Republic of the Philippines

Catanduanes State University

Virac, Catanduanes

College of Engineering and Architecture

Title of Article: The Athens Charter

Author of Article: Le Corbusier

I. Introduction
Following the industrial revolution,
modern society began to move at a
raging speed. The new productive
processes, construction, material, and
technology set the basis for becoming
one of the most significant challenges of
modernity: urbanization.
The demographics in cities rose exponentially
around the 20th century as people moved from the
countryside searching for jobs in the factories. The
living conditions were poor, the rhythm of life
asphyxiating, cities were not big enough, forcing people to settle in the peripheries. During the
19th and 20th centuries, the eye sat on the city’s perspective and how to make it a more
liveable, healthier place. The Haussmann Plan and the Garden City Movement are examples of
theorizations and practices that would mark urban development.
The Athens Charter, as we know it, is the decantation of the CIAM cumbre in 1933 in the hands
of Le Corbusier ten years after its debate. Function, technical specification, zonification, and,
finally, segregation characterized the document that would influence the post-war urban
development around the globe, establishing the central problematics of modernity and how to
approach them. The Athens Charter was the first document that recognized the city as a
complex economic, social, and political element, ruled by incipient industrialization in the 19th
century. The Charter classifies the central problematics of modern cities, treating them
individually in a cause consequence scheme to propose the best approach to modernity.

I. Content
 Summary of Articles
The Athens Charter was the first document that recognized the city as a complex economic,
social, and political element, ruled by incipient industrialization in the 19th century. The Charter
classifies the central problematics of modern cities, treating them individually in a cause
consequence scheme to propose the best approach to modernity.

Dwelling

This topic will be one of

the most controversial
problems in modern
urbanity. The Athens
charter faces this problem
from the health
perspective, evidencing
the risks of having houses
located in unsanitary
areas with poor
topographic and climatic
conditions where
exposition to busy streets
and insufficient green
spaces lower populations
standards of living.
Mobility also appears
Ville Radieuse masterplan, the theorization of the Functional City. problematic in functional
Traduction: A. Housing; B. Hotels and embassies; C. Businesses; D.
terms such as distances
Industries; E. Heavy industry; F,G. Satellite nuclei with special
characters (for example universities, government centers, etc.) H: from schools and services
Train station and airport.
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and congestion of the urban tissue resulting from a rising population density. The consequence
was the appearance of suburban rings, unlinked and unrelated to the administrative city and
therefore fostering segregation.
Recreation | Athens Charter
The lack of open spaces in the new
modern industrial era brought about
the determination to do all that it takes
for “Built volumes” to “be intimately
blended with the green areas
surrounding them,” their distances
studied in time to make it functional.
The urban image will transform
according to the sanitary bar. Green
spaces will take slums in repurposed,
functionally tagged open spaces to
provide the required services to social
necessities

