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The organic city vs. the tidy-minded city

When I was a kid, I was living in Paris and my parents and I moved to a residential complex in the suburbs of Paris - partly because we could get a bigger apartment but also partly because of the "political ideals" of my dad. It was a big building with about 500 / 520 apartments. The building was on a podium with a pedestrian route going around the building and linking the building to a park. It was like a street and I often met my friends there, people met and chatted on this “street”. It was supposed to be linked by a bridge to another big building (same number of apartments and same design). The idea that at the end all buildings will be connected above street level. It never happened, not even the bridge… and most of what was planned by the developers of the project never happened. We ended up leaving and going back to Paris.

When living in London 2 years ago, I went to the Barbican and there discovered the Barbican estate, which consists of 13 terrace blocks, grouped around the lake and green squares within the complex. The main buildings rise for up to seven floors above a podium level, which links all the facilities in the Barbican, providing a pedestrian route above street level. Yet to me, it seems  to me like a dead zone despite the incredible art program of the Barbican center. Yet, it seems that for residents it is a great experience "The Barbican is more than a collection of flats, it is a community. In its cloistered confines, the architects have created a self-contained urban village. ‘It’s very community-led – almost a university campus feel" (said one resident): http://www.timeout.com/london/property/features/1857/1.html

For this challenge, as I was searching articles about the Barbican, I found an article in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/04/death-housing-ideal) about another estate, the Heygate estate in South of London, nearby Elephant and Castle. Heygate is an estate of 1,260 dwellings (half a dozen huge, grey, monolithic blocks confronting the busy roads around the Elephant and, between them, groups of three- and four-bedroomed maisonettes) completed in 1974 and which is going through “regeneration”, understand destruction. Many residents and associations contest this decision of the Southwark council.

It also seemed to me an interesting counterpoint to the article I read about Starrett city: http://www.openideo.com/open/vibrant-cities/inspiration/starrett-city-a-home-of-one-s-own-with-party-walls/

One of the few residents still left noted:

"They're not very pretty and they have become unfashionable, but they're structurally sound and functional. Just because they're a bit grey doesn't mean people can't live here happily."

Another tenant added:

“There are a lot of bright, enthusiastic, imaginative architectural students who could do something amazing with it – a coat of paint, lighting. And there must be professional architects who would be interested in it as a social project. But it's not about that; it's all about the gentrification of the area. They've chosen to knock this estate down because it's in a prime location."

Reflections from the architect who designed the estate points to management / soft issues for the lack of success of the community: originally the community supposed to leave in the estate was supposed to represent a broad socioeconomical spectrum. Yet, the council ended up housing people only “ if they scored highly on an index of deprivation or social challenge and the council lacked the resources to deal with the attendant problems, did the "blight" begin. Software, not hardware; people, not buildings; politics, not aesthetics.”

Anne Power, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, says creating mixed communities by planning is impossible. She suggests a more flexible approach:

“Instead of knocking down estates such as the Heygate, and replacing one form of utopianism with another, she favours adapting the infrastructure that already exists – bringing derelict and unused property back into use, converting empty commercial buildings for residential use, making sure every council property is occupied – and plugging the gaps with small-scale developments. Property developers like grand designs; people just want somewhere to live.”

Dickon Robinson, former development director at the Peabody Trust housing association) also suggests a flexible approach. "It's unsustainable to build such robust and structurally sound properties, and then take them away after 30 or 40 years. We have to build on a much longer cycle, and if necessary we have to be prepared to allow the people in those buildings to change. Let them evolve. If you have the right kind of buildings, uses can swill backwards and forwards. Supposing someone wanted to convert part of the Heygate estate into office suites; great, let's do it. It's the organic city, as opposed to the tidy-minded planned city that says, 'You were once social housing, so you will always be social housing.'"

What do I take from these different examples:

1. the tension between deterministic urban planning and evolving / emergent / participatory design
2. it echoes the tension between property developers and city councils which like grand designs and people who just want somewhere to live
3. the importance of the software, the people, interactions and practices which cannot be separated, but also shape, interpret, make sense of the hardware and the buildings.

Comments

Meena Kadri

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December 05, 2011, 07:18AM

Lots to think about here – and we're loving the way you've woven together personal experiences with more abstract thinking.

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Anne-Laure Fayard's reply to Meena Kadri's comment

Anne-Laure Fayard

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December 05, 2011, 01:01PM

Thanks Meena. I realized that instead of posting 3 inspirations, it made more sense to write one connecting them.
I also thought that this tension between how much we can design and how much is emergent is something important to keep in mind in this challenge.

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Vincent Cheng's reply to Meena Kadri's comment

Vincent Cheng

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December 05, 2011, 05:34PM

Agreed with Meena, loving the complex delving into this issue through a combination of personal stories & abstract thinking!

