At The Intersection of Nature and Architecture - Modernism's Response To The Alienation of Man - The Charnel-House PDF

27/9/2019 At the Intersection of Nature and Architecture: Modernism’s Response to the Alienation of Man | The Charnel-House
The Charnel-House
FROM BAUHAUS TO BEINHAUS
Main menu
Apr
02 At the Intersection of Nature and Architecture: 3
Modernism’s Response to the Alienation of Man
Nikolai Ladovskii’s General Plan for the Green City (Зелёный
Город), 1930
Transitioning from my last series of posts (on humanity’s relationship to

nature) to a topic more immediately relevant to my thesis, this entry will
focus on some of the earlier attempts that were made at reconciling man with
nature. From the turn of the nineteenth century up until the 1930s, a number
of proposals were put forth aiming to eliminate the contradiction between
town and country. These were drawn up by city planners hailing from many
different countries. They believed that a solution was possible not only at the
local level, but rather one that was universally applicable. Theirs was a global
vision. And whether they were reformists or revolutionaries, these urbanists
believed that human society could be finally reunited with nature through new
patterns of settlement — patterns that could be put into effect anywhere,
irrespective of national boundaries.
The international and universal character of the modernists’ thinking set them
apart from many city planners today, who look for local solutions and strive to
have as little impact on existing nature as possible. These contemporary
planners are often under the influence of the environmental philosophies of
deep ecology and permaculturalism. According to these modes of thought,
humanity should seek to leave nature mostly intact and try to integrate as
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2011/04/02/at-the-intersection-of-nature-and-architecture-modernism’s-response-to-the-alienation-of-man-2/ 1/42
much of the existing environment as possible in order to create “sustainable”

living spaces. The creators of these eco-friendly homes advocate a sort of soft
resilience, one that blends in with nature as it already is rather than looking to
fundamentally reshape it.
In contrast to this way of approaching building, the modernists saw nature as

almost infinitely malleable. The wonders of technology could shear off the side
of mountains, redirect rivers, and create artificial lakes. Blessed with new
materials like steel and ferro-concrete, these planners believed that they build
futuristic structures all while transplanting nature into new settings,
determined by society. In this way, as part of an overarching plan, natural
objects could be placed into geometrically-defined spaces, into strips or
concentric rings spreading from the town center. Thus would the contradiction
of man and nature be dialectically resolved — the most natural and organic
objects arranged according to human and geometric patterns.
And so, looking backward with far greater hindsight than Bellamy, we can see
that the problem of man’s alienation of nature was on the mind not only of
radicals, but even bourgeois reformers. The sense of a loss of connection
from nature was felt everywhere, but nowhere more than in the factory towns
that had sprouted up in the fury of the nineteenth century’s industrial
revolution. Alfred Richard Sennett, a proponent of what came to be known as
the garden city concept, recalled that
“
As we desert the lanes of Nature for the cities of artificiality, we
desert quietude, happiness, and integrity for bustle, unrest, and
insincerity. Contrast the modest, unaffected, truth-loving
maiden, replete and content, in the charms of Nature’s
adorning, with the ‘woman-about-town,’ a creature of guile,
artifice, and insincerity. The one charms and attracts us, rivets
our belief in her sterling value, and secures our love; the other,
ostentatiously displaying her tinsel seductions and demanding
our admiration, fills us with distrust and secures naught but our
contempt. Contrast the smiling countryside, the bright sheaths
of golden sunrays lazily suffusing across emerald meadow and
bronzed upland; flocculent wisps of just perceptible cloud
calmly gliding high above the land, like idly-soaring gulls, to
enhance the comfort of the land-toiler as they momentarily
temper the ray to merge a tinge of gray with the whiteness of
the chalky headland; the wind — if such a feeble, scented breath
can so be called — with scarce strength to send a sluggish ripple
o’er the golden plush of ripening corn and the erstwhile merry
prattle of the babbling brook subdued to the hum of drowsy
content — contrast this, I suggest, with the unrest, the clatter
and roar of our frowning, grimed, noisy, noisome, never restful,
repellent towns.[1]
Late Nineteenth Century Factory Town
I. THE GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT
The “garden city” movement was founded at the turn of the nineteenth
century by an Englishman named Ebenezer Howard. He was seeking to
resolve what the young Marx had termed “the old opposition between town
and country.”[2] Howard recognized the acute shortage of housing and the
deplorable living conditions of even that housing which was available. At the
same time, he saw the extreme provincialism and lack of society that existed
in the countryside. This was the same problematic duality that Engels had
identified earlier in his writings on The Housing Question (1871). In that
work, Engels asserted that “the bourgeois solution of the housing question
has come to grief — it has come to grief owing to the antithesis of town and
country.” However, he hastened to add: “The housing question can only be
solved when society has been sufficiently transformed for a start to be made
towards abolishing the antithesis between town and country, which has been
brought to an extreme point by present-day capitalist society.”[3] For Engels,
such reform was possible only after a revolutionary transformation had
overturned capitalism. Until then, it would remain unsolvable.
“There are in reality not only, as

is so constantly assumed, two
alternatives — town life and
country life — but a third
alternative, in which all the
advantages of the most
energetic and active town life,
with all the beauty and delight of
the country, may be secured in
perfect combination; and the
certainty of being able to live
this life will be the magnet which
will produce the effect for which
we are all striving — the

spontaneous movement of the
people from our crowded cities
to the bosom of our kindly
mother earth, at once the source
of life, of happiness, of wealth,
and of power.” —Ebenezer
Howard [4]
Ebenezer Howard, however, was

