Introduction

Max Risselada

5
At first glance, the organization of a ‘congress’ devoted to the ideas and works of Team 10
seems to be a contradiction in terms. As we know, Team 10 members abolished the con-
cept of a congress at the moment they distanced themselves from CIAM (Congrès
Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), the body to which they had belonged. Team 10
held ‘meetings’ after establishing itself as an independent entity at the Otterloo Congress
in 1959, meetings that continued to be held until 1981, when, along with the death of Jaap
Bakema, these gatherings came to an end.

Team 10 meetings had nothing in common with CIAM congresses, at which only ‘del-
egates’ were invited to put forward their arguments, where everything complied with a pre-
determined format and where participants, separated into committees, worked with mate-
rials that were reduced to diagrams and compressed into grilles. Such strict procedures
alienated many younger members eager to be part of, and to intervene in, the new reality
presented at these congresses.

Team 10 meetings had no chairman. Projects brought to these gatherings were presented
‘as is’, rather than being forced into a given format; forms and dimensions were determined
by the subject or project in question. Above all, differences and conflicts were not ignored
but openly discussed, sometimes even in Team 10’s communications abroad.

In this context, it is worth noting that the proceedings and results of the 9th CIAM congress,
held in 1953 in Aix-en-Provence, were never published. CIAM had no wish to expose the
polemic character of this meeting, at which conflicts between an older and a younger
generation had surfaced for the first time.

Our meeting in Delft is not based on a productive urge to intervene. Team 10 is history to
us. Time has converted alienation into reality; it has created a distance and, in so doing,
has allowed the myth of Team 10 to prosper. It has to be said that Team 10 members
themselves also contributed to the genesis of the myth, through the way in which they
communicated their range of ideas in the media and, even more so, through teaching.

Consider, for example, the Smithsons’ contributions to Architectural Design, a periodical

that, for some time, apparently gave them the freedom to express their every thought. Or
the articles that they published in the Dutch magazine Forum from 1959 to 1963, the period
in which Bakema and Van Eyck were part of the editorial staff.

Note, too, that the myth grew larger as studies on Team 10 were published, many of which
were based primarily on existing literature and interviews with surviving members, and
rarely if ever supported by archival research.

6
Introduction

The main issue is how to choose a coherent body of Team 10 members to be studied,
knowing that the composition of this group had already been the subject of many internal
discussions during preparations for the meetings they organized. A review of the list of
participants and the correspondence available reveals a nuclear membership that Alison
Smithson liked to call the ‘inner circle’ – a denomination not undisputed, however.

To avoid the difficult issue of who was and who was not part of the nucleus of Team 10, we
have chosen a formal point of departure. We believe the nucleus of Team 10 should com-
prise those individuals who were officially appointed to a committee to organize the 10th
CIAM congress, held in Dubrovnik in 1956. The idea that took hold following the 9th CIAM
congress in Aix-en-Provence was that a younger generation should organize future CIAM
congresses. The composition of this organizational committee is telling: Jaap Bakema
(Netherlands), George Candilis (France), Rolf Gutmann (Switzerland) and Peter Smithson
(England).

Although they were members of the younger generation, Bakema and Candilis had contrib-
uted to all post-war CIAM congresses and could be seen, therefore, as mediators. Gutmann,
along with many Swiss colleagues, had worked from a central and neutral position in
Europe to help rebuild a war-torn continent. At the 1951 congress in Hoddesdon, Gutmann
had made an important contribution to discussions on ‘The Core of the City’. As the only
newcomer in the group, Peter Smithson had expressed his views for the first time in Aix in
1953.

Soon after the appointment of these four, the organizational committee was informally
expanded at the suggestion of Peter Smithson. Joining them were Howell, Van Eyck and
Van Ginkel – members of the so-called Doorn group – Alison Smithson (England), Voelcker
(England), Woods (United States), and Studer and Neuenschwander (Switzerland). The
latter three worked in the North African CIAM groups in Morocco and Algeria, which were
still French protectorates at the time. The presence of these new members further rein-
forced the exclusively Dutch/English/French character of the CIAM 10 Committee.

