POST Modern

ARCHITECTURE
Ar. poornima magesh
 UNIT – I
CRITIQUING MODERNISM
 writings of
- Jane Jacobs,
- Robert Venturi,
- Aldo Rossi
&
- Christopher Alexander.
ARCHITECTURAL Writings
 JANE JACOBS

• American-Canadian journalist, author,

and activist best known for her
influence son urban studies.

• Her influential book The Death and

Life of Great American Cities (1961)
The Death and Life argued that urban renewal did not
respect the needs of most city-
of dwellers.
Great American Cities
• The book also introduced sociology
concepts such as "eyes on the street"
and "social capital"
 “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody,
only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

— Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

• urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based

approach to city building.
• introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail,
that now seem like common sense to generations of architects, planners,
politicians and activists.
• jacobs saw cities as integrated systems that had their own logic and dynamism
which would change over time according to how they were used.
• With an eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail
design and self-organization.
• She promoted higher density in cities, short blocks, local economies and mixed
uses. Jacobs helped derail the car-centred approach to urban planning.

Who was Jane Jacobs?

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - PURPOSE

• Jacobs saw the principles that underlie city planning as incorrect

and disastrous, to cities.

• Small businesses are ruined and families become uprooted—

Jacobs cites expressway construction as one factor.

• A banker may consider a particular area to be a slum; however, it

may actually be a thriving neighborhood. Banks refuse to give out
loans to such areas, so the quality of the neighborhood is a result of
community interaction.

• Planners are more concerned with automobiles—they see cars as

both a cause of city decay and a needed commodity. Jacobs see cars
as a symptom of city problems, not the source
VARIOUS PARAMETER

• City Planning errors.

• Successful Neighborhood vs Unsuccessful neighborhoods.

• Diversity (mix in planning)

• Change is necessary

• Slumming/ Unslumming
 BRIEF ABOUT THE BOOK

Jacob wants to introduce new principles in city planning.

• Part 1 -examines city problems, using sidewalks and parks as metaphors.

• Part 2- studies the economics behind city problems and city diversity.

• Part 3 -emphasizes decay along with regeneration including slumming

unslumming.

• Part 4 -is where Jacobs makes suggestions for change in existing cities and
different planning for new ones. Jacobs looks to inner- cities for her main
observations.
City Concentration: The Opposite of Sprawl
Aldo Rossi, a practicing architect and
leader of the Italian architectural
movement La Tendenza, is also one of
the most influential theorists writing
today.

The Architecture of the City is his

major work of architectural and urban
theory.

.
In part a protest against functionalism and the Modern Movement, in part an
attempt to restore the craft of architecture to its position as the only valid object
of architectural study, and in part an analysis of the rules and forms of the city's
construction, the book has become immensely popular among architects and
design students
 • The book marks the shift
from the urban doctrines of
modernism to a rediscovery
of the traditional European
city.

Rossi criticizes the lack of understanding of the city in

current architectural practice. He argues that a city
must be studied and valued as something constructed
over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that
withstand the passage of time.
Rossi held that the city remembers its past (our "collective memory"), and that we
use that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the
city. His book has been a major reference for the reconstruction of the city of
Berlin after the German reunification in 1990
 City as Work of Art
• Aldo Rossi recognize the city as
architecture and sees it as a discipline
with self-determining autonomy,
inseparable from life and society.

• He considers the city as a unified

element – an overall synthesis of its
disassociated parts, and is always
undergoing changes, be it for natural or
• The first one viewed the city as a man-made reasons. In his study, Rossi
product of the generative functional framed his area of studies on the city by
systems of its architecture and looking at the city through two systems of
urban spaces, while the second one study.
consider city as a spatial structure,
which system belongs more to
architecture and geography.
The Architecture of the City is divided into four main parts:

1. Problems of description, classification and typology.

2. Structure of the city.
3. Individuality of urban artifacts and the locus.
4. Urban dynamics and the problem of politics of choice.
He describes the architecture of the city with two different meanings; first, the city is
seen as a gigantic man-made object, growing over time; second, as urban artifacts
characterized by their own history and form.
• This is supported through his • To Rossi, types on the basis of
argument that urban artifacts are functions seem to be inadequate to
changeable with time and needs, thus understand the city. Since every
seeing functionalism as physiological in function can be articulated through
nature, which justifies the formation, forms, and forms will contain the
development and alterations of forms. potential to exist as urban artifacts,
forms are reflexive enough to allow
TYPOLOGY AND FUNCTION themselves to be articulated as urban
elements.

