Urban Form and Design - Debating the American City
6 likes1,863 views
1) The document discusses debates around modern urban planning approaches championed by Le Corbusier and their critique of traditional urban forms. 2) Le Corbusier advocated for straight, efficient street grids and separating functions into high-rise towers with green space in between, while critics argued this ignored how people naturally interacted in cities. 3) Brasilia, built upon Corbusian principles, is presented as a large-scale example of this vision but is critiqued for being inhuman in scale and not adapting to local contexts.
Urban Form and Design - Debating the American City
- 1. PLAN 4003: Urban Form & Design Week 4: Debating the American City Anuradha Mukherji Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
- 2. MORDERN PLANNING & LE CORBUSIER - Critiques traditional physical structure of cities - Utopian vision of modern city geared towards the car - Not grounded in how people live, interact, and enjoy cities - Enamored with products of industrialization – car, mechanization, standardization
- 3. CORBUSIER’S ARGUMENT PACK DONKEY’S WAY VS MAN’S WAY Man: Governed by reason, intelligence, experience, goals Pack Donkey: Comfort, convenience, lack of concentration, meanders, line of least resistance
- 4. Haussmannization of Paris (Transformation of a Medieval City)
- 5. Camillo Sitte, Study of Medieval Plazas This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
- 6. Piazza Del Campidoglio (Rome, Italy)/Capitoline Hill, Michelangelo, 1537, Italian Renaissance This image is attributed to Giulio Menna @ 2010 (CC BY-ND 2.0)
- 7. CAMILLO SITTE’S IDEAS - Straight lines are unnatural, do not follow terrain - Need both art and function to make cities appealing - Lack of urban public space in cities - Isolated block of buildings, and no unifying factors, boring spaces
- 8. This image is attributed to United States Geological Survey Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing Complex, St. Louis, Missouri
- 9. CORBUSIER’S IDEAS - Modern city functions along straight lines – sewers, tunnels, highways, traffic circulation - Divided into grid system, no need for curves - Stress on functionality, no artistic tradition - Bare, efficient, functional – main purpose of carrying traffic, gas, water, electric lines - No discussion of street as a public space – crooked streets as pack donkey’s way
- 10. CORBUSIER’S IDEAS - High-rise vertical towers with lots of leftover space in-between - Standardized super blocks using repetition, mechanization, and industrialization of construction - Dense city center comprising business and residential towers with garden cities on periphery - Technical, civil engineering project
- 11. BRASILIA, Capital of Brazil This image is attributed to www.urbanity.es, Accessed February 2013
- 12. BRASILIA
- 13. BRASILIA This image is attributed to www.skyscraperlife.com, Accessed February 2013
- 14. BRASILIA This image is attributed to www.skyscraperlife.com, Accessed February 2013
- 15. Construction Phase, National Congress, BRASILIA Built upon 20th century principles of urbanism as expressed by Le Corbusier Applied to the scale of a capital city, only other example is Chandigarh, India This image is attributed to www.oesquema.com.br, Accessed February 2013
- 16. Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA This image is attributed to m.feher.pestana @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
- 17. Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA This image is attributed www.urbanity.es, Accessed February 2013
- 18. Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA This image is attributed to www.indirameza.wordpress.com, Accessed February 2013
- 19. Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA
- 23. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Felipe Venancio @ 2008 (CC BY 2.0)
- 24. Ministry Buildings, BRASILIA This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 25. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 26. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 27. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Diogo Diniz Garcia Gomes @ 2010 (CC BY-NC 3.0)
- 28. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 29. Presidential Palace, BRASILIA This image is attributed to gtavares @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 30. Palace of Justice, BRASILIA This image is attributed to Sergio Lang @ 2012 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- 31. Metropolitan Cathedral, BRASILIA This image is attributed to Olivier Peyre @ 2007 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
- 32. BRASILIA This image is attributed to Marco Mugnatto @ 2010 (CC BY-NC 3.0)
- 33. CORBUSIAN CITY - Theoretical top-down design, gigantic at eye level, not to human-scale - No sensitivity to local contexts - Forgot how people lived for centuries – need a car in a Corbusian city - Centralized and controlled by designer, no input from people
- 34. NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT This image is attributed to New York Regional Survey @ 1929 - Growing congestion and traffic - New plans for regional expansion - Idea of a self contained neighborhood unit - Centered on school and community center - Bound by arterial roads - No vehicular traffic through neighborhood - Unit – school, residential, shops, parks - Codified by FHA into sub-division standards