There is, however, an exception to our formal argument. In view of later developments, we
have added Italy’s Giancarlo de Carlo to the nucleus. Although, according to many sources,
he was not active in Team 10 until after the Otterloo Congress (1959), he was involved in
practically every subsequent meeting, and he organized meetings at Urbino (1966) and
Terni (1976). Even more relevant was his initiation of the only public event involving Team 10
members, the 1968 Milan Triennale, which was devoted to a theme characteristic of both
CIAM and Team 10: ‘The Large Number’. De Carlo was also present at crucial moments
prior to 1959; he attended the congress in Aix (1953) as a ‘youth member’ and – quite
relevantly – a preparatory meeting for the 10th Congress at La Sarraz (1955), which he

7
attended with Ernesto Rogers. As De Carlo later reported, this was the first time that Team
10 members who were prevented from meeting with the Council discussed and critiqued
one another’s work: plans they had brought with them and hung on the walls while waiting.
This type of informal analysis would be a determining factor at future Team 10 meetings.
(Keep in mind that in those days, only officially appointed delegates were permitted to
enter the room where propositions for the congress were put forward.)

An unsolved mystery is the absence of the officially appointed Swiss Team 10 member
Gutmann. In light of what we know, we can surmise that little need existed for post-war
reconstruction in a country that had been neutral during the war, a situation that may help
to explain his absence.

A second reason for our initial focus on the youthful nucleus of Team 10 is the inclusion of
these architects, at the beginning of their careers, in active national CIAM groups led by
older, pre-war colleagues who were intensely occupied with the reconstruction of their
countries. It was in these national groups that the younger members developed the new
ideas that united them at international meetings. The main countries in which active CIAM
groups of this kind operated were England (MARS group), France (ASCORAL), the Nether-
lands (8 and OPBOUW) and Italy (MSA in Milan). There was no such group in Germany,
owing to the pre-war departure of many veteran members of CIAM. Franco ruled in Spain,
and post-war reconstruction was not an issue in the Scandinavian countries. Possible links
with groups from the Eastern Bloc countries – such as Czechoslovakia, Hungry, Poland
and Yugoslavia – became irregular and difficult after the commencement of the Cold War in
1948.

In our view, relationships that developed within the separate national CIAM groups and
factions mentioned above – whose members forged links, often while assuming opposing
positions – were crucial to the growth of individual members and vital to developments that
occurred within Team 10 both before and after 1959.

Understanding such developments requires an insight into architectural culture as it took

shape in the countries concerned during the period of reconstruction and its aftermath. To
structure the information and subsequent discussion on the culture of architecture at that
time, we selected four themes for discourse at the congress:

1. Communication within both CIAM and Team 10, and the manner in which media and
educational institutions are instrumental in disseminating ideas.
2. Contacts with and relations to the arts – high and low – and other cultural phenom-
ena both Western and non-Western.
3. Cognizance and incorporation of knowledge of the social sciences into ideas and
proposals for the urban project.

8
Introduction

4. Influence and assimilation of planning instruments, building production and the de-
velopment of new technologies and materials.

We constructed a ‘grid’, with the countries involved on one side and the four themes for
discourse on the other: a framework that supports the entire congress. It not only offers us
the opportunity to position invited speakers in relation to one another, but also determines
the way in which we have structured the two-day symposium.
The first day is plenary, with introductory lectures on both the main theme of the congress
and the various national contexts in which CIAM and Team 10 members operated.
The second day is devoted to lectures on the four selected themes, which together form the
patchwork of the grid. We have grouped these themes into two parallel sessions, each
presided over by two chairs.

- Art, the Everyday and the Media, presided over by Hilde Heynen and Jos Bosman
- Sociology, Production and the City, presided over by Deborah Hauptmann and Max
Risselada

Each session combines two interrelated lectures, followed by a discussion. At the end of
these sessions, participants will attend a final plenary meeting presided over by Stan von
Moos.

The name of the congress, ‘Team 10 between Modernity and the Everyday’, not only im-
plies the presence of ongoing tension between modernity and the everyday, but also sug-
gests that Team 10 deliberately positioned itself, in various ways, within the space between
these two timeless concepts.

9
Team 10 and its Topicalities

Dirk van den Heuvel

13
 Team 10 and its Context

To begin with, a picture of Team 10 by Peter Smithson, who died only three months ago.
Looking back in 1989 he writes:
‘a children’s television programme fragment, a playground, recalled Team 10 to mind:
every child playing by his or herself, inner-concentrated
each in their own private game
a small boy puts on roller skates he teeters away,
falling frequently
he works his way round the edge from support to support
he is seen by another child who gives him the end of a skipping rope and pulls him
along
other children join in the pulling
they see it as something only possible if they join together
six or seven pull, one small boy is pulled
suddenly the pulling stops
each resumes his private play.’

A few years ago we started to put our long standing interest in Team 10 into an actual
research project. Since then we have been asked, why? Not all the time of course, but we
met some skepticism on our way: why Team 10? We already know everything about them,
it is said, there are hundreds of publications on them, as well as numerous ones by them-
selves. So, what news could there be? Even more critically some of our colleagues remark:
they never built a lot, and eventually their impact on mainstream production seems quite
modest. The rhetoric answer to these equally rhetoric questions I would say, is: we don’t
know yet, and this is the very reason why we start the project altogether.