a reformer. He sought to
ameliorate the contradictions
inherent in the capitalist mode of
production through a series of
reforms and bold new measures
Howard’s Proposed Dialectical Resolution of the
Polarities between Town and Country rather than pursue an all-out
revolution. The result of his
labors was his book, Garden
Cities of To-morrow, which was released in 1898 to much fanfare and
aplomb. “Town and country must be married,” the book declared, “and out of
this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilisation.”[5]
Charles Purdom, one of the many who would come to promote Howard’s
garden city proposal, wrote that “many readers saw the possibilities
suggested by the book of an important practical step in the reform of town
life. The evils of the congested town and the declining population of country
districts had been pointed out many times before; but there had never been
so picturesque, so practical, and so timely a suggestion for dealing with them
as Mr. Howard was fortunate enough to make.”[6] His book included a
diagram illustrating his proposed synthesis between town and country,
represented by three magnets. In many ways, his answer was slightly facile,
conceptually speaking. It amounted to little more than a “best of both
worlds” scenario, all while leaving behind the less desirable aspects of either.
Howard also hoped to resolve the modern antithesis between individual and
society using similarly simplistic logic.[7] Despite these conceptual
shortcomings, however, it caught the public’s imagination and gathered a
following of like-minded architects, planners, and reformers.
Ebenezer Howard’s Original Conception of the Garden City (1902)
The city was designed concentrically, with satellite towns arranged at regular
intervals, all of them emanating in a radial fashion from the central city.
These were all to be connected by two rings of transportation: the outermost
being a canal that would run through the center of each satellite town; the
other being a railroad that would just touch upon their edges. These outer
lines of circulation would also be channeled back toward the central city, such
that each town would be easily accessible to one another. In between these
lines of transportation, there would form forested wedges of nature-life.
Housed in these natural surroundings, Howard placed reservoirs, waterfalls,
and schools for the blind — as well as farmland, an insane asylum, and a
“home for inebriates.” Fantastic though it might seem (and it did to many),
Howard’s vision was an idyllic one, and many were enchanted by the prospect
of a rationalized, slumless and smoke-free town surrounded by gardens.
The enthusiasm surrounding the

garden city movement was fueled by
the addition of authors and architects
like Raymond Unwin, W.R. Lethaby,
Charles Purdom, Ewart Gladstone
Culpone, and Patrick Geddes.
“[Howard’s] scheme was so obviously
rational and desirable,” remembered
Unwin, “that in a comparatively short
time it attracted the attention of a
sufficient number of reformers to
create a strong Garden City
Association.”[8] Ralph Neville, the
chairman of that Association, was

particularly optimistic about the
positive effects the garden cities might
offer the working class. In a lecture
he delivered on October 24th, 1904, he
stated that he was “convinced that the
redistribution of the people upon the
land would do more to transform the
members of the working class than
any other conceivable alteration of the
conditions under which they live.”[9] It
was Neville’s hope, like that of so
many other bourgeois reformers
belonging to the Garden City
Association, that these new measures
might soften the class struggle, which
One of the “Spokes” of the Garden City
had been so turbulent in England
during the nineteenth century.
Howard’s notion of a “garden city” —
insofar as it promised to overcome the opposition between town and country
— seemed to be a step in this direction. The pollution, overcrowding, and
chronic housing shortage suffered by urban working-class populations would
be done away with through careful planning and reform.
The members of the Garden City

Association were eager to test the
principles set forth in Howard’s book.
Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker were
selected as the main planners for what
came to be known as Letchworth, the
first garden city. The Association
purchased a plot of land and began
building in 1903. Though the result did
not exactly mirror Howard’s original
scheme, those who participated in its
building seemed generally pleased with
the result. “[T]he Garden City of reality
is something much more than any ideal,”
wrote Purdom. “It is now an actual
town, with all the defects, the
compromises, the adjustments of theory
Plan for the First Garden City, Letchworth to practice, as well as the happy
achievements which belong to work in
process of accomplishment. And it may
be said at once that as an actual town, while it falls short of its ideal, it is still
better than that ideal because the merest bit of practice is worth endless
theory.”[10] Though Howard’s theory had to yield to some of the messiness of
empirical reality, Letchworth was seen as a practical success. The news of

this success helped popularize the idea of the garden city even further.
Detailed Section of Howard’s “Garden City” Proposal Map
In addition to the creation of Letchworth, the garden city concept also

received publicity through an official periodical. Shortly after the Association
was established, some of its members immediately set to work editing a
monthly publication, Garden Cities and Town Planning. They used this as a
means to spread Howard’s ideas throughout England, and even abroad.
Ewart Culpone thus outlined in broad strokes an overview of the Association’s
progress and its successes over its first fifteen years:
“
When fifteen years ago the Garden City Association was first
formed, it was necessary in the literature that was published
from time to time to point out in graphic form and detail the
necessity for action along the lines which were advocated by Mr.
Ebenezer Howard. Thirteen years of propaganda have,
however, brought home to the minds of the thinking part of the
population the fact of the awful wastage that is going on
through the ill-housing of the people, and through the
haphazard growth of our centres of population. Month by
month the pages of Garden Cities and Town Planning, the organ
of the Garden City and Town Planning Movement, has contained
information shedding new light on the varied phases of this
difficult question, and it may fairly be claimed that the
knowledge of garden city principles has spread into every
civilised nation under the sun.[11]
Indeed, the spread of Howard’s garden city concept to continental Europe

would prove to be an especially important development in the history of those
modernist strains of urbanism that came later, as the modernists both took
inspiration from and reacted against the garden city movement. Germany
was the country where the movement spread the most noticeably, with the
creation of several garden suburbs before the start of the First World War.[12]
It branched out into France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Russia as well.
[13] Following the Great War, the influence of the garden city movement
waned, but its principles remained a point of reference for the numerous
avant-garde currents that came afterward. It remains historically significant
for its posing of the question of how to resolve the contradiction of town and
country, as well as its search to find the place of nature within the artificial
environment created by human society.
Model of Le Corbusier’s Original Plan for the Reconstruction of Paris
II. LE CORBUSIER, LA VILLE CONTEMPORAINE, & LA VILLE RADIEUSE
Le Corbusier’s ideas may have had revolutionary implications for architecture