• While function alone cannot be indicated as a principal issue in studies on city,

other elements such as individuality, locus, mnemonic meanings and design
itself are priorities to urban analysis. Rossi believes that all urban forms are
capable to incorporate functions with some alterations and transformations if
required.
Theory of Permanence and Monuments

• The theory of permanence is useful in seeing the city as the product

of individual and collective artifacts, and sees the persistence of the
city is revealed through ‘monuments’ as well as through the city’s
basic layout and plans.

• However, this concept of permanence can be propelling or

pathological. Urban artifacts help to perceive the city in a holistic way,
but may also appear as isolated elements of the urban system.
Theory of Permanence and Monuments
• A City Hall from the 1200’s, converted
into a marketplace.
• Form is permanent and complex
• Form can be adapted to new uses.
• Not “form follows function”
• Project to transform the Coliseum into a
forum for a centrally planned church.
• Proposed by Carlo Fontana, 1707.
colosseum rome
• Unrealized.
• Maintains the idea that existing artifacts
can be adapted for new uses.
•“ Whereas the Functionalist seeks the
Permanence of form greatest possible suitability to the most
specific purpose, the Rationalist desires to
obtain the greatest potential of adaptation
to the largest number of needs”.
Rossi explained that if a monument survived through times because of their form
can accommodate different functions over time, it becomes a propelling element.
But if the monument stands virtually isolated and contributes nothing to the city,
then it is considered as a pathological artifact.
CITY AS A SPATIAL SYSTEM

The city is conceived as a spatial system composed of many different parts, and
this spatial system is attached to nature and evolution of the city, and constitutes
the city’s image.

CONCEPT = total system Vs theories of the functionalists, Rossi considers

specialized zones are characteristics of a city and they may have their own
autonomous parts within the whole system.

ZONING = Their distribution and positioning in the city’s spatial system was
determined by the entire historical process, and not based on function alone.
These phenomena were caused by cultural demand, human preferences, and
history, and function alone may not contribute to its condition in the city’s spatial
system.
HISTORY, COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND LOCUS

HISTORY = collective memory of the people of the city, and it has important
influence on the city.

History expresses itself through urban artifacts and monuments, thus city
become the reflection of the collective will through out the time and its existence.
Rossi believes that urban history is a useful tool to study urban structure.

collective memory, people engaged to discover their meanings and beauty.

Rossi also viewed the city with emphasis on cultural stability that somehow will
inspire further developments. The city itself became a locus of the collective
memory.
LOCUS = the context of Rossi’s study on the city is conceived of singular
place and event, which bridge the relationship of architecture to the city’s
constitution, and the relationship between context and monuments. Locus is
regarded as conditions and qualities of space. On the other hand, architecture
shapes a context, which again constitutes changes in space, thus contributing
to the city’s transformations
The book focuses on the question why some architecture is interesting and
fascinating while other types are not.
NONSTRAIGHT FORWARD ARCHITECTURE :

A Gentle Manifesto about COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN

ARCHITECTURE.

