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GEOG2046: Making of the Modern City

17-2 High Modernism 2:


Going Global

Dr Asa Roast
Starting place:
There are many different kinds of modernism
Competing and contradictory

Today … we will look at one of the most comprehensive


adoptions of High Modernism in the world … in Paris.

And then look at other forms of High Modernism around the


world
… with an emphasis on the postcolonial and the Global
South
PART 1:
Competing Modernities in 20th
Century France
Paris as “capital” of the
19th century
Squalor, deprivation,
luxury, glamour
Haussmann:
regularisation and
wholesale reform of the
centre
The working class of
the city continues to
fight back: Paris
Commune (1871)
Housing problems in central Paris
1900s: thousands of people in substandard and
unhygienic housing in the centre of Paris
1913 Commission for the Extension of Paris
proposes large scale clearances due to
unsanitary conditions and spread of disease.
Legal and financial difficulties with mass
expropriation (high land prices) halt major work
From late 9th Century: reformist housing
movement had emerges: Societe Francoise des
Habitations a Bon Marche (HBM).
Initially: privately owned low cost and decent
housing.
Later: laws introduced to provide affordable
housing. Montmartre 1900s
HBM projects not sufficient
Growing population after WW1 Housing problems
Residential congestion and slum conditions in the
centre at the same time as unregulated growth of
the periphery.
Post-WWI surveys identified 17 “îlots insalubres”:
13 located in the periphery and others in the historic
centre.
Centre of Paris: terrible mortality, high density
(186,597 people housed in 4,290 buildings)
Demolition and replacement by HBM = slow and
partial reform of these areas
But never enough flats to rehouse the population
in situ who were eventually rehoused in
peripheral housing complexes.
Ragpickers on the periphery, 1934
(See gallery here)
Ilot 1
Overpopulated
neighbourhood in Central
Paris

Demolitions begin in 1930

1960 designated as the


place for the Centre
Pompidou (centre for arts
and culture).
Paris suburbs grow BIG
1. Expulsion of the poor from the
centre
2. Arrival of migrants from outside
Migrants from rural areas and other cities
arrive to Paris and settle in the less
regulated, cheaper squatter areas, so called:
The “zone”

Year Paris Paris Suburbs


population population
1910 2.7m 955,000
1921 2.9m 1.5m
1931 2.9m 2m

Evenson, 1979, p.221


Up to 1950s no grand projects built, no
total reconstruction, no big plans for
demolition
High modernist plans were rejected
(e.g. Le Corbusier’s ideas)
Those in charge of the city had
“nostalgic modern” (Wakeman, 2007)
views wanting to preserve Paris’ own
individuality, preserving the
architectural heritage, vernacular
architecture.
Two world wars = cash-strapped city,
unable to embark on any big urban Smaller interventions: e.g. HBM in
redevelopment plans. Only small Aubervilliers
improvements (HBM)
After WW2, things begin to change

Different modernist solutions are


proposed…
Solution 1: The
garden city “solution”

Inspired by Howard’s ideas


but not carried to in full.
Typically privately financed
Residential suburbs –
initially single family
houses, then increasingly
large residential blocks.
American-style suburbs.
Small relief vs huge housing
problem.

http://pierrefacon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sauvegardons-le-patrimoine-vert.html
Solution 2: Les grands ensembles (Large housing estates)

Supported by post-war optimism… new construction


methods (prefabs) … military technology and
organisation … strong centralised government.
Solution 2: Les grands ensembles (Large housing estates)

Social housing provided the opportunity


to diffuse revolutionary tendencies
(Newsome, 2004).
Bourgeois politicians and moderate
socialists all believed that “good housing
could kill social ills” (Newsome, 2004: p.
795).
HBM kicks into next gear.
Emphasis on order, hierarchy, size,
ruthlessness, technology, production,
progress.
By the 1950s Grands
Ensembles pattern of mass
housing construction had
been established:
8,000 to 10,000 dwelling
units and a population of
30,000 to 40,000 per
ensemble.