One of the reasons this question – why Team 10 – is asked, I believe, is that we had and
sometimes still have, contact with the circle of Team 10 on a personal basis. Even though,
the architects of Team 10 haven’t been on the covers of architectural magazines for more
than two decades now, their presence has always been felt. For some of us, here, mem-
bers of Team 10 were our teachers, even intellectual parents. And so, although Team 10 is
history, Team 10 thought and work, at least parts of it, have become an intrinsic part of the
way we speak and think without actually being conscious of this.
This is a problem of distance, or lack of it. It means that we may overlook the obvious and,
at the same time, that we are uncritical about the familiar stories surrounding Team 10.
This is not just a problem for the ones who are sincerely interested in Team 10. It is also a
problem for the ones who identify with Team 10 in a negative way. There is a lot of myth
around this loose group of kindred souls.
In contrast to the people who think everything is already known about Team 10, we think
the research into Team 10’s thought and work has only just begun. While organising this
congress this point was proven almost immediately. Many of the issues we wanted to be
addressed, puzzles to be solved, will still be there after this congress. Looking for speakers
for specific subjects, we found they were simply not there.
One obvious handicap for our research into Team 10 is the fact that we tend to focus on the

14
Team 10 and its Topicalities

break with CIAM and the 1950s. What happens afterwards has not been investigated ex-
haustively yet. Also for us this is true. I think the majority of the contributions to this
congress will focus on the formative years of Team 10. A few contributions will paint a larger
picture. Eventually we shall have to go beyond that to come to a more complete revaluation
of Team 10.
Or, to put it more viciously, as art historian Kees Vollemans did so provokingly, when he got
entangled into one of those terrible disputes with Aldo van Eyck at our Faculty:
‘Not a single historical movement can be explained solely on the basis of its previous
history; its subsequent history is also – and precisely – determinant for a proper under-
standing, no matter how hard such a movement tries to suppress the subsequent history.’
(1975)

This was said in 1975, and I mention it to stress once again, that the research into Team 10
has only just started. Apart from numerous archives waiting to be disclosed, completing
our factual knowledge, one of the bigger questions is, how to situate Team 10 and its
members within their time and place, from the late 1940s probably up until the 1980s; may
be even 1990s, when one considers for instance that Peter Smithson remained in touch
with Giancarlo de Carlo by lecturing at the latter’s summer school of ILA&UD in Urbino.
Obviously, individual positions shift during such a period, also within Team 10. So, which
connections are actually there? Which purposeful parallels can be drawn, and also, which
not? Because sometimes, upon closer inspection, hypothesised connections and paral-
lels seem to be non-existent. Tempting as it may be, we have to be careful not to merge the
various neo-avant garde groups of the post-war period into one grand narrative, blurring their
differences and individual contributions. On the other hand, the insistence on a history of
sheer individual, singular trajectories leads to a crumbling of the larger picture we need in
order to understand those individual trajectories.
Reading through the latest publications on the postwar period and the presupposed posi-
tions taken up by Team 10 architects one cannot help but feeling lost. Some authors stress
the search for authenticity and ordinariness, whereas others include Team 10 projects
within a tradition of an ever accelerating modernism. Team 10 thought is said to be con-
nected to our culture of tourism and consumerism, even precursing our contemporary world
of simulacra, and much in contrast with this it is also said that Team 10 demonstrated a
proto-ecological awareness, and aimed for creating identity on the basis of patterns of daily
use by way of experiencing space in a corporeal way, and not a visual way.
So, apart from asking, why Team 10, apparently we can also ask: which Team 10?
One reason for this, is the nature of the group. As we all know, it is a loosely organised
group of individuals. It is hardly possible to speak of ‘membership’, or ‘movement’. Ulti-
mately one can detect an ‘inner circle’, and ‘invited participants’, but in some cases a clear
distinction is hard to make.
There is only one manifesto produced within the older CIAM organisation, the Doorn Mani-
festo of 1954, nothing more. And even this one manifesto was a matter of dispute between

15
 Team 10 and its Context

the Dutch and English younger members of CIAM.

After leaving CIAM no new programmes were drawn, no Charter of Habitat, or any other
‘official’ document. Most of all, questions were posed, and criticism was ventilated, to-
wards mainstream building and planning, as well as within the meetings among the group
members themselves.
The only public evidence of Team 10 as an autonomous entity are the publications edited
by Alison Smithson, self appointed chronicler of the group. May be we still speak of Team
10 because of her reports – even when they evoked criticism at the time, and still do.
According to one of the introductory texts of the Team 10 Primer, the individual members
‘sought each other out, because each has found the help of the others necessary to the
development and understanding of their own individual work.’