• hybrid rather than "pure",

• compromising rather than "clean",
• distorted rather than "straightforward",
•ambiguous rather than "articulated",
• perverse as well as impersonal,
• boring as well as "interesting", conventional rather than "designed",
• accommodating rather than excluding,
• redundant rather than simple,
• vestigial as well as innovating,
• inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear.
complexity and contradiction Vs. Simplification Or
Picturesqueness
• In orthodox Modern architects' attempt to break with tradition and start all over
again, they idealized the primitive and elementary at the expense of the diverse
and the sophisticated.
• In their role as reformers, they puritanically advocated the separation and
exclusion of elements, rather than the inclusion of various requirements and
their juxtapositions.
• Modern architects with few exceptions eschewed ambiguity.
• Mies, for instance, makes wonderful buildings only because he ignores many
aspects of a building. If he solved more problems, his buildings would be far less
potent."
• Forced simplicity results in oversimplification. Aesthetic simplicity which is a
satisfaction to the mind derives, when valid and profound, from inner complexity.
When complexity disappears, blandness replaces simplicity.
AMBIGUITY

Ambiguity and tension are easily found in complex and

contradictory architecture. Architecture is form and substance - -
abstract and concrete and its meaning derives from its interior
characteristics and its particular context. - An architectural
element is perceived as form and structure, texture and material.
These oscillating relationships, complex and contradictory, are the
source of the ambiguity and tension characteristic to the medium
of architecture. - The conjunction "or" with a question mark can
usually describe ambiguous relationships. Villa Savoye The size
of Vanbrugh's forepavilions at Grimsthorpe The Casino di Pio IV
,Vatican in relation to the back pavilions is ambiguous from a
distance: are they near or far, big or small? The ornamental cove
in the Casino di Pio IV in the Vatican is perverse: is it a square
plan or not? Vanbrugh's fore-pavilions at Grimsthorpe is it more
wall or more vault?
Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon Of "Both-and" In Architecture "BOTH-
AND" " relation of the part to the whole " Contradictory levels of meaning and
use in architecture involve the paradoxical contrast implied by the conjunctive
"yet". The tradition of "either-or" has characterized orthodox modern
architecture: a sun screen is probably nothing else; a support is seldom an
enclosure. Such manifestations of articulation and clarity are foreign to an
architecture of complexity and contradiction, which tends to include "both-and"
rather than "either-or".
PATTERN LANGUAGE
- christopher alexander
 A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book
on architecture, urban design, and community livability.
"At the core... is the idea that people should
design for themselves their own houses, streets
and communities. This idea... comes simply from
the observation that most of the wonderful places
of the world were not made by architects but by
the people".
— Christopher Alexander
USING PATTERNS

"Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our
environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in
such a way that you can use the solution a million times over, without ever
doing it the same way twice."
WHAT IS A Pattern Language ?
A pattern language is an ordered collection of patterns.

• The patterns in a pattern language combine into a holistic set of

patterns that are intended to be used together
• In the original book Alexander stated that a pattern language could
be developed in any domain.
• Now pattern languages are often a collective work. Alexander uses
“pattern language” in a specific sense

A Pattern Language provides 253 “patterns” for “bottom up”

architecture

FROM, pattern 1 INDEPENDENT REGIONS, the most general,

to pattern 253, the most specific,... THINGS FROM YOUR
LIFE.
 STAIRCASE AS A STAGE
A staircase is not just a way of getting from one floor to
another. The stair is itself a space, a volume, a part of
the building; and unless this space is made to live, it
will be a dead spot, and work to disconnect the building
and to tear its processes apart

. Therefore: Place the main stair in a key position, central and visible. Treat the
whole staircase as a room (or if it is outside, as a courtyard). Arrange it so that
the stair and the room are one, with the stair coming down around one or two
walls of the room. Flare out the bottom of the stair with open windows or
balustrades and with wide-steps so that the people coming down the stair
become part of the action in the room while they are on the stair, and so that
people below will naturally use the stair for seats.
IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD

People need an identifiable spatial unit to belong to. Therefore: Help

people to define the neighborhoods they live in, not more than 300
yards across, with no more than 400 or 500 inhabitants. In existing
cities, encourage local groups to organize themselves to form such
neighborhoods. Give the neighborhoods some degree of autonomy as
far as taxes and land controls are concerned. Keep major roads outside
these neighborhoods.