and urban planning, but the man himself was a politically ambivalent and
socially reformist. The question he so famously posed in a chapter of his
landmark book, Toward an Architecture, was “Architecture, or
Revolution?”[14] What this implied, of course, was that a new architecture
must be found so as to avert revolution. This was a point on which the Czech
communist and architectural critic Karel Teige, though initially an admirer of
Le Corbusier, took him to task in his work The Minimum Dwelling. “[Le
Corbusier’s] desire to forestall revolution by solving the housing question,
besides betraying a fundamentally antirevolutionary position, clearly is totally
naive, for the housing question can never be fully solved without revolution,”
wrote Teige, echoing Engels. “Presumably, Le Corbusier thinks that change
can be accomplished without revolution and without the abolition of private
property. Instead, he answers his own question (‘Architecture, or revolution?’)
with the slogan ‘architectural revolution.’”[15] Nevertheless, Le Corbusier’s
emphasis on the place of nature, sunlight, and clean air in the modern makes
him an important figure in the transition toward the revolutionary urbanism of

the Russian avant-garde.
A Picturesque Sketch of Le Corbusier’s Le Ville Contemporaine
The problem of humanity’s relationship to nature presented itself as a problem

to Le Corbusier as well, just as it had for the members of the garden city
movement. He was quite familiar with the literature of the garden city
advocates, and well acquainted with their body of work. When he wrote his
book on Urbanism in 1925, he casually dismissed the garden city ideology:
“Garden cities have always been laid out on a basis of the poetical ‘simple life,’
with their little balconies and arches and their tiled roofs and all the other
romantic paraphernalia. It is sad that thatch should not be allowed, but at
least we can have artificially weathered tiles.”[16] But Le Corbusier was not
altogether immune from the influence of the garden city movement; just a
few years later, he would propose a radical “vertical garden city,” where
residents of his Cartesian towers could plant their own gardens on the
spacious, sun-lit balconies. Corbusier was a consistent critic of the
romanticism of what he called “the pre-machine age,” but he acknowledged
that humanity’s estrangement from nature presented an obstacle that any
serious urban planner would have to confront at some point or another.
View of Le Corbusier’s “Cartesian Towers”
Indeed, this underlying alienation was never lost on Corbusier. In fact, he

even felt compelled to offer a sort of creation myth of his own to show where
man fit into Nature, while at the same time demonstrating man’s neverending
quest for establishing order and thinking rationally. In his polemic against
“organic” and “natural” curvilinear construction advocated by the followers of
Camille Sitte, he insisted that the human mind was governed by “geometry”
of the straight line and the right angle; in other words, rectilinear patterns.
Toward the beginning of Urbanism, Le Corbusier thus wrote:
“
Man, created by the universe, is the sum of that universe, as far
as he himself is concerned; he proceeds according to its laws
and believes he can read them; he has formulated them and
made of them a coherent scheme, a rational body of knowledge
on which he can act, adapt, and produce. This knowledge does
not put him in opposition to the universe; it puts him in
harmony with it; he is therefore right to behave as he does, he
could not act otherwise. What would happen if he were to
invent a perfectly rational system in contradiction to the laws of
nature, and tried to put his theoretic conceptions into practice in
the world around him? He would come to a full stop at the first
step.
Nature presents itself to us as a chaos; the vault of the heavens,

the shapes of lakes and seas, the outlines of hills. The actual
scene which lies before our eyes, with its kaleidoscopic
fragments and its vague distances, is a confusion. There is
nothing there that resembles the objects with which we
surround ourselves, and which we have created. Seen by us
without reference to any other thing, the aspects of Nature
seem purely accidental.
But the spirit which animates Nature is a spirit of order; we

come to know it. We differentiate between what we see and
what we learn or know. Human toil is regulated by what we
know. We therefore reject appearance and attach ourselves to
the substance.[17]
Through this version of events, Le Corbusier differentiates humanity from

nature while at the same time putting it in “harmony” with Nature. In some
ways, it mirrors the argument that humanity is doing nothing “unnatural” by
creating shapes that are found nowhere in Nature. Nature built this creature,
man, in whose mind the will-to-order is contained. Though Nature first
presents itself as a blooming, buzzing mass of confusion, humanity has,
through the power of understanding, the ability to find the underlying causes,
the laws by which this apparent chaos operates.
Another view of La Ville Contemporaine
Though Le Corbusier may have “naturalized” this will-to-order which is

peculiar to human beings, he nonetheless recognized the artificial character of
products of man’s labor. Humanity builds and builds and finds itself
surrounded by the artifice of its own making, and stands at a remove from the
Nature from which it originated. For this reason, Le Corbusier relented in his
view of the contemporary city. Not everything in his city was to follow the
strict laws of geometry. “We must plant trees!” he declared. He then asked,
rhetorically:
“
Why should not the new spirit in architecture, that fast-
approaching town planning on the grand scale which we have
talked about so much, satisfy the deepest human desires by
once more covering the verdure the urban landscape and setting
Nature in the midst of our labor? so that our hearts might find
some reassurance in face of the dreadful menace of the great
city which imprisons, stifles, and asphyxiates those who are
cast into it and who have to work in it; for work is a noble
necessity which should bring peace to the mind and lead on to
the rapture of creation.[18]
Contrasting his own contemporary city with the “paradox and disorder” of
New York City, Le Corbusier claims that in his model “[t]he whole city is a
park. The terraces stretch out over lawns and into groves. Low buildings of a
horizontal kind lead the eye on to the foliage of the trees…Here is the CITY
with its crowds living in peace and pure air, where noise is smothered under
the foliage of trees.” Once realized, Corbusier continues to state that thus
“[t]he chaos of New York is overcome. Here, bathed in light, stands the
modern city.”[19]
Blueprint for the Bird’s-Eye View of La Ville Contemporaine
Clearly, the garden city movement and Le Corbusier individually thought that
fresh air and natural surroundings had to be integrated into the modern city,
both for health and for happiness. But unlike the “ecological urbanists” of
today, who merely want to build in such a way that it does not disturb
nature’s pre-established harmony (as eco-Leibnizians), the garden city
movement and Le Corbusier personally sought to transplant and reshape
nature so as to maximize its benefit to society. This is nowhere expressed
more clearly than in a fragment from Le Corbusier’s later work, The Radiant
City (1933), in which he discusses his concept of “exact air.” The
maintenance of nature as it presently existed was nowhere on his mind.
Rather, the elements of nature were to be rearranged so as to suit humanity,
as he makes clear in the following lines:
“
But then where is Utopia, where the temperature is 64.4º?…
And why the devil do men insist on living in difficult or

