10th Lecture on City Planning

10th Lecture on City Planning
Neo-Rationalists K katedra sídel a regionů

K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Aldo Rossi The architecture would have to be reduced to a state of sublime uselessness, preferably in terms of pure geometry Rossi’s first major text: L’Architectura della Citta published in Italy in 1966 (English translation: The Architecture of the City came out in 1982) He sees the book itself as divided into four parts:  K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. In the first he defines his terms, considering problems of descriptions and clarification which leads him, inevitably, to a discussion of Typology in the Quatremére/Plato sense In the second he looks at the structure of the city as a whole and in terms of its different elements In the third he looks at the architecture of the city and the locus, the actual site on which the city is imprinted K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. And in the fourth, he looks at problems of urban dynamics which lead him, as one might expect, to discuss the politics of choice Rossi’s concern throughout the book is to study architecture for its own sake without reference to outside disciplines such as sociology and other sciences, nor even, he says to the history of architecture although the use of historical examples is fundamental to his method K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. So Rossi deals, he says, with urban facts, as they are in themselves, the actual physical objects of which cities are made, with their individuality and their evolution. Rossi looks at the elements of which cities are composed and the ways in which these are grouped together to form neighbourhoods, in, for instance, Howard’s Garden City, Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse and so on K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. Architecture, for Rossi, is the physical expression of certain thoughts and the architect’s task, therefore, is to explain those thoughts and convert them into built reality He says: “The city, which is the subject of this book, is to be understood here as architecture. By architecture, I mean not only the visible image of the city and the sum of its different architectures, but architecture as construction, the construction of the city over time.” K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. For Rossi the word construct means to act on the basis of reason; a thoroughly Rationalist position As Rossi says: “As the first men built houses to provide more favourable surroundings for their lives, fashioning artificial climates for themselves, so they built with aesthetic intention. Architecture came into being along with the first traces of the city; it is deeply rooted in the formation of civilization and is a permanent, universal, and necessary artefact.” K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. Rossi, therefore, is concerned with how reason produces results in the construction of the architecture and how architecture, in its turn, results in the construction of the city So Rossi describes the elements of which cities are made, that is to say the different building Types. Type for Rossi, as for Quatremére, is that which remains constant and unchanging behind and underlying all the particular built examples K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. Having established his basic types, Rossi hopes to determine the laws by which each Type was constructed and once he has established the laws for constructing the various Types Rossi then hopes to establish the further laws by which building Types are grouped – constructed – together to form that much more complex entity, the city itself Within the lifetime of the city as a whole, of course, there will be constant changes to the corpus of buildings it contains, the architectural “facts” of which it is composed K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. Each building will have been designed, built, used for a while and then, perhaps, demolished But the city itself will continue to exist through all these changes and our concept of it as a particular city will be founded in our memories – fig. 1 Our memories will depend in particular on the presence of certain monuments; particular architectural “facts” which, because of their sheer quality, have withstood the ravages of time A true monument , for Rossi, adds far more to the city than its mere physical, atmospheric and visual presence K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 1: Arles: Roman Amphitheatre
K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. It actually gives meaning to the city thus acting, in a sense, as a locus of the city’s memory So-called functionalist critics, of course, decry the monument as individualistic and rhetorical They want to see the monuments torn down, to be replaced by neutral, commonplace buildings designed to meet their specific, so-called functional programmes But Rossi sees monuments as essential to retaining the very concept of city K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. Rossi’s aim, therefore, is to use the idea of type to establish the basic continuity that underlines the apparent diversity of the individual urban “facts” Architectural types are revealed, above all, in plans, in the relationships of the various spaces to each other within the building But the urban spaces between the buildings also have their Types These too are legible in plan as indeed are other urban Types at the scale of the city as a whole K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. “Space possesses its own values; just as sound and perfume have their own feeling “ Rossi calls a single spatial fact of this kind a “place” So: “place is that which allows a particular architectural “fact” to acquire its condition of being” But place itself is far more than any mere physical environment Place encompasses both that physical reality and its history No-one builds in a particular place, at a particular time, unless they have particular reasons for doing so K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. “…architecture becomes a determining factor in the constitution of urban facts when it is able to subsume the entire civil and political dimensions of an era; when it is highly rational, comprehensible and transmissible. In other words, when it can be judged as style.” So style becomes the major determinant of urban form K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. For style, as Rossi puts it, is a way of thinking which: “… contradicts the belief which many hold that pre-ordained functions can give the necessary directions to facts and that the problem consists (merely) in giving form to certain functions; in reality, the forms themselves, in their materialization, separate the functions; they are stated in the city itself.” As Rossi rightly points out, the great historic buildings, the monuments which have remained from ancient times in various cities are often used now for purposes which were quite unknown to those who originally built them  K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. He shows the Arena at Nimes for instance which, having been built for murderous Roman spectacles, formed a man-made landscape into which a medieval village was built These days, in its restored form, it might be used for anything from a bull-fight to an Ice Show or an Opera In such a building, clearly, function literally follows form K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. As we have seen the medieval craftsman, literally, lived over (or behind) the shop so the first signs of change he says: “…can be discerned in the destruction of the fundamental structure of the medieval city, (which had been) based on absolute identity between dwelling and workplace within the same building.” K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. During the Industrial Revolution, of course, the workers moved in ever larger numbers to the factories so, says Rossi, the second, decisive stage of destruction began, “with progressive industrialization provoking the definitive split between residence and work and destroying the relationships of the neighbourhood” – fig. 2 And of course the divisions became even greater in the third phase which, according to Rossi, “starts with the beginning of individual means of transportation”, especially the motor car K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 2: Preston: an Industrial Revolution City

