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June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller Tried to Redesign Harlem

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38 pointsmitchbob35 comments

It's interesting how one generation's vision of utopia often becomes the dystopia of the following generation. In his time, Le Corbusier was heralded as the genius of modern architecture. Today, his buildings seem vaguely dystopian (to me, at least) and remind me of the recent 2012 Dredd movie.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dredd+movie+building&t=osx&iar=ima...

Fuller probably envisioned the shape of his buildings as futuristic and naturalistic, but to me, they look like nuclear power plants. Icons (as in a simplified, recognizable image) end up playing an unexpected role.

From the countries I've visited, I'd say Berlin (especially Prenzlauerberg) and Tokyo had the most pleasant version of urban design. With Berlin, most apartments have balconies, streets are wide enough to let shops expand onto the sidewalks, and public transit works extremely well. Tokyo mixes commerce with residential in a way that American cities get completely wrong.

There is also a city in Poland, Łódź, which also has a geometrically appealing layout: it's essentially a single long street with two concentrations at either end. The city itself is still recovering from the 90s and is fairly run-down outside of the center, but the conceptual simplicity has an appeal that's hard to describe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street

My first take was that they did look like nuclear power plant silos. But then I examined closer and the idea started to appeal to me more.

I think these might work in Detroit. The city has lots of vacant land. These towers are wider at the bottom. Why not have shops and offices on the lower floors? The upper floors would offer great views of the Detroit river into Windsor or out to the suburbs. By staggering the rows everyone would have a great view.

You'd be within walking distance of shops in the other towers, it would be village-like with a lot of green space. In effect you'd have a set of towers in the middle of a park.

You should look up how the idea of “towers in a park” actually played out when implemented. It’s not a new concept.

Cabrini Green definitely comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini–Green_Homes

Maybe the boosters of "towers in a park" should have taken a page from the legend of Parmentier, and made them exclusive things one couldn't get an apartment in without knowing someone who knew someone, or at least paying a massive "finder's fee" to some agency?

(Parmentier lived at a time before the pommes frites, when only pigs, prisoners, and people in poor faraway countries ate potatoes. The story goes that he set up a fancy potato field, complete with armed guards, but because they weren't guarded at night, the same people who earlier wouldn't dare eat a potato came to steal them under cover of darkness to grow themselves.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Augustin_Parmentier#Po...

Caveat: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Parmentier says it's fake news. Parmentier really did wish to guard his research patches.

I'm surprised you mentioned Berlin (where I live now) - I think most Germans consider it one of the less pleasant German cities (compared to say Munich, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, etc or other German speaking cities like Vienna or Zurich).

Prenzlauerberg is a fancy/hip neighborhood and not representative of how the average Berliner lives.

And most of us in Berlin would say living in any other German city is unimaginable.

I like living in Berlin but not because of its beauty or pleasantness :)

Although I guess one feature mentioned by OP that is relatively unique (in the German speaking countries) to Berlin how wide so many of the streets/sidewalks are.

What Berlin got right is that they tried to get all of society into the same building. As in the well-off into the 1st floor (Belle Etage) the poor under the roof, but the idea was to have the doctor living in the same building as the plumber. I think that idea is key to having livable cities.

Of course a lotbof happened between these ideas and the situation now.

Heidelberg is of course pittoresque but not a city in the same league in size. Maybe Mannheim could be taken as a town planning model.

Berlin has some parts that resemble the dystopian visions that you mention, in particular some parts of Lichtenberg [1] and Gropiusstadt [2].

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lichtenberg+berlin&t=hx&iar=images... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gropiusstadt+berlin&t=hx&iax=image... [3]

> It's interesting how one generation's vision of utopia often becomes the dystopia of the following generation. In his time, Le Corbusier was heralded as the genius of modern architecture. Today, his buildings seem vaguely dystopian (to me, at least) and remind me of the recent 2012 Dredd movie.

That structure in Dredd reminded me of Corbs Ville Contemporaine (aka 'A City of Three Million Inhabitants') design. Interestingly, the objective was to bring back a green landscape without sacrificing urban density. Almost everywhere there isn't a structure there would have been park. Manufacturing, Business, Recreation, and Habitation each occupied it's own zone. One of Corbusier's plans could fit 800-1200 residents/hectare.

It's an interesting observation on our vision of a utopia; Paul Rudolph enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity in the 60's & 70's, now many of his structures (in the U.S.) have been dismantled. Luckily some past endeavors age well, e.g. Neave Brown was awarded the Gold Medal by RIBA for Robin Hood Gardens several years ago, Trellick Tower is still standing, etc.

> Manufacturing, Business, Recreation, and Habitation each occupied it's own zone.