In this sense, I would say Team 10 represents a collection of individual careers, a web of
interactions and exchange between architects.
Looking from a conventional historiographical perspective there is hardly a ‘product’, or let’s
say an ‘object’, to research. The individuals within the group emphatically maintained their
autonomous position, with the many clashes between them as a result and demonstration
of this. Yet, at the same time they persisted in calling Team 10 a ‘family’, expressing their
close bond. Thus, Team 10 history challenges conventional historiography, and the histori-
ography of Modern Architecture in particular. Apart from the notion of ‘object’ Team 10
history challenges notions like authorship and historic development.
The picture becomes even more complicated, since Team 10 members themselves turned
out to be quite adequate ‘historians’, rewriting the history of Modern Architecture and fur-
ther establishing the paradoxical phenomenon of a tradition of Modern Architecture, even
when their tradition was quite different from the one Sigfried Giedion forged with his various
editions of his Space, Time and Architecture.
Because of this web of individual positions and development another question becomes
important, namely how to approach Team 10?
Once again looking at recent publications, too often the position of the author seems to be
decisive which Team 10 comes afore. On the other hand, this may be one of the things that
Team 10 invites, even demands, to become personally involved, and to explain one’s own
position.
In 1991, Alison Smithson published her final document on Team 10, Team 10 Meetings,
produced here at our Faculty by Max Risselada, to point out one more line of the web we
are looking at.
Concluding her introduction Alison Smithson writes:
‘… As to people who are interested in Team 10, Team 10 might ask a few serious ques-
tions: “Why do you wish to know?” “What will you do with your knowledge?”’
and perhaps most interestingly she writes down a final question:
‘Will it help you regenerate the language of Modern Architecture so that it would again be
worth inheriting?’

16
Team 10 and its Topicalities

So, once again, this question: why Team 10? Why should we look into its history today?
A lot of things can be mentioned here, like the ways in which Team 10 continued as well as
transformed Modern Architecture; the ways by which they tried to redefine the relationship
between the individual and the larger whole; the steps they made to move away from
universal solutions towards solutions specific to situation; the first answers provided to the
question how to deal with the rising consumer society; how to re-use and re-energise our
old cities in a modern age; and the inspiring and still exemplary way by which they pre-
sented a European perspective after the devastation of the Second World War.
But first of all, I would say, the obvious thing would be Team 10’s ethos, and the way this is
related to their practices. Of course, this is the most difficult thing at the same time. It is
why much of Team 10 was rejected by younger generations. However, it is there at the very
core of Team 10 thought.
John Voelcker said it quite aptly: ‘[Team 10’s] programme is simply “what needs to be
done”.’
This is in such sharp contrast with today’s opinions of leading architects. After the deficit of
the ‘grands récits’, and after the so called ‘end of history’ caused by the neo-liberal triumph
the general assumption is that architecture and planning are largely autonomous prac-
tices, free from any nagging of an uneasy conscience. Many architects today seem to
revell in sublime uselessness, surfing the waves of Zeitgeist. Bringing up morality is said to
lead to unnecessary political correctness, and to impose inconvenient restrictions.
Only two fields related to architecture and planning still allow for moral issues to be openly
discussed. They are of course gender studies and (post) colonial studies. And even there is
a lot of suspicion.
So, why bringing up the issue of morality? Everyone knows when that happens you can
say goodbye to humour and a social atmosphere. However, one should realise, it is not
simply a matter of bringing up the issue, it is simply already there. Also, or may be espe-
cially, in those cases when we say we shouldn’t look at something in a moral way, but be
practical about it. One must keep in mind, there is always a reason for this, to be practical.
And with that reason there is a function, a value and a morality. May be a different kind of
morality, but a morality nonetheless.
The philospoher John Searle explained this quite convincingly in his book ‘The Construc-
tion of Social Reality’, the way human and social practices are always intertwined with
cultural and moral functionalities.
When I bring up the issue of morality, it is not to be judgmental, nor is it to re-install the
ethos of Team 10. On the contrary, I would probably disagree with many of the postulations
that are expressed within the Team 10 discourse. Yet, these postulations are necessary
and intrinsic parts of that very discourse.
The repressed issue of morality brings up quite something else, namely the question to its
function as a postulation, or a set of postulations within architectural practice and within
the discourse of Team 10 specifically.