Drawing giving count of the distribution of

unprogrammed open spaces between cross-shaped
towers
Work
The Charter makes critical observations towards the random, unplanned distribution of
industries and the inefficiency of suburban and residential areas. With the Industrial Revolution’s
peak, the new sectors set themselves near main roads and waterways for easy supply, leading
to long, uncomfortable distances between city residences and workplaces. As cities packed up,
saturated, suburbias developed nearby industries in condensed apartments in eternal shifts and
poor conditions. Both alternatives seem precarious: endless hours of travel, over poor living
conditions.
The solutions proposed are, to be fair, the most deductible ones: factories should be closer to
residential areas, just enough to reduce travel distances, but not enough for it to break health
standards, separated by green areas. However, they should remain close to railroads for
supply, differing from workshops, that as a part of social urbanity, they deserve a VIP spot in the
city tissue. The business district will confirm its area, inconstant and efficient communication
with the industrial, residential, commercial spaces.
Transport | Athens Charter
With wider morphologies and a renewed need for speed, modern vehicles could not exist
alongside these medieval streets. The winding, uneven paths and interstitially caused by the
railroad system made circulation an
odyssey. The verdict called for traffic
analysis to restructure its order,
classified according to their use, and
designed specifically to fit thir
requirements. A fundamental premise
was that pedestrian paths and roads
should not relate; each track has its
classification. Following this modern
logic, heavy traffic routes were
surrounded by green belts.
Brasilia: the Built Charter
Notice the segregation of pedestrian life and vehicles, Many cities during the 20th
fragmenting the city in two levels century adopted the charter ideals
for their development. Brasilia’s
case is as extreme as it is
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fascinating: built from scratch in record time, Lucio Acosta took it in his hands to design the ideal
modern utopia.
During an interview, Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism for London 2012 Olympics
Burdett observed, “The problem is that it’s not a city. It’s that simple. The issue is not whether
it’s a good city or a bad city. It’s just not a city. It doesn’t have the ingredients of a city: chaotic
streets, people living above shops, and offices nearby!.” Urban distribution and organization
underwent several studies to set the best orientation for residential areas in terms of natural
light and ventilation and ensure practical use of topography and terrain, resulting in a cross-like
organization building the future
Brazilia’s planimetric distribution_ ©Source “The Evolution of city’s boundaries.
Urban Spatial Structure in Bras\’edlia: Focusing on the Role of Organized over two axes in the
Urban Development Policies”, C. Costa, S.Lee. shape of a cross, Brasilia applies
zonification by separating
residential area from economic and political regions of the city: the vertical line hosted
the administrative buildings, crowning within a triangular plaza where the National Congress
Building, the presidential Palácio da Alvorada, and the Supreme Federal Court sit imponent,
looking out on one another, critical of their work and conviction. As if bending under the will of
power, the horizontal line is known as the “residential axis” turns. It meets the end of the vertical
line; a strong gesture then segregated the virgin lands from the possible future functional city.
Where the lines overlap, the city center arises.

Miles of green areas in Burle Marx’s landscape design. On the far enf peers in the distance Oscar
Niemeyer’s National Congress of Brazil.
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This segregation met Le Corbusier’s expectations in terms of functionality and green areas; it
complies with hygienic conditions proposed by the Charter. The unbreakable word of
modern transportation linked these two axes; long routes crossed the distances between the
residential area, surrounded by green areas, to the majestic administrative buildings designed
by Oscar Niemeyer, places along with the administrative axis in green spaces, and to the ‘Praça
dos Três Poderes’ (‘Plaza of the Three Powers’).

‘Praça dos Três Poderes’ _ ©WikiArquitectura

Brazil’s integration into the world’s economy brought about an internal migratory trend, where
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people moved into the modern industrialization built idea to participate in this booming industrial
economy. This unexpected behaviour caused population density to grow to saturate the planned
city, and suburbs spontaneously began to accommodate beyond the residential axis, unrelated
in these “satellite cities,” turning the “a monocentric city” into a “model of polycentric occupation”
(C. Costa, S. Lee, 2018)
Unwalkable distances through undesigned open spaces fragmented the city in a
highway landscape with breathtaking architecture. The intervention of Burle Marx as a
landscape artist did improve the image of the city. However, zonification eliminated any
possibility of interaction between the dwellers and the city and the dwellers between
themselves. As part of a more extensive process called the Highway National Plan, individual
transport reigns over the communal social kingdom, where individuality is the enemy of social
interactions. The open spaces that frame the city, supposed to be the nucleus of social
interaction, proposed no more than un-perspective, enormous uncomfortable areas of land, in-
hospital and unattractive.” It just doesn’t have the complexity of a typical city. It’s a sort of office
campus for the government. […] People run away on Thursday evenings and go to Sao Paulo
and Rio to have fun.”