Aldo Rossi – cont. Whilst the individual urban “fact” – the work of architecture – can be studied in purely architectural terms, the decision to place a building of that type at that locus within the city cannot That is a political decision Rossi sees the city as a continuous mass into which large-scale elements – often simple in their geometry – can be inserted These insertions, of course, will conform to the types which have been derived from the study of historical precedents: centralized blocks, courtyard forms, linear blocks and so on K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. For Rossi, the function of architectural theory is to examine those laws which actually make construction possible The simplest architectural laws, obviously, are those which determine how one achieves an actual form with a given set of elements and he finds the clearest demonstration of such laws, and their application – not surprisingly – in 18th century neo-Classicism Rossi finds the answer to his problem of how – having established the Type of his building – to realize it as a three-dimensional fact  K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. It lays for him, in neo-Classicism, or, more specifically, in the Rationalism of the architecture of Enlightenment The Rationalists of the Enlightenment were, for Rossi, the first architects in history to make an autonomous discipline out of Architecture itself They alone discovered the principles which allow for architectural construction in Rossi’s particular sense and this led to an “objectification” of various elements within the building, of buildings within the city, and so on K katedra sídel a regionů

Aldo Rossi – cont. But the question still remains as to how, having established the actual Type of a building one then realizes it as a three-dimensional architectural fact The answers are to be found not only in Rossi’s enthusiasm for Boulée’s buildings – with their pure Enlightenment geometry – but also in Rossi’s own buildings, at least in those from the early part of his career K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo He analyzed social housing, as described at Conferences of CIAM (Congres d’Architecture Moderne) at Frankfurt in 1929 and Brussels in 1930 His primary concern, of course, was the Existenzminimum dwelling which had been such a feature of European, and especially German, social Housing in the 1920s It had been pursued with particular vigour in Frankfurt where Ernst May had been appointed City Architect in 1924 K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 3: Carlo Aymonimo, Plan of the Gallaratese housing in Milan ( ) K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 4: Carlo Aymonimo: Rational Housing Apartment Types from Frankfurt K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo – cont. May himself argued, among many other things, that where possible, people should be housed in single-family houses each with an outdoor garden “room”, that the city should be ringed by housing developments, each housing from 10 to people, separated from the city centre, and from each other, by green open spaces “right up to the core of the city” K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo – cont. Indeed two of May’s erstwhile colleagues, Böhm and Kaufmann, made a spirited defence of Frankfurt’s low-rise developments in general, and individual houses in particular, at the CIAM meeting of – which was held in Frankfurt – against Gropius’s attempt to bulldoze through his idea of high rise as correct CIAM policy! May and his colleagues designed no less than 18 housing estates around Frankfurt including Westhausen, Praunheim, Romerstadt and so on K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo – cont. May and his colleagues could experiment with housing layout, orientation, aspect, sun-penetration, room size, methods of construction, including prefabricated construction, and so on Their work included the first large-scale experiments anywhere – 900 dwellings – in large-panel concrete construction The smallest Frankfurt kitchen – on the Praunheim Estate – was no more than 1.87 metres by 3.44 but with everything prefabricated and built in, from the ironing board to the various food containers K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo – cont. Whilst the kitchen seems to have been analysed more thoroughly than most, all the rooms in the house – or apartment – were subject to this kind of analysis so it is hardly surprising that Aymonimo included several examples from Frankfurt in his study K katedra sídel a regionů

