bakema and Aldo van Eyck from Holland, of specific urban solutions. In 1953, in parallel Their vision was a complex of buildings, in Alison and Peter Smithson from Great Britain, with the split within CIAM, the Smithsons fact one multi-story housing block, which, Giancarlo De Carlo from Italy, and also the managed to implement one of the first of like a snake, zigzagged its way through the Greek architect , working their own projects, a secondary school in the defragmented building development. Smith- in , as well as the American Shadrach British town of Hunstanton. The complex of sons’ Golden Lane Estate was supposed to be Woods. They were all involved in planning simple modernist buildings at first sight re- composed of linear brutalist structures and, projects, shaping the post-war order in their sembles a factory. The architects rejected the at its inception, was the first of these types of countries. A year after the spectacular schism, aesthetics of the white box – typical for early complexes in Great Britain. Another innova- the new group published the celebrated Doorn modernism – leaving material from which tive idea was invoking the British tradition Manifesto, a document in which they rejected the object was really built visible: brick, steel of terraced housing and introducing the and raw concrete. In the case of this complex, so-called ‘streets in the sky’ into the structure the form was literally the result of the func- of blocks. The traditional terrace of Palladian flickr tion, and the elevation was a derivative of the terraced housing was here multiplied on sev- distribution of the interior space. Many years eral levels, creating a building with outside later, the school in Hunstanton was acknowl- corridors. Wanting to gain the acceptance of edged as the first example of brutalism in the audience for their competition ideas, the British architecture. Smithsons decided to use visual manipula- tion. They prepared the project charts using

Smithdon High School, Hunstanton, Norfolk, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, 1949−1954 Current view of the Robin Hood Gardens housing complex, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, 1969−1972

but still before the failed occupation of the Suez Canal and the ruinous war in Algeria – wanted to strengthen the economic develop- ment emerging from post-war reconstruction and undertook a task on a scale surpassing all the most daring earlier visions of contempo- rary urban planners.

In the described period, , the architect George Candilis and the builder Vic-

flickr tor Bodiansky co-created the ATBAT-Afrique (Atelier des Bâtisseurs) office, a company photomontage, inserting photographs of film endless line was supposed to suggest a formal operating in North Africa, co-owned by Le stars, including Marilyn Monroe into the new reference to the world of biology. This theme Corbusier. Under its aegis, they designed a context. Well-known figures, associated with was present in the works of many architects range of housing estates, offered primarily to wealth and splendour, were there to give the belonging to Team X. The group, which since migrants who at that time were increasingly ultramodern building a positive, implicitly the seminal meeting in Aix-en-Provence had eagerly moving from the depths of the African exclusive image. operated for almost three decades, generated continent to the coastal cities of Morocco and lively debate and constituted the most impor- Algeria. In Casablanca, they erected the exten- The plan for the Golden Lane Estate did not tant voice in the discourse on late modernist sive Carrières Centrales complex, where they win the competition, but aroused controversy urban planning. applied the traditions and customs of Muslims and became well-known; it was one of the originating from the desert to the language first urban visions associated with the phi- One of the leading polemicists in this envi- of multi-story modernist blocks. Just as in the losophy of Team X, in which the real architec- ronment was Shadrach Woods, of American works of the Smithsons, in Woods’ African tural structure was the result of social needs. descent, who gained his first stripes under projects, one can see gallery communication A dozen or so years later, the Smithsons were the supervision of Le Corbusier during work systems, from which lead entrances to flats. able to return to their urban planning ideas, on the Marseille Unité d’Habitation (housing Their characteristic feature was extensive designing Robin Hood Gardens – two brutalist unit) project. In 1954, Woods’ proposal won in balconies that were – most importantly – housing blocks, whose characteristic elements Opération Million, a competition for an urban surrounded on all sides by high walls, which were ‘streets in the sky’ and also folds intro- planning project, which was supposed to be imitated the traditional patio of the Bedouin duced in lines of buildings. This theme ap- implemented as part of a government plan of home. Elements of humanisation and sensi- peared for the first time in 1952 in the “Cluster the mass urbanisation of French towns and tivity to identity and the specific nature of City” project, a seemingly chaotic structure territories subordinate to France. The name the local culture have been preserved here, reminiscent of biological tissue, which was itself of this initiative is surprising, suggest- but at the same time, the belief that humans supposed to link the architectural and social ing the intention of building a million new are malleable beings, capable of changing structure and also place human interactions homes by the Fourth Republic. The French their behaviour and habits, is also evident. at the centre of attention. The fold in the state – humiliated by the defeat in Indochina,

autoportret 2 [34] 2011 | 64 Cité verticale, designed by ATBAT-Afrique, Shadrach Woods, Georges Candilis, Carrières Centrales, Casablanca, Morocco, 1953