dangerous climates? I’ve no idea! But I can observe a
worsening situation:
The variety of climates had forged races, cultures, customs,

dress, and work methods suited to the obtaining conditions.
Alas, the machine age has, as it were, shuffled the cards — the
age-old cards of the world. Since the machine age, the product
of progress, has disturbed everything, couldn’t it also give us
the means to salvation?
Multiplicity of climates, play of seasons, a break with secular

traditions — confusion, disorder, and the martyrdom of man.
I seek the remedy, I seek the constant; I find the human lung.
With adaptability and intelligence, let’s give the lung the
constant which is the prerequisite of its functioning: exact air.
Let’s manufacture exact air: filters, driers, humidifiers,

disinfectors. Machines of childish simplicity.
Send exact air into men’s lungs, at home, at the factory, at the
office, at the club and the auditorium: ventilators, machines so
often used, but so often used badly!
Let’s give man the solar rays which will penetrate the all-glass
facades. But will be too hot in the summer and terribly cold in
the winter! Let’s create “neutralizing walls.” (And “sun
control”).[20]
By this time, however, Le Corbusier had moved on from the previous plan he
set forth in Urbanism, La Ville Contemporaine. Responding to a questionnaire
solicited by Moscow in 1930, Le Corbusier concocted a new city scheme. It
bore some resemblance to his previous model, and retained his signature
“Cartesian Towers,” but the overall shape of the city was much further
elongated than it had been in La Ville Contemporaine. Le Corbusier dubbed
this new project La Ville Radieuse, the “radiant city.” He would unveil this new
project as early as 1931, and then two years later an extremely odd
eponymous book composed of personal notes, fragments, letters, marginalia,
article clippings, and even minutes from meetings. These were all gathered
from material accumulated over the previous three years, but were not
arranged into any sort of apparent order, let alone chronological. Le
Corbusier’s style of writing had always been somewhat jagged and abrupt,
with moments of great poetry thrown in along the way. But the contents of
his book The Radiant City were even more slapdash and dissociated than in
any of his earlier works. It truly set a new precedent for authorial license in a
book purporting to be about architecture.
But here too Le Corbusier sought to

integrate aspects of the countryside
into the heart of the city, including
trees and large fields for sports and

relaxation. Despite the modernist
austerity of his actual structures, there
thus remained a bucolic element
embedded in Corbusier’s dream city.
This could not, perhaps, be detected in
his overall plan of the city, but it almost
always appeared in the numerous
sketches he made of the parks and
boulevards that were to fill his
proposed municipality. Unlike the
adherents of the garden city
movement, however, there was not a
hint of romanticism in Le Corbusier’s
new urbanism. He considered this
natural scenery and open park space to
be vital to the health and physical
La Ville Radieuse
culture of his city’s inhabitants. There
would be no traditional English cottages
and tiled roofs in La Ville Radieuse;
only concrete buildings and towers surrounded the elements of nature he
incorporated into the city plan. Le Corbusier had made a definitive break with
the leftovers of what he called the “pre-machine age.” His political leanings
and social preferences might have always been somewhat suspect, but his
modernism was unquestionable.
Trees planted in La Ville Radieuse
A view of the city’s parks and flora
Le Corbusier’s influence spread far beyond Germany and extended into the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. From 1928-1932, he would spend much of
his time working alongside his colleagues and admirers in Moscow,
participating in various building projects for the Soviet state. Though he
would later become disillusioned with the Soviet experiment after Stalinism’s
decisive turn toward neoclassicism, during these first four years Corbusier was
enthusiastic about its prospects. In 1930, he took part in a project dubbed
“the Green City” (Зелёный Город). As a segue into the final section of our
investigation, we might quote (at length) Le Corbusier’s own appraisal of the
project in the appendix to his 1930 book Precisions, entitled “The Atmosphere
of Moscow”:
“
The Green Town.
Here is what it means.
In the USSR Sunday has been suppressed, the rest period of the
fifth day has been introduced.
This rest period comes by turns; every day of the year, one fifth
of the population of the USSR is at rest; tomorrow, it is another
fifth, and so on. Work never stops.
Committees of doctors have drawn the curve of the intensity of

productivity in work. The curve goes down sharply at the end of
the fourth day. The economists said: it is useless to be satisfied
by a mediocre output during two days. Conclusion: the rhythm
of machine age production is five days; four of work, one of rest.
[…]
It was therefore decided to create Green Towns devoted to the

rest period of the fifth day.
[…]
Great enthusiasm followed the decision to create Green Towns.
The Green Town of Moscow, 30 kilometers away, was begun at

once: its territory defined, its program established. The first
competition of architecture and urbanism has brought the bases
for the discussion of the plans of green towns.
Here is the program of the Green Town of Moscow:
The site measures 15 kilometers by 12, its altitude varies from