Aymonimo – cont. He also showed historic layouts such as linear housing, courtyard housing, and so on from Vienna, Berlin, the Soviet Union, Frankfurt and Brussels, also more recent layouts from Letchworth, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Abo in Finland, Zurich, Mailand, Plessis-Robinson in France, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Paris, Budapest, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Karlsruhe most of which were designed with parallel rows of the “sunlight, fresh air and greenery” housing of the kind which CIAM was promoting at the time K katedra sídel a regionů

Tendenza 2 Aymonimo’s L’Abitazione Razionale was a study of Typology of the kind which Rossi advocated at the level of the individual dwelling Aymonimo’s housing, naturally, is based on the Existenzminimum Types he had analyzed so assiduously in his Vivienda Razionale (1973) He packs apartments of different sizes, for different kinds of household, with some ingenuity into stepped sections with access balconies on alternate sides every two floors or so K katedra sídel a regionů

The Krier Brothers 1 By the early 1970s other people in other places were thinking of urban space very much on Rationalist lines These included, most particularly, the Brothers Krier, Leon and Robert of Luxembourg Both had started thinking in quite un-Rationalist ways Rob Krier’s earliest built project, for instance, the Siemer House ( ) was white-walled but rather more complex in its geometry than a true neo-Rationalist would have made it K katedra sídel a regionů

The Krier Brothers 1 – cont.
But then in 1970, Rob Krier began to work out his urban ideas in and around Stuttgart which he took as it stood, inserting streets and squares where appropriate within the existing context The most ambitious of his studies is that for Leinfelden, a rather amorphous suburb which he sought to unify by inserting a Megastructure; some 1200 metres long between an Assembly Hall with a U-shaped Plaza by way of a shopping street, an open courtyard, a covered Galleria, another courtyard, another shopping street, in an open market to a garden beside an existing Church K katedra sídel a regionů

The Galleria was to be a multilayered interchange between the metro, car parking, buses at ground level, shops, offices, housing and so on, grouped under and around a glass-vaulted Arcade with aisles – fig. 5 So, in quite a literal sense, Krier’s Leinfelden represents a study of urban Types Leon Krier’s early work was by no means Rationalist in form or content He admits that as a schoolboy he was a fervent admirer of Le Corbusier and himself given to planning grandiose schemes for Luxembourg K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 5: Robert Krier – Project for Stuttgart Leinfelden 1971

Fig. 6: Stirling 1971 – Project for Derby Civic Centre with a U-shaped glazed Galleria K katedra sídel a regionů

Much of Krier’s own scheme for Echternacht (1970) also seems to be Hi-Tech The scheme was generated from the Baroque Abbey including extensions to the adjacent Lycée Classique – fig. 7 K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 7: Leon Krier 1970: Echternacht – extensions to the Lycée Classique K katedra sídel a regionů

Tendenza Exhibition Rossi and his colleagues believed that the time was ripe for their neo-Rationalism to be launched as a more-or-less coherent Movement at the Milan Trienale of 1973 Much of the material was published in the book: Architectura Razionale – also 1973 – by Bonifanti, Bonicalzi, Rossi, Scolari and Vitale The Existenzminimum was seen as an “odious concept which is now being excavated from the libraries” K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 8: Leslie Martin & Colin St J. Wilson with Patrick Hodgkinson; Harvey Court, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge K katedra sídel a regionů

Tendenza Exhibition – cont.
Le Corbusier, surprisingly, was represented at the Triennale by his monastery of La Tourrette which, being thoroughly Brutalist, surely has nothing much to do with Rationalism? There were several of Hilbersheimer’s theoretical housing-slab layouts too – fig. 9 Projects in this group take the form of extremely bleak, mechanistic, sterile and thoroughly inhuman forms K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 9: Ludwig Hilbersheimer (1964) – Theoretical City Layouts