17
 Team 10 and its Context

And of course, on reflection, it poses to us the question, how do we ourselves deal with this
issue of morality.

The re-surfacing of the issue of morality with regard to the practice of architecture is some-
thing of recent date. It is prepared in the recent revisionary studies of the history of Modern
Architecture, most notably by Hilde Heynen and by Sarah Williams Goldhagen.
With regard to the historiography of Modern Architecture Sarah Goldhagen claims in her
book Anxious Modernisms that we should try and identify and analyse what she calls ‘the
interlocking cultural, political, and social dimensions that together constitute the founda-
tion of modernism in architecture.’ In her profound study ‘Architecture and Modernity, A
Critique’ and the anthology ‘Back from Utopia’ Hilde Heynen comes to a re-conceptualisation
of the utopian dimension of the Modern Movement. She draws the conclusion that after the
obvious failures of many of the social claims of Modern Architecture, it is no longer valid to
think of Utopia as an ideal future to be actually realised by architecture and planning.
However, this doesnot mean any social ambition falls outside the realm of architectural
practice. To Heynen the idea of Utopia may still figure as a critical and energising moment
within that realm of everyday architectural practice.
So, what about Team 10, their discourse and the functionality of their ethos and a possible
Utopian moment?
My speculation is that Team 10 holds an ambiguous position towards the Utopian. Partly
due to their experience of the war, and partly due to the rational, technocratic course
Modern Architecture and urban planning was following with the reconstruction of the bombed
European cities. In this sense Team 10 spoke of the necessity of a ‘new beginning’.
In their Primer Team 10 speaks of a Utopia that is directly linked to the present. They
somewhat mysteriously formulate the following:
‘[Team 10 is] Utopian about the present. (…) their aim is not to theorize but to build, for only
through construction can a Utopia of the present be realized.’

From this onwards Team 10 speaks of ‘responsibility’, a moral imperative geared ‘towards
the individual or groups [the architect] builds for, and towards the cohesion and conve-
nience of the collective structure to which they belong’.
This is necessary for ‘society’s realization-of-itself’, as they put it, and to come to ‘mean-
ingful groupings of buildings (…) where each building is a live thing and a natural extension
of the others. Together they will make places where a man can realize what he wishes to
be.’
For Team 10 this requires in their words: ‘a working-together-technique where each pays
attention to the other and to the whole insofar as he is able.’
The ambiguous link between the Utopian and the present, and the construction of the
present, is critical I believe. It complies with the idea that everyday practice and the issue
of morality are inextricably linked. To locate the Utopian within the construction of the

18
Team 10 and its Topicalities

present has to do with the idea that better choices can be made, and that it is the architect’s
responsibility to make these better choices with the larger whole in mind.
To know what is the better choice Team 10 devised this so called ‘working-together-tech-
nique’, their meetings and publications. They felt they needed to discuss their own posi-
tion, to put themselves and their convictions on the line. Even though, this meant becoming
vulnerable, and sometimes heavily criticism. All this was part of their ethos.
So, trying and following the Team 10 discourse over the years, we can see that these initial
ideas lead to different conclusions. To mention only one striking instance: three of the core
members of Team 10, Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck quit drawing large
scale urban schemes at some point in their career. Ideal schemes like the one for Nagele
and the Golden Lane competition entry are not repeated, or further elaborated upon.

Concerning Team 10’s ethos and their idea of the Utopian within the present, I would like to
point out two more strands within the history of Team 10.
First of all, their interest in the everyday situation of street life and children’s games. I am
not sure whether these situations comprise the actual Utopian moment for Team 10, since
Team 10 links the Utopian with the building of the present. In any case, within Team 10
discourse these situations do figure as critical moments – critical towards the processes of
modernisation and our condition of modernity, that threaten to push aside, or even abolish
these everyday situations.
As such the everyday is not something idyllic, it is a locus where a different kind of morality
is to be found, and secondly, it also becomes a locus for a political and social struggle, a
contestation of values.
As is well known, Team 10’s interest for street life and children’s games is parallelled by an
interest in developments of the arts, especially CoBrA and Art Brut of course, presenting a
similar kind of alternative, or critical position towards modernisation and modernity.
The other line I would like to point out with regard to Team 10’s ethos is their involvement
with education. I believe without exception, all members of Team 10 were, or in the case of
Giancarlo de Carlo, still are, substantially involved with teaching, all over the world. Next to
their own meetings, publications and architectural careers, this practice constitutes a many-
branched web. This interest in teaching is parallelled by the numerous remarkable school
buildings Team 10 architects designed and built: from Hunstanton to the University of Urbino,
from the schools in Nagele to the Free University in Berlin.