160 to 240 meters. It is covered by big forests of pines with
fields and pastures between them, there are little rivers, which
a dam will turn into a lake in the part used for sports.
The ‘Green Town’ of Moscow will be developed like an enormous

hotel where the inhabitants of Moscow will come to rest every
fifth day in turn, in accordance with precise schedules. The
architectural problem is thus to create a rest unit for a man or a
household, to group these units in a building, and to distribute
these buildings ingeniously on the site. Here we shall have the
country, nature, and nothing of the urban character of a big city.
Nevertheless, as public services must function normally, the
problem is to create from scratch a completely new
architectural and urban organism.
The first year, they will build lodgings for 20,000 to 25,000
visitors per day, which represents 25,000 x 5 = 125,000 persons
coming to rest, if one counts a rotation of once every fifth day;
or 25,000 x 5 x 2 = 250,000 if the rate is only every ten days;
finally 375,000 if it is every fifteen days.
In three and a half years, at the end of the five-year plan of the
USSR (this gigantic program that now galvanizes the country),
100,000 will be lodged, or 500,000 in a period of five days; one
million in ten days; one million and a half in a period of fifteen.
Enough to ‘relax’ all of the population of Moscow.
In addition to the rest period of the fifth day, the Green Towns
will be inhabited two weeks or a month at a time by officials or
workers who will take their annual vacations there.
Finally the ill, not those with diseases requiring hospital care
but those needing rest, will find sanatoria in the Green Towns.
Transportation must be developed; the existing railway station,

Bratova-China, will become the main station (the line is already
electrified). Still to be created: an expressway, radial roads, and

a ring road; in addition, a farm and service network (for the
food factory).
This spring the first two big hotels of 500 dwellings and four
small ones of 100 will be built. Spread out on the site, ten
tourist centers (hostels).
More than 3,000 peasants at present are dispersed in isbas in

villages on the site of the Green Town. The isbas will be torn
down and the villages destroyed; the 3,000 peasants will he
regrouped in one place called an ‘agro-city’ (a term honoring
the current campaign for the industrial organization of
agriculture all over the USSR).
One part of the Green Town will be organized in a big collective

farm where 3,000 peasants will be housed around model
installations equipped with machines made in the new industrial
cities. The model farm will provide the food for the Green Town.
The rest of site will be developed in vacation hotels whose form

is still to be determined. The food center With a kitchen factory
is connected by automobile service to the hotel restaurants. A
sports city with an artificial lake, different playing fields and a
central stadium for big matches. A question to be solved is
whether to develop sports facilities all over the site, also at the
very feet of the hotel, physical culture being one of the decisive
motives for the Green Town.
The hotel program, extends from camping to caravansarais

whose form is still to be designed and whose purpose is to give
everyone a feeling of the greatest liberty at the same time as
the benefit of common rooms and an organized hotel service.
Facilities are planned for the hospitalization of children, of

adolescents, and of adults.
Very small children (preschool) will be with their parents; the

others, up to 14 or 15, can come to take their rest period of the
fifth day with their parents, but preferably will come in groups
with their classmates, to draw all of the invigoration possible
from their stay in the midst of fields and forests under the
control of competent instructors.
The young will camp or be free in their lodgings: it is considered

that at a certain age independence is needed.
Finally, adults, men and women, will dispose together or

separately of these dwelling unit, whose shape and size are yet
to be found and which raise a highly immediate architectural
problem.
Such is, roughly, the texture of the Green Town on which

preliminary work has begun in Moscow.[21]
Mikhail Barshch & Moisei Ginzburg’s General Plan for

the Green City (1930)
III. THE GREEN CITY
[1] Sennett, Alfred Richard. Garden Cities in Theory and Practice. (Bembrose
& Sons, Ltd. London, England: 1905). Pg. 3.
[2] Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. From Later
Political Writings. Translated by Terrell Carver. (Cambridge University Press.
New York, NY: 1996). Pg. 56.
[3] Engels, Friedrich. The Housing Question. Translated by Geoffrey Nowell-

Smith. From Marx & Engels: Collected Works, Volume 23. Pg. 347.
[4] Howard, Ebenezer. Garden Cities of To-morrow. (Swan Sonnenschein &

Co. Ltd. London, England:1902). Pg. 15.
[5] Ibid., pg. 18.
[6] Purdom, Charles. The Garden City: A Study in the Development of a

Modern Town. (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London, England: 1913). Pg. 23.
[7] “[T]here is a path along which sooner or later, both the Individualist and
the Socialist must inevitably travel; for I have made it abundantly clear that
on a small scale society may readily become more individualistic than now —
if by Individualism is meant a society in which there is fuller and freer

opportunity for its members to do and to produce what they will, and to form
free associations, of the most varied kinds; while it may also become more
socialistic; — if by Socialism is meant a condition of life in which the well-
being of the community is safe-guarded, and in which the collective spirit is
manifested by a wide extension of the area of municipal effort. To achieve
these desirable ends, I have taken a leaf out of the books of each type of
reformer and bound them together by a thread of practicability.” Howard,
Garden Cities of To-morrow. Pgs. 116-117.
[8] Unwin, Raymond. Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of

Designing Cities and Suburbs. (T. Fisher Unwin. London, England: 1909). Pg.
2.
[9] Neville, Ralph. Garden Cities: A Warburton Lecture Delivered on 24th

October, 1904. (Manchester University Press. Manchester, England: 1904).
Pg. 16.
[10] Purdom, The Garden City: A Study in the Development of a Modern

Town. Pg. 195.
[11] Culpone, Ewart Gladstone. The Garden City Movement Up-to-Date.

(The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association. London, England: 1913).
Pg. 1.
[12] “So far as the continent of Europe is concerned, Germany has made by
far the most substantial progress, thanks to the devoted enthusiasm of the
cousins Kampffmeyer and of Adolf Otto, who between them have borne the
chief burden of the organisation.” Ibid., pgs. 61-62.
[13] Ibid., pgs. 65-67.
[14] Le Corbusier. Toward an Architecture. Translated by John Goodman.

(Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, CA: 2007). Pg. 292.
[15] Teige, Karel. The Minimum Dwelling. Translated by Eric Dluhosch. (The
MIT Press. Athens, GA: 2002). Pgs. 145-148.
[16] Le Corbusier. Urbanism (translated as The City of To-morrow and Its

Planning). Translated by Frederick Etchells. (Dover Publications, Inc. New
York, NY: 1987). Pg. 206.
[17] Ibid., pgs. 17-19.
[18] Ibid., pgs. 78-79.
[19] Ibid., pg. 177.
[20] Le Corbusier, The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be

Used as the Basis of Our Magine-Age Civilization. (Viking Press. New York,
NY: 1970). Pg. 42.
[21] Le Corbusier, Precisions. Translated by Edith Schreiber Aujame. (The

MIT Press. Cambridge, MA: 1991). Pgs. 262-263.
With lightning telegrams:
 Facebook  Twitter  Tumblr  More
Like this:
Like
Be the first to like this.
Related
Bauhaus: Evolution Varlam Shalamov CLR James, critical

of an Idea versus Aleksandr theory, and the
September 11, 2019 Solzhenitsyn dialectic
In “articles” June 6, 2019 November 24, 2017
In “essays” In “images”
Posted in modernity
3 THOUGHTS ON “AT THE INTERSECTION OF NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE:

MODERNISM’S RESPONSE TO THE ALIENATION OF MAN”
Pingback: House Plans - House project 21834
Pingback: Against gravity | The Charnel-House
Pingback: Against gravity | The (Dis)Loyal Opposition to Modernity:
Leave a Reply
Enter your comment here...
← Man and Nature, Parts I-IV A Cruel Irony in the History of

(Complete) Architectural Modernism →
THE CHARNEL-HOUSE
“Our world, like a charnel-house, lies strewn with the detritus of dead epochs.” ⎯ Le
Corbusier, Urbanisme (1925)
EXHUMATIONS
Search Search
SUBSCRIBE
Click to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new entries by email.
Join 56,374 other subscribers
Email Address
Subscribe to “The Charnel-House”
FOLLOW US
CATEGORIES
event (21)
panel (21)
guest post (238)
images (55)
interviews (27)
media (379)
images (297)
PDFs (47)
videos (12)
modernity (197)
news (54)
PDFs (7)
translations (163)
writings (554)
articles (253)
essays (70)
fragments (60)
poetry (3)
reviews (59)
book reviews (38)
event reviews (12)
movie reviews (5)
music reviews (2)
short stories (3)
write-ups (129)
DREAMWORLDS OF MODERNITY
RECENT ENTRIES
Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea

1929 letter from Varlam Shalamov to the director of OGPU
Varlam Shalamov versus Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Engels on the importance of Hegel to Marxism
Race Traitor and Hard Crackers
Looking back: A self-critique
Air Maoism
Marx still haunts capitalism two hundred years on
Hillel Ticktin’s contributions to Marxist theory
Seventy-five years since the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
Antisemitism as a “blindspot” for the Left

Moishe Postone, 1942-2018
RECENT COMMENTS
How to Murder a Useful Theory: The Politics of the Death of the “Death of the
Author” – みみドしま on The Marxism of Roland Barthes
thebeckoningwildernessoeanna on Mikhail Okhitovich, Moisei Ginzburg, and
Disurbanism
Libero Maesano on On the work of Friedrich Pollock
Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea | The Charnel-House on Mies van der Rohe
Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea | The Charnel-House on Object lessons from the
Bauhaus
Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea | The Charnel-House on Hannes Meyer, Marxist and
modernist (1889-1954)
Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea | The Charnel-House on Walter Gropius’
International Architecture (1925)
Fiat's rooftop test track - Now You Kno! on A rooftop racetrack: The Fiat Lingotto
factory in Turin, Italy (1923)
mamadou on Le Corbusier’s “contemporary city” (1925)
mjw51 on Air Maoism
Kevin Keating on Air Maoism
mjw51 on Air Maoism
PAST VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
TOP POSTS
SCIENCE FICTION AND THE SLAUGHTER-BENCH OF HISTORY
ART/ARCHITECTURAL LINKS
@phorismes
aggregat456
Alternative Architecture Lens
Aristide Antonas
Arran Q. Henderson
Art Margins
Artificial Order
ArtWrit
Awaking Lucid
axonométrica
Brad Troemel
Cartographies of the Absolute
City of Sound
Classic Cartoons Blog
Collage Lab
continent
Create an Accident
Critical Architecture Network
Cured Quail
Daniel Marcus
DBR-Barcelona
Diffusive Architectures
disasturbation
Disorientalism
DoKC Lab
Eikonographia
Entschwindet
Façades Confidential
fantastic journal
Interstices
Janus Project
Kevin Rhowbotham
KLAUS
Kosmograd
Ktismatics
Laboratoire Urbanisme Insurrectionnel
lemonslemons
Life Without Buildings
machine machine
Margo Wolowiec
Megan Panzano design
microcities
Monoskop
Nasty, Brutalist, and Short
Nuits sans nuit
Ogino Knauss
Patterns that Connext
Progressive Geographies
Psychocartography
Rekolektiv
Remix Theory
RHEOmode
Robert Andrade
Robert Cowherd
Ruins of the 20th Century
Sarah Elliot
sesquipedalist
SOCKS
Subtopia
The Funambulist
The Functionality
The Paperny Times
The Sleep of Rigour
Thomas Wensing
Urbain, Trop Urbain
Words in Space
Архитектор
MARXISM/CRITICAL THEORY LINKS
A Critique of Crisis Theory