Tendenza Exhibition – cont.
If Tafuri looked for evidence that the 20th century city was forcing people into mechanistic lives he could have found it here But none of these were Capitalist buildings They were, rather, designed and even built for Marxist regimes by Marxist architects K katedra sídel a regionů

Robert Krier – Urban Space
Robert Krier’s Leinfelden and his Tower Bridge housing both represent worked examples of a study which he had been undertaking into Urban Typology His Stadtsraum in Theorie und Praxis (1975) was translated into English as Urban Space in 1979 It includes a massive analysis – some 350 examples in plan alone – of significant urban spaces in different cities of Europe K katedra sídel a regionů

Robert Krier – cont. Krier defines urban space as openly as he can as “comprising all types of space between buildings in towns and their localities “ These range from the courtyard within an individual building by way of contained urban space, such as the Piazza Navonna in Rome, to the wide open spaces of, say, a Chandigarh where such containment as there is seems to be provided by the landscape – the mountains beyond – rather than by any group of buildings K katedra sídel a regionů

Robert Krier – cont. So it is hardly surprising that Krier’s analysis is followed by a history – with particular reference to Le Corbusier – of how there has been an “erosion of urban space in 20th century town planning” His splendid analysis, as it stands, supplies more than enough material to draw our attention, at least, to the concept of “urban space” Krier sees the city itself as formed essentially of urban spaces in the form of streets, squares and other open spaces K katedra sídel a regionů

Robert Krier – cont. Urban spaces – in various forms, essentially square, circular or triangular The urban tissue itself is formed of such elements either pure or in various combinations Krier shows that the urban spaces of Europe generally fall, pure or compromised, into three main forms: square, circular or triangular – fig. 10 – 12 Each of these occurs on its own or compromised against others K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 10: Robert Krier 1975: Square Urban Spaces

Fig. 11: Robert Krier 1975: Circular Urban Spaces

Fig. 12: Robert Krier 1975: Triangular Urban Spaces

Robert Krier – cont. Each may be twisted, divided, added to others, penetrated, overlapped or alienated – fig. 13 Each can be regular – a precise piece of geometry in itself – or irregular: compromised against the site or whatever They can be closed, by walls, arcades, or colonnades from the streets around them, or they can be open to their environment Of course the streets and squares of the city are lined by buildings; literally they are framed by facades K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 13: Krier 1975: Typologies of urban spaces

Robert Krier – cont. What is more the facades themselves can take many forms from solid, unrelieved masonry, to masonry with openings of various kinds: windows, doors, arcades, colonnades, to facades which are entirely glazed What is more these facades have sections: from the absolutely vertical, with a pitched roof or a flat roof, to the stepped section, with various gradations of stepping, to diagonal sections, the sections on pilotis, the sections with buttresses and so on – fig. 14,15 This survey of Types seems quite exhaustive K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 14: Krier 1975: Typologies of Sections

Fig. 15: Krier 1975: Typologies of Elevations

Robert Krier – cont. Krier, in other words, gets closer with his plans of urban spaces, his elevations and his sections to the concept of Type than anyone else at any scale of design from that, say, of the doorknob as a Type to that of the city as a whole The physical form of the city is determined by relationships between the streets and the open spaces, the elevations and sections which enclose them – Krier shows a vast range of possibilities Krier demonstrates his Typologies in use with various applications to Stuttgart, especially his own large project for Leinfelden K katedra sídel a regionů

Leon Krier - Luxembourg
By 1973 Leon Krier had started moving further in Rationalist directions as he prepared an Appeal to the citizens of Luxembourg to rehabilitate their city He said: “If shoemakers decided one day to make shoes in the shape of bananas, if cabinet makers started to make tables in the shape of a toboggan, if greengrocers one day sold you pebbles…(for)…apples, I think there would be a revolution. …  K katedra sídel a regionů

Leon Krier – cont. …however for twenty years now…architects have been selling you houses and palaces in the shape of aquariums, aeroplanes and tin cans while trying to convince you that what you thought to be the issues of architecture, the city, a house, a palace, streets and squares; have finally been resolved – but that resolution was beyond the comprehension of non-specialist.” But after the “crimes committed against the cities and landscapes of Europe over the past twenty years “ he sees the city and its public places must be built in another form… K katedra sídel a regionů

Fig. 16: Leon Krier (1973-78), Luxembourg; Capital of Europe

Fig. 17: Leon Krier, Luxembourg; New Parliament Building (1979)

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