Even before winning the Opération Million competition, in the face of growing politi- cal crisis, Woods and Candilis returned to , where they created a joint architec- tural studio, which in time became the main propagator of the ideas of Team X in France. The third partner in this office was and fine arts library, /courtesy of nai publishers columbia university/courtesy library, and fine arts Alexis Josic, who came from Yugoslavia. The architectural avery and archives, collection, drawings woods shadrach Candilis–Josic–Woods partnership was from the end of the 1950s involved in the creation The utopia of democratisation of space and The mass-scale utopia was here combined of tens of thousands of flats, forming part of giving equal chances to all inhabitants pushed with the utopia of participation. Space refer- a series of gigantic urban projects, built on post-war urban planners towards ever fur- ring to the idea of ‘Stem’ was to resemble the the initiative of and using funds from French ther-reaching experimentation. People were structure of a leaf. In time, Woods developed state institutions. The Bobigny Estate, which to have a free right to use everything that this concept, introducing another definition was ready for use in 1958, was one of the the metropolis offered. The system of mass of non-hierarchical, democratic architecture, earliest of these types of complexes built in communication constituting the backbone which he called the ‘Web’. These two princi- the suburbs of Paris. The estates, which are of development of the linear town was ide- ples were expressed most fully in a project for currently inhabited by immigrants from the ally suited to this purpose. Through analysis the Free University in West Berlin, realised former colonies who systematically vent their of these issues, Shadrach Woods, who had by Woods jointly with Manfred Schieldhelm anger at the Fifth Republic, were erected as a undoubted polemic talent, developed a new (1963–1973). The new university building is prestigious and priority project of the Fourth vision of organisation of space in the 1960s, a low, extensive and orthogonal structure Republic and also as a fulfilment of dreams of which he named the ‘Stem’. He proposed that enclosed in a rectangle. Within this regular a whole generation of architects-modernists. urban design should be based on social inter- shape, architects inscribed a series of small In the following years, Woods’ company also action and participation of the individual in courtyards, each of which, in turn, had a prepared plans for an enormous new hous- the life of the district. The fourth dimension different shape and size. Their shape, like the ing development in the northern part of of architecture used by modernists – time – ancient palace of Diocletian in Split referred Paris. Drawn up in 1965, the Paris-Nord plan was treated here as an alternative way of con- to in Woods’ descriptions, contained a compli- promoted the subordination of the logic of structing space, whose fundamental function cated sequence of various spaces with similar urbanisation to a regular orthogonal network, is human mobility. Time, speed of moving and aesthetic solutions. Just like in the Smithsons’ transforming the capital of France into a distance were to generate the character of projects, Woods consciously revealed struc- gigantic linear system. a place. Space was no longer to be perceived tural materials – mainly concrete and steel only visually. At the same time, interpreting promoted by the brutalists. the problem of mobility in a modern city, Woods pointed out the need to build diversity Woods’ projects often operated on urban of space in which people move, in order that planning principles inspired by fractal they can identify with it. geometry. Making use of the bends in the linear system of the block of flats applied

A bird’s eye view on Cité verticale shadrach woods collection, drawings and archives, avery architectural and fine arts library, columbia university/courtesy of nai publishers Collage of Stem-concept, Shadrach Woods, 1961