Generally for low income


residents

1969: 1 in 6 persons in
Paris lived in a grand
ensemble (Evenson, 1971:
238)
‘At night the windows would light up
and inside there were only happy
families, happy families, happy
families. Going by you could see
them beneath the ceiling bulbs,
through the big windows. One
happiness after another, all alike as
twins, or a nightmare. The
happinesses facing west could look
out of their houses and see the
happinesses that faced east as if they
were seeing themselves in a mirror.’
- Life in the grands ensembles: Chritiane
Rochfort, Les petits enfants du siècle, 1961,
translated as Children of Heaven (New York:
David McKay, 1962, quoted in Evenson, 1979, p.
241)
The critique:
Kitchens vs living rooms
Architects separated the kitchen from the dining
areas, making the cooking area quite small.
“such a design was supposed to force workers
out of the kitchen, the typical location of the
working class table and into a room more
deemed more appropriate for proper meals
and socialization” (Newsome 2004: p. 81)
1947 survey found 50% of the general public
(>72% of the working class) preferred to
socialise around the kitchen table
Government officials disregarded these findings.
“state official were trying to provide homes
for fellow citizens but they were so convinced
of the validity of their own social preferences
and so obsessed with the technical means to
accelerate construction that they lost sight of
the people who had to inhabit these spaces”
(Newsome 2004: p. 802).
https://www.manonvergerio.com/a-critical-atlas-of-the-grand-paris-2
Part 2: High Modernism and Post-
Colonialism
Previously: High Modernism and Colonialism and the city.
High Modernism after WW2 coincides with liberation and independence of previously colonised
countries.
Transferring planning ideas
Different types of diffusion Practices of diffusion
(I) Authoritarian imposition Appointing imperial planners
(II) Contested imposition and architects
(III) Negotiated imposition Borrowing “indigenous”
(IV) Undiluted borrowing motives
(V) Selective borrowing Invitation of famous architects
(VI) Synthetic innovation Indigenous bourgeoisie
Westernized architectural
schools

Ward, S. (1999) The international diffusion of planning, International Planning


Studies, vol. 4, n.1, pp. 53-77
Chandigarh: Corbusier’s dream realised?
Colonial India: Edwin Lutyen’s Delhi
Chandigarh: Le Corbusier’s city
Monumental Government
Jawaharlal Nehru

“Let this be a new town, symbolic of freedom


of India unfettered by the traditions of the Chandigarh was designed from the ground up
past….. an expressions of the nation’s faith in to embody hopes and aspirations of the
the future”. - Nehru nation's progressive, modern outlook. –
Anthony Flint
Burail: A Village within the city

Situated in Sector 45

Village maintained
political autonomy

Centre of migrant
housing and informal
economy

https://thefunambulist.net/archi
tectural-projects/proletarian-for
tresses-the-corbusean-grids-ano
maly-burail-in-chandigarh
Indira Colony: An informal settlement on the periphery

Large informal city


derived from ‘labour
colonies’ required to
construct Chandigarh

The informal face of the


High Modernist city

Fixing slums, or
moving them around?
The legacy: critiques and reassessment

‘Chandigarh was meant to be something beyond a new


state capital. But it lacks a culture. It lacks the
excitement of Indian streets. It lacks bustling, colorful
bazaars. It lacks the noise and din of Lahore. It lacks
the intimacy of Delhi. It is a stay-at-home city. It is
not Indian. It is the anti-city. But with all its
shortcomings, Chandigarh provokes the interest of
people far beyond the borders of India. […] The rest of
the world closely watched the development of a
planned city and the results it would bring. In India
the city became an educating experience for India
architects and planners, who rushed to other parts of
the country to duplicate the features of Chandigarh.’ – ‘At least, in Chandigarh the housing was much better than what
Ravi Kalia (quoted in Fitting, 2002) the people had known before, and probably better than they
could ever have hoped for if the city had never been built.’
(Hall, 2014. p.249)
African Modernisms
Former colonies viewed as ‘testing
ground’ for architects to ‘experiment’
with ambitious modernist plans
Mutual aid from socialist countries
(especially USSR and Yugoslavia)
introduces socialist planning
practices
Contradictory tendencies:
- Modernism as ‘superiority of
Western practice’
- Or powerful expression of
independence and identity
Modernist Asmara (Eritrea)
Italian (Fascist) reconstruction in
1935 creates ‘Modernist capital of
Africa’

A modernist idiom which borrowed


heavily from local approaches to
space, construction methods an
planning.