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Charlotte Fliegner

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December 04, 2011, 10:25PM

Interesting post, Ilike your account of what it is like to live inside a Le Corbusian city. In the 1920 - '30s, French architect Le Corbusier created a city plan called the Radiant City - a city made up of large buildings on 'super blocks' which would contain parklands underneath and around. The idea was to have self contained buildings offering everything one would need in on one lineal block, the buildings were to be raised off the ground, offering large open space for social interactions with neighbours underneath. An image of the original city plan is here http://bit.ly/sztPBJ

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Anne-Laure Fayard's reply to Meena Kadri's comment

Anne-Laure Fayard

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December 04, 2011, 10:59PM

Thanks Charlotte... Yes Le Corbusier is a source of inspiration of these works. I don't know his work very well but I know people who bought an apartment in the Radiant City... They liked it but it is only an apartment for holidays. I will try to ask them what they think about it. I always thought it was interesting this attempt to build buildings above the ground level on a podium with platforms for interactions.
In Singapore, HDB buildings - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board- are also constructed on pilotis. Yet, I remember seeing people meeting and interacting under the buildings or in the parks in between. As I was searching to reply to your comment, I just found an article about HDB buildings which says: "Typically, the HDB apartment is very functional, simple in
shape and plan. It could be conceived as the realization
of a simplified version of Le Corbusier’s dream of La Ville
Radieuse. The orientation of dwelling blocks, position of
courtyards and balconies, are carefully considered to
achieve climatic responsive buildings.
The void space in every HDB block allows the free flow
of pedestrians and nature, although it is does not quite
resemble the Corbusian pilotis space. Small-scale social
spaces are created within a cluster of several housing
blocks, containing playgrounds and a senior citizen
corner. Next on the grouping scale is the neighborhood
center, consisting of small shops, markets, nursery
schools, clinics, and other public facilities for about
6,000 residents." (Modernism in Asia, JOHANNES WIDODO, in DOCOMOMO N°29, September 2003)...
Interesting cross-connections. Thanks for sharing this reference to Le Corbusier, interesting in itself and which led me to figure out the inspiration of HDBs! :-)

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Charlotte Fliegner's reply to Meena Kadri's comment

Charlotte Fliegner

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December 04, 2011, 11:17PM

Interesting how this style is seen as so universal, where the planning and architecture is not connected to the cultural context and does not reflect the inhabitants ways of living, whether in Asia or Europe.

I recall speaking about living at the Barbican estate, as you have described above, with Haiyan Zhang (of OpenIDEO) who lived there. And whilst I think I would find this type of development isolating, her description was that the raised walkways also provide small places of refuge and quietness above the city.

I find it intriguing that here in Melbourne, which is rather low density in development, the public housing echoes this type of style. The 30 floor buildings stand out amongst the low level housing, and the green spaces underneath and surrounding the perimeter are fenced in and almost never used. This should be public space, integrating everyone in the neighbourhood and not just fencing off those living in public housing, it should be a way of creating vibrancy, activity, and multi-cultural social interaction in these rather dull areas.

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Anne-Laure Fayard's reply to Meena Kadri's comment

Anne-Laure Fayard

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December 05, 2011, 12:12AM

Indeed interesting to see this sort of universalism. What would be interesting would be to do observations of several of these buildings in very different countries and see how people inhabit these spaces and how their ways of living might differ. I am pretty sure that people find ways "to work around" the building. At least from what I've noted while living in Singapore (although I did not live in an HDB, and went only a few times to visit people living there), there were a lot of people in the common areas.

As for Haiyan's experience, it echoes the Time Out article that I found. I was personally surprised as I remember that each time I went to the Barbican (or the Museum of London) and had to go through the Barbican estate, I found it incredibly quite and empty.

Last, as a kid, I remember enjoying the freedom that I got living in this big building: we would play on the elevated street (running, biking) or even around the building at the ground level (as only residents would go around, so there was not much traffic. I'm not sure that part was really allowed though...). There were public rooms at this elevated level with a lot of clubs (for adults and children) and after schools. So why to a certain extent the project did not succeed, as a kid, I have good memories. Yet, I would not think of living in such a place now!

Regarding your last point, it seems from what I read that many of these projects started with the idea of having a broad community and that seems to have "worked" (at least to a certain extent) at Starrett city:http://www.openideo.com/open/vibrant-cities/inspiration/starrett-city-a-home-of-one-s-own-with-party-walls/

I remember a lecture on how the Singaporean government redesigned the city to avoid risks of cultural ghettos - destroying local neighborhoods like Little India or China Town, and making sure that there is a real mix of cultures in each building, and even each floor... they also try to mix incomes... the question is do they succeed? Moreover, it is sad to see neighborhoods like Little India and China Town to have shrunk so much...

I agree with you that there might have better ways of designing, planning and building...

However, I like the issue raised about the Heygate: Is it worth destroying or are there ways of reinventing the estate? I am not an expert... I'd love your views on this.

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