And this, I would say, brings us back again, here, to our Delft Faculty, a building designed
by Van den Broek and Bakema, and to our own practice as teachers.

19
Engaging Modernism

Hilde Heynen

21
 Team 10 and its Context

Man loves to create and build roads,

that is beyond dispute. But … may it not be that…
he is instinctively afraid of attaining his
goal and completing the edifice he is
constructing? How do you know, perhaps
he only likes that edifice from a distance
and not at close range, perhaps he only
likes to build it, and does not want to live in
it
Feodor Dostoevsky, 18641

Introduction

Let me first make it clear that I am giving this talk as a stand in for Sarah Williams Goldhagen,
who is much more of a Team 10 scholar than I am, and much better suited to introduce you
into the specificities of post-war modernism.2 I hope, however, to be able to contribute
something to the discussions that will be held during this colloquium, by clarifying some
terminological issues. I will present to you a way of understanding some terms that are
relevant for discussing Team 10: modernity, avant-garde, colonialism. Thus my contribution
is meant to propose a theoretical framework that can be used in positioning and assessing
the work of members of Team 10.3

Conceptualising the modern

To many it seems that modernity is located in the West. For Dostoevsky modernity was to
be found in the London Crystal Palace, which he saw (and denounced) as the symbol of a
rationalist, materialist and purely mechanical view of the world. For him this modernity
needed to be fought against, since it implied the negation of all uncertainty and mystery,
the defeat of adventure and romance. At the same time, however, as Marshall Berman
points out, he very radically put forward the primacy of engineering as the actual symbol of
human creativity. In that sense he was doubtlessly of modernist conviction, prefiguring the
credo of his constructivist countrymen half a century later. It is this very ambivalence that
distinguishes Dostoevsky’s attitude from later generations. Being very critical of modernity
while at the same time embracing its promises, was the hallmark of many 19th century
intellectuals dealing with the contradictions and paradoxes that modern life implied. This
ambivalence allowed Dostoevsky to capture the truth formulated in the motto quoted above:
it is one thing to love building and dreaming a new world, it is quite another thing to have to
live in it.
In this respect a distinction should be drawn between modernization, modernity and mod-
ernism.4 The term ‘modernization’ is used to describe the process of social development
the main features of which are technological advances and industrialization, urbanization
and population explosions, the rise of bureaucracy and increasingly powerful national states,

22
Engaging Modernism

an enormous expansion of mass communication systems, democratization, an expanding

(capitalist) world market, etc. The term ‘modernity’ refers to the typical features of modern
times and to the way that these are experienced by the individual: modernity stands for the
attitude to life that is associated with a continuous process of evolution and transformation,
with an orientation towards a future that will be different from the past and from the present.
The experience of modernity provokes responses in the form of cultural manifestoes and
artistic movements. Some of these which proclaim themselves as being in sympathy with
this orientation towards the future and the desire for progress are specifically given the
name of modernism. In its broadest sense, the word can be understood as the generic term
for those theoretical and artistic ideas about modernity that aim to enable men and women
to assume control over the changes that are taking place in a world by which they too are
changed.
Modernity then constitutes the element that mediates between a process of socio-eco-
nomic development known as modernization and subjective responses to it in the form of
modernist discourses and movements. In other words, modernity is a phenomenon with at
least two different aspects: an objective aspect that is linked to socio-economic processes,
and a subjective one that is connected with personal experiences, artistic activities or
theoretical reflections.
Exactly what the relation between modernization and modernism is - between the objective
social given of modernity and the way that it is subjectively experienced and dealt with -
remains an open question about which opinions are many and various. Some people tend
to separate the two domains completely and to create a division between objective condi-
tions and subjective experiences.
The discussion about modernity is for example bound up with this problem of the relation
between capitalist civilization and modernist culture. The different positions that have been
adopted in this debate have to do with how this relationship is understood: is it a matter of
totally independent entities or is there a critical relation between them? Or is it rather a
determinist relation, implying that culture cannot but obediently respond to the require-
ments of capitalist development? I draw a distinction between different concepts of moder-
nity. A first differentiation can be made between programmatic and transitory concepts of
modernity. The advocates of a programmatic concept interpret modernity as being first and
foremost a project, a project of progress and emancipation, emphasizing its liberating
potential. A programmatic concept views modernity primarily from the perspective of the
new, of that which distinguishes the present age from the one that preceded it.
In contrast to this programmatic concept the transitory view stresses the transient or mo-
mentary quality of modern phenomena. A first formulation of this sensitivity can be found in
Charles Baudelaire. His celebrated definition of modernity stated that ‘Modernity is the
transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art, of which the other half is the eternal
and the immutable.’5 Throughout the development of modern art, this moment of
transitoriness has been stressed over and over again.