We have since discovered that this becomes a major problem. If these things are far apart, you need to dedicate a ton of resources to transportation to move people between those areas.

> Interestingly, the objective was to bring back a green landscape without sacrificing urban density.

Yeah, it was one way to do that, for sure. But there are other ways that many people would think are far better. Here's a typical street in a neighborhood that is presently at about 30,000 people/mile^2 (11,000 people/km^2):

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0103594,-87.6643239,3a,75y,2...

>Le Corbusier was heralded as the genius of modern architecture. Today, his buildings seem vaguely dystopian

100% agree with this. He designed first planned city of India, Chandigarh - state capital of Punjab at that time. Buildings he designed are lifeless to me. There is just no motivation going into those buildings, they sap your energy. Legislature house is easily one of the worst designed building of them all - imagine giving your politicians such an uninspiring structure and tasteless interior. On top, all of these buildings are poorly lit. I dreaded going into these buildings and bureaucrats housed inside also resented their offices.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/apr/07/the-c...

Here's an alternate source that's much better and has better (but not enough) images: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16868494/harlem-history-buck...

I don't really understand why this is the case, but a large percentage of stories about architecture, urban design, urban planning, development, etc. are written with thousands of words and no maps, diagrams, or pictures. The fuzzy black and white scribble on this one doesn't count.

Why do writers bother penning these? Architecture and it's assorted offshoots are visual media, and spending a bunch of words to describe it is about as useful as writing an essay to say what the Mona Lisa looks like.

Maybe copyright issues? (Same reason you do not see many night pictures of the Eiffel tower)

This really is a much better source -- thank you!

You can write an article about something from afar, but can't photograph it. Leaves you trying to find Creative Commons images or licensing something. Writer isn't paid enough to do that, I'm guessing.

Corbu got a few things right but he was off the mark when he said a house was a machine for living. A house cannot provides all the necessities for living, it must be integrated into a community. Monolithic buildings like this are an extension of his incorrect idea, they are the monoculture of urban design much like the suburb. We should take the good idea of simple and easy to manufacture buildings and use them to create human scale spaces that fulfill our needs as a community.

If you look at page 341 these would be solarpunk if drawn today.

They are thin and constructed over existing buildings. But with ramps so you can drive a car up.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2397578/dc67d37c8...

That was a terrible idea. Apartment buildings with 45,000 people each? Most with no exterior windows?

Someone went to Kowloon walled city and said "Cool".

There are parts of Shenzhen that look like that.[1] But with better structural soundness. Here's a ground level view.[2] (That's a full sphere video; you can change the view direction, including looking straight up.)

This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable.

Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves.

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/@22.54024647,114.0656082...

[2] https://youtu.be/e-2n_HksLh0?t=220

[2] is an important historical document. Highly recommended.

Cool! It's nice to see there is something similar to to Kowloon Walled city still in existence.

Last year we visited the Anata no Warehouse arcade in Kawasski, which had parts modeled after it. Unfortunatelly it closed at the end of November 2019: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anata-no-warehouse

> This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable.

> Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves.

This is like suggesting that people who value having their own backyard are being inconsistent by not moving into the remote countryside. There's nothing inconsistent in promoting a certain set of values within desiring those values taken to the extreme.

From the article;

“ These towers would contain new dwelling space—light-filled apartments of twelve-hundred square feet, each equipped with a balcony and parking spot”

Where does your assessment come from?

From the geometry. Those things have the diameter of a city block. That's the problem with those old giant arcology designs. Too much volume for the amount of outside wall. They look great in drawings.

Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential.

> Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential.

Most buildings in Budapest are set up this way and I don't see how it fails. Technically they are hallways, not balconies, but they function the same way.

I think a lot of it has to do with the size of the court yard and the height of the building. Four stories with a court yard that's as long and wide as the buildings are high? That can work. 50 stories with a yard that's 50m across? The lower levels will live in perpetual twilight.

Brainstorming here: what about light tunnels every ±5 floors that use mirrors to funnel light from outside the building into the courtyard? In theory, this would work...I think.

There are modern municipal housing buildings in Vienna that do this - mirrors for community space ilimunation during the day. :)

I Spain it is fairly common to see appartement building with a hollow center and interior balconies (but they usually have exterior balcony too).

I honestly hated this design because the hollow center was almost never getting any light, but it was getting the moist and the rain, making it look dirty almost all the time. It also act has a good way for sound to propagate. You can hear your neighbours at all time ...

When the hollow center has the size of a court, it is okay, but when it is just a few meters wide, it is truly awful.

So you’re saying that a quick glance at the diagram means that you think she was lying about the apartments having light?

the worst part of this is that at the time Pruitt-Igoe already was riddled with social issues, vandalism, crime, everyone who could afford leave doing so, etc.

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