“High-income Lago Sul neighborhood in central Brasilia”

“Low-income Sol Nascente neighborhood in Ceilândia, 26 kilometers west of the capital”

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As we have seen, the Athens Charter was very critical of the existing problems of
industrial modernity. However, some of its proposals turn out to be contradictory. The Functional
City, founded in a structure-based program and zoning, left nothing to spontaneity and
uncertainty; quite a wrong move if we reconsider that, according to the Charter, the variables
conformed to a city were indeed fluctuating. Another contradiction in this scheme is that green
areas start the health plan to foster a real connection to nature. However, they behave as
insulation for harmful gases from transport and industry.
Still, the fundamental problem with this clockwork utopia relies on the failure to see that “space
is a social construction” (C. Costa, S. Lee, 2018). So much we talked about mobility, efficient
distances, and links that they forgot that urbanity is what occurs when every part of the city can
connect, and that includes the dwellers.
From a chronological perspective, it is only logical to expect rationalism in the boom of
modernity, and Le Corbusier’s treaty is the written will of an era. As Jane Jacobs once said: “His
conception, as an architectural work, had a dazzling clarity, simplicity, and harmony. It was so
orderly, so visible, so easy to understand. It said everything in a flash, like a good
advertisement…But as to how the city works, it tells, like the Garden City, nothing but lies.”
(Jacobs, 1961, p. 23)
The Charter was controversial from the very beginning, not only it exposed the idea of a time,
but it also set the bar for progress and analysis of the future of the cities. In its research article
“New Urbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an Unfinished ReformationSecond text,”
Michael W. Mehaffy * and Tigran Haas exposes the impact of the Athens Charter in the
evolution of modern urban perspective and its revision from a renewed perspective.
The 1960s and beyond
As a result of the evident weaknesses of the Athens Charter and Le Corbusier’s vision, many
reformers began to voice their criticisms begin- ning around 1960. In that year, the CIAM
breakaway group known as Team 10 embraced a more ‘structuralist’ understanding of
architecture as a setting for human life and culture.
They compare the Athens Charter to the ideals established during the new Urbanism and,
consequently, the New Urban Agenda, exposing it as the first proposition that prepared the field
for the others to learn from its mistake and make a fairer play the next time. Particularly they
emphasize what they identified as six essential points that stand out between ideologies: o
 Mix of uses
 Walkable multi-modal streets (in place of functional segregation of streets and travel);
 Buildings defining public space (in place of open patterns of buildings and vegetation);
 Mix of building ages and heritage patterns(in place of demolition of most historic buildings);
 Co-production of the city by the citizens (in place of city creation solely by technical
experts);
 The city as a self-organizing evolutionary structure (in place of the city as a static end state
of design
Modern Urbanism gained a more humane perspective and thought of the city due to the
development of urban life, not the latter. According to human scale, functionality and planning
step back to give birth to more democratic spaces that foster community and integration.
Spontaneity leaves room for diversity, making cities more complex, therefore culturally richer
and higher quality. “Arbitrary constraints gave rise to flagrant injustices. Then the age of
mechanism arose”.(Le Corbusier, 1973, para. 6) Le Corbusier stated, justifying the Chartes
orientation towards zoning. However, the city’s structure arises from living patterns that, after
analysis, result in a hybrid between technical expertise and real-life experience. This way,
polysemic streets follow the prose of the dwellers and the historical background.

References
 Acebillo, J. (2020) Disruptive Urbanism: Glocal Urbanity. ActarD edition.
 Costa C., Lee S., (2019) The Evolution of Urban Spatial Structure in Brasília: Focusing on
the Role of Urban Development Policies. MDPI S ustainability pg. 1-21
 Mehaffy, M.W, Haas T, (2020) NewUrbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an
Unfinished Reformation. Urban Planning (ISSN: 2183–7635) Volume 5, Issue 4, Pages
441–452.
 Banjerji R., (2012) Niemeyer’s Brasilia: Does it work as a city? [online] BBC World Service
[Accessed Thursday 6 May2021] URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20632277
 Republic of the Philippines
Catanduanes State University
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 Steffen A. (2015) Designing the future of “Her” [online] The Nearly Now [Accessed
Wednesday 5 May 2021] URL:https://thenearlynow.com/designing-the-future-of-her-
b865347a8895
 Hawthorne C. (2014) Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ a refreshingly original take on a future
L.A. [online] Los Angeles Times [Accessed Wednesday 5May 2021]
URL: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2014-jan-18-la-et-cm-her-
architecture-notebook-story.html