23
 Team 10 and its Context

Both these aspects of modernity, the programmatic as well as the transitory, have played
a role in modern architecture. The programmatic outlook is most clearly perceivable in the
notion of the ‘Modern Movement’, introduced by Nikolaus Pevsner as a description of the
joint efforts of a generation of young designers and architects who pursuit an architecture
that answers to the exigencies of its time in that it is objective, rational, sober and without
ornaments.6 A similar programmatic idea was expressed by Sigfried Giedion, who more-
over stressed the ideas of social mobility and emancipation that were inherent to modern
architecture.7 The transitory aspect on the other hand was getting primary value in the
‘Manifesto on Futurist Architecture’, in which Sant’Elia and Marinetti declared that the
fundamental characteristic of the new architecture would be obsolescence and transience
(each generation would have to build its own city).8 It is this aspect that was especially
celebrated by for instance Reyner Banham or the Smithsons.9
By now the notion of modern architecture has received a rather broad meaning, encom-
passing the larger part of the architecture produced in the 20th century.10 For many authors,
the term ‘Modern Movement’ tends to be a bit more specific and polemic, referring to those
architects who explicitly joined forces with other modernists, for instance through an alli-
ance with CIAM, the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne.11 Although the con-
cept itself of the ‘Modern Movement’ has been repeatedly criticized as incorrect and mis-
leading (because it suggests that there was a unified and consistent set of ideas to which
all its proponents adhered12), it has survived these attacks, probably because it expresses
so well that modernism was ‘not a style but an issue’.13 This awareness underlies many
historical and personal accounts of the Modern Movement.
Sarah Williams Goldhagen proposes an interesting framework for analysis, that accounts
for both the Modern Movement’s historical reality and its complexity.14 The generative prin-
ciples of the movement, according to her, had to do with the interlocking cultural, political
and social dimensions that together constitute the foundation of modernism in architec-
ture. On the cultural axis, all modernists denounced the authority of tradition and wanted to
develop a radically new architecture. Some thought that it would generate a ‘new tradition’15
(these would take what I called a programmatic outlook on modernity), whereas to others it
was clear that it would be the basis for ever more innovations and inventions (those would
rather take an outlook focusing upon transitoriness). On the political axis, the most distin-
guishing common feature is that modernists agree that there is a political dimension to
architecture. In more concrete terms, they took very different stances, ranging from con-
sensual (people who consented with democracy and capitalism), over negative critical
(people intending to break up existing conditions in favor a revolutionary transformation) to
reformist (people advocating substantial changes within the existing political and economic
structures). As to the third, social dimension, there was considerable agreement that the
new architectural language must symbolize and embody the essence of the era, the Zeit-
geist, and that this Zeitgeist had to do with the dominance of industrial technology and the
machine, and hence with rationalization. Opinions differed, however, as to the question in

24
Engaging Modernism

how far this machine constellation should form the sole point of reference for architecture.
Williams Goldhagen argues that there were many modernists –

such as Aalto, Gray, Rietveld, Scharoun or Taut – who were rather ambivalent about the role
of the machine. Instead of a purely machinist aesthetics, they advocated what she calls a
‘situated modernism’, seeking to situate the users of their buildings socially and histori-
cally, in place and time.
Williams Goldhagen positions these diverse specters of modernism against the so-called
‘non-modernists’ and the ‘anti-modernists’. ‘Non-modernist’ are those who are unaware of
the existence of the Modern Movement, and who still accept the authority and the value of
tradition, because they don’t see why it should be challenged. ‘Anti-modernists’ fight the

25
 Team 10 and its Context

effects of modernity by returning to the old ideas of community and identity. Williams
Goldhagen qualifies the regionalist tendencies in the interwar period as anti-modernist, just
like the social realism of Eastern Europe in the post-war period. In as far as Italian neo-
realism and English new empiricism celebrated the values of pre-modern societies, they
also labeled ‘anti-modernist’ in her book.
It seems that, within this framework, most members of Team 10 should be considered
‘situated modernists’. The Smithsons with their interest in everyday issues such as popu-
lar culture and consumption patterns; Aldo Van Eyck with his appeal to develop an aes-
thetic for the great number; Candilis-Josic-Woods with their studies of vernacular and popu-
lar dwelling cultures … they all testify of an interest to anchor their designs in the concrete
reality of concrete people, not seeking abstract solutions, but situating their projects within
a social, historical and site-specific context.