Functional zoning = racial


segregation (de-segregated after
1945)

2017: UNESCO world heritage status


Corbusier’s plans for Algiers and Addis
Ababa

“Colonial Africa
was transformed
into a laboratory
for Western
modernity.”
• Fredenucci, J.-C. 2003. L’entregent colonial des
ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées dans l’urbanisme
(Scheer, 2010)
des années 1950–1970. Vingtième Siècle. Revue
d’histoire, 79(3), pp. 79–91.
• Picard, A. 1994. Architecture et urbanisme en
Algérie. D’une rive à l’autre (1830–1962). Revue du
monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, 73(1), pp.
121–36
African Modernisms
Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew (UK)
introduce modernist architecture in
West Africa during colonialism – Ghana National Museum (1955-56)
and continue after independence:
‘Tropical Modernism’
Guidelines for modern
construction widely adopted.
Symbols of independence
constructed by colonial architects.

University College, Ibadan


(1948)
African Modernisms
“Modernizing colonialism” (Salvador and
Rodrigues, 2012, p.409)
Salvador, Cristina, and Cristina Udelsman Rodrigues. 2012. “Colonial Architecture in Angola: Past
Functions and Recent Appropriations.” In Colonial Urbanism and Architecture in Africa: Intertwined
and Contested Histories, edited by Fassil Demassie. Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate

“The instruments and ideas of decolonization,


while intended to liberate, were nonetheless
being directed along trajectories defined by
the alien colonizers; the transformative
potential claimed by modernist polemic was
similarly controlled.” (Liscombe, 2006, p.193)
Liscombe, R.W., 2006. Modernism in Late Imperial British West Africa: The Work of
Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1946-56. The Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, 65(2), pp.188-215.
Other African Modernisms
By late 1950s – a turn against Western
European modernist design.
Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and other pan-
African socialist leaders seek “to remould
African society in such a way that the
humanism of traditional African life
reasserts itself in a modern technical
community.”
Collaboration and technical education
from socialist countries – Czech, Polish
and Yugoslav architects visit West Africa.
Flagstaff Housing project, Ghana, 1964

Independence Square, Accra (1961)

State House, Accra (1965)


Accra International Trade Fair
- incorporating West African University of Zambia, Lusaka
symbols (umbrella, Baobab tree) - Incorporating open air social space
within socialist design and local practices of public space
‘Architectures of Independence’
Kariakoo Market: Dar-es-Salaam
Stanek (2015) argues that High
Modernism cannot just be seen as top-
down export: it shows collaboration,
remixing, and mondialisation (becoming
global).
“the process in the course of which
modern architecture was becoming the
technocultural dispositif of urbanization
outside Europe and North America
cannot be reduced to the exports from
one or more ‘centers.’”(p. 436)
Japan: Technology and the hypermodern
Japan enthusiastically adopts
modernist planning in imperial period
– model city of Changchun/Hsinking
in China.
Strong construction sector from 1950s
provides basis for dramatic expansion
without largescale replanning
Architectural megastructures inspired
by organic forms: ‘Metabolism’

Tsujiki District, Kenzo Tange 1963


Brasilia: the closest thing to total modernism

Capital of Brazil
constructed 1956-1960

‘The closest thing to


realising the total
modernist city’
High Modernism and the Global South

Ideology of national independence and liberation


Modernism as a technology for expressing national identity
Post-colonial governments as powerful, motivated actors in a way not
seen in imperial countries: why?
The challenge of ‘becoming modern’ while remaining ‘different’

We must always ask whose modernism is being created?


High Modernism and the Global South: points to take forwards

How the design solutions of High Modernism worked with the


political solutions of newly independent countries in the Global South.
The political and practical problems faced by post-colonial cities:
national identity, resource scarcity, infrastructural inequalities.
How do the solutions of European and North American modernist urban
planning translate to post-colonial context? What is the result of their
implementation? Is modernism just a new form of Euro-Amercian
colonialism?

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