Agon Hamza
All that is Solid
Brockley
Civilized Discontent
Critical Grounds
Darth Nader
datacide
David Harvey
Drift Lines
eleutheromania
Essays of the Absurd
eye splinters
For the Desk Drawer
Grim and Dim
Gruppen gegen Kapital und Nation
i cite
Idiot Joy Showland
Infinite Thought
John Riddell
Jonas Kyratzes
kapitalisation
Left at the Lights
Lenin's Tomb
Linguistic Capital
Louis Sterrett
Marx: Dialectical Studies
Marxism in Culture
Marxist Marginalia
Mr. Teacup
New Institute for Social Research
No Useless Leniency
Obsolete Capitalism
Old Alexius
Paths to Utopia
Principia Dialectica
Reading the Maps
Reification of Persons and Personification of Things
Rekolektiv
Renegade Eye
RHEOmode
Rough Theory
Sherry Wolf talks back
Spirit is a Bone
Stalin's Moustache
Steven Lydon
Tendancecoatesy
The Last Marxist
The Luxemburgist
trigger warning
Unemployed Cinema
War of Position
Wasted Ideology
Weapon of Class Instruction
Теории и практики
PHILOSOPHY LINKS
Aberrant Monism
Accelerationism
Accursed Share
ads without products
An und für sich
Archive Fire
Arts and Letters
Attempts at living
Box 3, spool 5
continent
Continental Drift
Diet Soap podcast
Duncan Law
Emrah Göker'in İstifhanesi
Fractal Ontology
Ian Bogost
Installing (Social) Order
Larval Subjects
monas oikos nomos
Mr. Teacup
Naught Thought
Object-Oriented Philosophy
Perverse Egalitarianism
Philosophers for Change
Speculative Heresy
Speculum Criticum
Stellar Cartographies
synthetic zero
The Book to Come

The Invisible Truth
Time's Flow Stemmed
POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
3CT
CP-GB
CP-USA
DSA
FRSO-FightBack!
FRSO/OSCL
IBT
ICL-FI
IMH
IMT
IP-PI
ISO
Kasama Project
Kosmoprolet
LibCom
LRP-COFI
MHI
PCR-RCP
RCP-USA
Socialist Party (SP-USA)
SWP-UK
Théorie Communiste
Troploin
U.S. Marxist-Humanists
PUBLICATIONS
306090
Antipode Foundation
Blaumachen
Case
Endnotes
EXIT!
Gemeinwesen
Historical Materialism
IMH Journal
ISJ
Jacobin
Kerb
Krisis: Journal for contemporary philosophy
krisis: Kritik der Warengesellschaft
Letters
Log
Mute
n+1
New Left Review
Notes
Phase Zwei
Quaderns d'arquitectura i urbanisme

review 31
SIC
Socialist Review
The Brooklyn Rail
The Militant
The New Inquiry
The North Star
Theorie Communiste
urbanomic
Vectors
Verso
Viewpoint
Weekly Worker
World Picture
RUSSIAN/SOVIET HISTORY
Calvert Journal
Chto Delat
Giuviv Russian Film
Nasty, Brutalist, and Short
Nuits sans nuit
Ogino Knauss
Riding the Third Rail
Stalin's Moustache
Теории и практики
THE PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY

pacpobric
Petrichor
quaquaqua
Sitterwerk
sp-am
The (Dis)Loyal Opposition to Modernity
The Chair Leg of Truth
The Platypus Affiliated Society
ON FACEBOOK
The Charnel-H…
22K likes
Like Page
Be the first of your friends to like this
ON TWITTER
Tweets by @rosswolfe
Ross Wolfe
Ross Wolfe
@rosswolfe
kecobe: Le singe et l'éléphant = The
Monkey and the Elephant Henri-Charles
Guérard (French; 1846–1897) before
1887 Etching and aquatint The New
York Public Library, Print Collection
tmblr.co/ZC0xFx2l3X8SE
rosswolfe
kecobe: “Le singe et l'éléphant = …
rosswolfe.tumblr.com
15h
Ross Wolfe
@rosswolfe
kecobe: Nature morte = Still Life

Fernand Léger (French; 1881–1955)
1927 Oil on canvas Nasjonalmuseet,
Oslo, Norway © Léger, Fernand/BONO
tmblr.co/ZC0xFx2l2KxTC
rosswolfe
kecobe: “Nature morte = Still Life …
Sep 25, 2019
Ross Wolfe
@rosswolfe
kecobe: El Lissitzky (Russian; 1890–

1941) Der Konstrukteur (Selbstporträt) =
The Constructor (Self-Portrait)
Photomontage, gelatin silver print on
paper, 1924 Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
tmblr.co/ZC0xFx2l172bx
tmblr.co/ZC0xFx2l172bx
rosswolfe
kecobe: “ El Lissitzky (Russian; 1…
Sep 24, 2019
Ross Wolfe
@rosswolfe
moma: Over 100 works from a lost
Dada anthology will be reunited at
MoMA this summer in Dadaglobe
Reconstructed (June 12, 2016–
September 18, 2016). Tristan Tzara’s
planned but unrealized magnum opus
featuring works by artists such as Man...
tmblr.co/ZC0xFx2k-tyLx
rosswolfe
moma: “ Over 100 works from a l…
Sep 23, 2019
Ross Wolfe Retweeted
Monthly Review
@monthly_review
Great in-depth critique of Angela Nagle
—and by extension the thinly veiled
liberal reformist angle on topics such as
immigration, labor, and economics—
from @TheBrooklynRail by Ross Wolfe.
mronline.org/2019/09/11/nat…
MR Online | Nationalism, borde…

Last summer, protesters in Orego…
mronline.org
Sep 18, 2019
Ross Wolfe Retweeted
lulzim abdiaj
@LulzimAbdiaj
Nationalism, Borders, and the State
brooklynrail.org/2019/09/field-…
Nationalism, Borders, and the …