where between the high, multi-family Urban utopias of the post-war reconstruction buildings forming hexagonal courtyards, era were implemented with varying degrees the architects have introduced lower service of success throughout the world. From 1956 buildings and green areas. onwards, Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer were erecting the linear structure of Brasilia, A modern humanistic utopia of a demo- the new capital of their country. In 1960, cratic city was fully realised in , the Japanese urban planner, Kenzo Tange, and Woods had the opportunity to make use presented a new vision of how to develop the of many of the urban planning measures in Japanese capital. This architect, a Team X the repertoire propagated by him. The space, sympathiser who was fascinated by the works which was supposed to provoke people to in- of Le Corbusier, used such terms as cell and teract and shape a modern identity, in time, metabolism in his presentation. He proposed however, evolved into a dystopia. In 2005, erecting a colossal structure – extending a and fine arts library, columbia university / courtesy of nai publishers columbia university / courtesy library, and fine arts shadrach woods collection, drawings and archives, avery architectural avery and archives, collection, drawings woods shadrach similarly to many other French estates, Le dozen or so kilometres – in the Bay of Tokyo, Mirail blazed, turning into a scene of street in which 10 million people could live. At the by the Smithsons helped in this. The bend war between the police and the rebellious, same time, on the eastern side of the Iron created a closed shape resembling a fragment excluded immigrant community. The social Curtain, the Polish town planner and fine art- of a hexagonal honeycomb cell. The most de- and political hierarchy did not disappear, ist, Oskar Hansen, prepared the concept of the veloped project of this type by the Candilis– but moved to another level. The concrete Continuous Linear System (see Fig. on p. 56). Josic–Woods office was a plan of the Le Mirail paradisiacal garden turned out to be a Hob- Hansen, who was also linked with Team X, district in Toulouse. In 1966, the governments besian jungle, a place full of violence, whose translated a utopian vision of linear towns of France, Great Britain and West Germany residents are stigmatised and reduced to be- into the language of communist-era mass signed a preliminary agreement concerning ing members of a subclass. A city which was urbanisation, in accordance with which four the creation of a joint European aviation supposed to tear down hierarchies and break lines of multi-family prefabricated buildings company, which in the course of six years down class and ethnic divisions turned out were to stretch for nearly 1000 km from the introduced the Airbus A300 design – one of to be a ghetto breeding poverty and exclu- Baltic to the Tatra Mountains. Within a few the world’s most popular passenger aircrafts sion. The war with these phenomena, which years, in various parts of the world, utopia – into mass production. In connection with lay at the basis of modernism and projects reached its zenith, and many more similar the creation of a new factory in Toulouse – such as Le Mirail, led to a physical war be- examples could be mentioned here. The era of like Krakow after the establishment of Nowa tween the excluded and the oppression of the utopian visions, however, ended as suddenly Huta – the population doubled in the course dominating system, turning utopia into its as it had started. of several years. With Airbus employees’ grotesque opposite. The vision of the birth needs in mind, within a decade the giant of the modern human being, which modern- In 1969, the Candilis–Josic–Woods partner- Le Mirail housing estate had been built for ism was based on, did not find reflection ship ceased to operate. In the last year of 40,000 inhabitants. It was completed at the in reality, (instead) creating new barriers their collaboration, the partners could beginning of the 1970s and is characterised by and social ruins in which people were not observe the outbreak of the student revolts a network of fractals propagated by Woods, subjects, but just puppets. from the windows of their Parisian studio.

autoportret 2 [34] 2011 | 66 Building at the campus of Freie Universität Berlin, designed by Shadrach Woods, 1963

a new estate can be without such founda- tions of modern marketing as images full of sunshine, smiles and hallmarks of luxury linked with a handful of slogans talking about ecology and balanced development meeting the needs of potential consumers, in other words the needs of people. In reality, beneath this new vision lie blocks on a scale and of a form that do not differ much from those of the post-war period. The only thing that re- ally differentiates them is widespread private

flickr / evan chakroff evan flickr / ownership and the ultimate rejection of the non-hierarchical paradigm, visible evidence Under the slogan “It is forbidden to forbid!” So where is the human’s place in the plan- of which is illustrated by ubiquitous fences the baby boomers spoke out against the con- ning process? At least since the end of the 19th and barriers. So what will remain of the servative social mores and social model that century, people and their needs have been utopian dreams of the modern human? So had been imposed from above, the physical printed on the banners of almost all utopian far the only utopia that has been consistently expression of the latter being monstrous visions of the world of the future. People implemented is the housing estate. modern complexes like Le Mirail. The break- were supposed to be modern, to live in a through in social sciences and the social garden city, in a machine-home, their life was translated from polish by george lisowski revolution propagated during the 1968 events supposed to be regulated by time, and lastly hastened the crystallisation of postmodern people were supposed to stop being afraid of ideas in architecture and spatial planning. their natural aesthetic needs and to return to The outbreak of the fuel crisis in 1973, when nature, and also to the city, which they had petrol prices rose more than six-fold showed previously been supposed to leave. The mul- that the hitherto development model, based titude of conflicting ideas which arose in the on mass consumption of energy, made no course of almost a century caused chaos and sense. The concrete utopia of the founders of mistrust towards looking at a city in terms of Team X was soon mocked and regarded as an big ideas. After the fall of modernism, a new anti-humanist aberration. But was it really utopia was not born. Contrarily, postmodern- just a dead end into which architecture was ism led to commercialisation of space and its driven by faith in technology and the ability hierarchisation, generated by its enclosed of humans to adapt? From the perspective of estates. st

the 21 century, it is easy to see that post- modernism only named and classified the Paradoxically, people and their needs still oc- problems of modernity, but solved few of cupy a central position in the urban planning them. discourse. No commercial advertisement for

A view of Le Mirail estate in Toulouse, designed by Candilis, Josic, Woods, 1961 shadrach woods collection, drawings and archives, avery architectural avery and archives, collection, drawings woods shadrach of nai publishers columbia university / courtesy library, and fine arts