While the “Abolish ICE” slogan is …
brooklynrail.org
Sep 22, 2019
Embed View on Twitter
INTERNATIONALISM
INCEPTO NE DESISTAM
This blog is intended to serve as a place where I can share my work and thoughts
online. On the one hand, it will provide a convenient place for me to store an online
portfolio for future reference. At the same time, I am interested in connecting and
engaging with others who are interested in the subjects it covers.
Disclaimer: Needless to say, all of the opinions expressed on my blog are mine
alone, unless otherwise indicated. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any
other group or organization. No one else is responsible for them. That being said,
any comments, questions, and criticisms are welcome.
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
More Photos
FANTASTIC STRUCTURES
“Comrades!
The twin fires of war and revolution have devastated both our souls and our cities.
The palaces of yesterday’s grandeur stand as burnt-out skeletons. The ruined cities
await new builders[…]
To you who accept the legacy of Russia, to you who will (I believe!) tomorrow
become masters of the whole world, I address the question: with what fantastic
structures will you cover the fires of yesterday?” ⎯ Vladimir Maiakovskii, “An Open
Letter to the Workers” (1918)
“Utopia transforms itself into actuality. The fairy tale becomes a reality. The contours
of socialism will become overgrown with iron flesh, filled with electric blood, and
begin to dwell full of life. The speed of socialist building outstrips the most audacious
daring. In this lies the distinctive character and essence of the epoch.” ⎯ I.
Chernia,“The Cities of Socialism” (1929)
“The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended
even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating
structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.” ⎯ El Lissitzky, The Reconstruction of
Architecture in the Soviet Union (1929)
MENACING RECTILINEAR SHAPES
META
Log in
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
WordPress.org
STATS
12,151,122 visits
CALENDAR OF PAST ENTRIES
April 2011
M T W T F S S
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30
« Mar May »
PHANTOSCOPE
ARCHIVES
September 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
December 2018
November 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
November 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2008
June 2008
THE CITY OF THE SUN
CATEGORIES
event (21)
panel (21)
guest post (238)
images (55)
interviews (27)
media (379)
images (297)
PDFs (47)
videos (12)
modernity (197)
news (54)
PDFs (7)
translations (163)
writings (554)
articles (253)
essays (70)
fragments (60)
poetry (3)
reviews (59)
book reviews (38)
event reviews (12)
movie reviews (5)
music reviews (2)
short stories (3)
write-ups (129)
ARCHITECTURE AND UTOPIA
Futurist Cities
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Reddle by WordPress.com.

At The Intersection of Nature and Architecture - Modernism's Response To The Alienation of Man - The Charnel-House PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

At The Intersection of Nature and Architecture - Modernism's Response To The Alienation of Man - The Charnel-House PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

27/9/2019 At the Intersection of Nature and Architecture: Modernism’s Response to the Alienation of Man | The Charnel-House

Transitioning from my last series of posts (on humanity’s relationship to

much of the existing environment as possible in order to create “sustainable”

In contrast to this way of approaching building, the modernists saw nature as

Late Nineteenth Century Factory Town

I. THE GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT

“There are in reality not only, as

we are all striving — the

Ebenezer Howard, however, was

Ebenezer Howard’s Original Conception of the Garden City (1902)

The enthusiasm surrounding the

chairman of that Association, was

The members of the Garden City

empirical reality, Letchworth was seen as a practical success. The news of

Detailed Section of Howard’s “Garden City” Proposal Map

In addition to the creation of Letchworth, the garden city concept also

Indeed, the spread of Howard’s garden city concept to continental Europe

Model of Le Corbusier’s Original Plan for the Reconstruction of Paris

II. LE CORBUSIER, LA VILLE CONTEMPORAINE, & LA VILLE RADIEUSE

Le Corbusier’s ideas may have had revolutionary implications for architecture

him an important figure in the transition toward the revolutionary urbanism of

A Picturesque Sketch of Le Corbusier’s Le Ville Contemporaine

The problem of humanity’s relationship to nature presented itself as a problem

View of Le Corbusier’s “Cartesian Towers”

Indeed, this underlying alienation was never lost on Corbusier. In fact, he

Nature presents itself to us as a chaos; the vault of the heavens,

But the spirit which animates Nature is a spirit of order; we

Through this version of events, Le Corbusier differentiates humanity from

Another view of La Ville Contemporaine

Though Le Corbusier may have “naturalized” this will-to-order which is

Blueprint for the Bird’s-Eye View of La Ville Contemporaine

And why the devil do men insist on living in difficult or

The variety of climates had forged races, cultures, customs,

Multiplicity of climates, play of seasons, a break with secular

Let’s manufacture exact air: filters, driers, humidifiers,

But here too Le Corbusier sought to

trees and large fields for sports and

Trees planted in La Ville Radieuse

A view of the city’s parks and flora

Here is what it means.

Committees of doctors have drawn the curve of the intensity of

It was therefore decided to create Green Towns devoted to the

Great enthusiasm followed the decision to create Green Towns.

The Green Town of Moscow, 30 kilometers away, was begun at

Here is the program of the Green Town of Moscow:

The site measures 15 kilometers by 12, its altitude varies from

The ‘Green Town’ of Moscow will be developed like an enormous

Transportation must be developed; the existing railway station,

electrified). Still to be created: an expressway, radial roads, and

More than 3,000 peasants at present are dispersed in isbas in

One part of the Green Town will be organized in a big collective

The rest of site will be developed in vacation hotels whose form

The hotel program, extends from camping to caravansarais

Facilities are planned for the hospitalization of children, of

Very small children (preschool) will be with their parents; the

The young will camp or be free in their lodgings: it is considered

Finally, adults, men and women, will dispose together or

Such is, roughly, the texture of the Green Town on which

Mikhail Barshch & Moisei Ginzburg’s General Plan for

III. THE GREEN CITY

[3] Engels, Friedrich. The Housing Question. Translated by Geoffrey Nowell-

[4] Howard, Ebenezer. Garden Cities of To-morrow. (Swan Sonnenschein &

[5] Ibid., pg. 18.