Questions of colonialism

An important issue that has been raised in recent scholarly work on modernism concerns
its relations with colonialism. Herman Hertzberger mentions somewhere, that the Van Nelle
factory, which processed coffee, tea and tobacco, was built when the Netherlands was still
a colonial power and that its modernism is therefore inseparable from the country’s colonial
past.16 Indeed, looking back from a perspective of 80 years hence, there is no denying that
there exists a direct link between the universalist and progressive ideals of the Modern
Movement on the hand and the colonial discourse which legitimated colonialism as a politi-
cal practice on the other.
When modernity is understood programmatically, as a project of progress and emancipa-
tion, it finds an outspoken manifestation in colonialism. The setting up a colony often links
the occupation of new territory with the desire to leave behind old habits and limitations in
order to establish another, a new, a better order. The colony was seen as the locus of a new
world, where the old world would be rejuvenated through its confrontation with purity and
virginity. However, this idea of a new and better order was inevitably interwoven with a
striving for conquest and domination. For the new land was seldom pure or unclaimed, and
the establishment of a colony thus meant violation and oppression of another culture. This
internal contradiction is by no means an unhappy coincidence brought about by historical
circumstances. It rather is inherent to colonialism..
In postcolonial theories the interconnections between the Enlightenment project of moder-
nity and the imperialist practice of colonialism have been carefully disentangled.17 Follow-
ing the lead of Edward Said’s Orientalism18, it is argued that colonial discourse was intrin-
sic to European self-understanding: it is through their conquest and their knowledge of
foreign peoples and territories (two experiences which usually were intimately linked), that
Europeans could position themselves as modern, as civilized, as superior, as developed
and progressive vis-à-vis local populations that were none of that.19 Orientalism, according
to Said, refers to that body of knowledge and practices that study and describe the Orient

26
Engaging Modernism

as the ‘other’ of the Occident, roughly equating it with the mysterious, the exotic, the
excessive, the irrational, the alien. The other, the non-European, was thus represented as
the negation of everything that Europe imagined or desired itself to be. This crucial role of
the colonized in the self-understanding of Western culture is something that most ac-
counts of modernity and modernism did not acknowledge. It is conveniently ignored in the
conventional historiography of the Modern Movement. Only recently, in the work of histori-
ans such as Gwendolyn Wright or Zeynep Çelik have these topics come to the fore.20
Indeed there are doubtlessly orientalist traits that can be recognized in e.g. the discourse
of Le Corbusier. His Voyage à l’Orient, in which he acquainted himself with the vernacular
architectures of Eastern Europe and Turkey, is a case in point. Although his experience of
the spatial and constructional qualities of these architectures clearly contributed to the
development of his own architectural vocabulary, they are not acknowledged as such, since
they do not reappear in his modernist polemic of the 1920s which rather referred to ocean
liners, grain elevators or airplanes as basic sources.21 Another case in point is Le Corbusier’s
fascination with the city of Algiers and with Algerian women, which, according to Zeynep
Çelik, places him in the long line of French colonialist endeavors to conquer the feminine
heart of the foreign culture.22 In such instances, the complicity of modern architecture’s
discourse with the colonial enterprise to establish Western hegemony over the world seems
to be revealed.
There is however more to it. Whereas it cannot be denied that modern architecture was
often instrumental in the formation of colonialist domination (reference can be made to the
French architecture in Algeria and Morocco, or to the Belgian one in Congo, or to the Dutch
one in Indonesia), the identification of modern architecture with the colonizers was not a
given that was established once and for all. As Bruno De Meulder points out in his com-
ments on the pictures by Marie-Françoise Plissart, the reception of the modernist architec-
ture in Kinshasa was fundamentally ambivalent.23 As clearly recognizable points of inter-
vention by the colonizers, modernist buildings were the prime target of attack for the rebel-
lions that sought to overthrow the colonial rule. After independence was established, how-
ever, this architecture has been willy-nilly appropriated as basic infrastructure that cannot
be missed in order for the city to function. As such it remains a reminiscence of a dream
that is not given up entirely: the dream of emancipation and liberation for all.
Thus far, the complicity between the modernism of Team 10 and the colonialist conditions
in which some members worked has not been the focus of thorough studies (although I am
sure that they are in the making). The work of Candilis and Woods in Morocco and Algiers;
the fascination of Herman Haan and Aldo Van Eyck for the Sahara, its sense of space and
the architecture of its people; or the dealings of Ecochard and Bodiansky with ‘l’habitat du
grand nombre’ deserve to be studied from this point of view. It seems urgent now that the
study of Team 10 should take into account theoretical insights gained in post-colonial
studies. This is necessary in order to overcome the simple duplication of earlier fascina-
tions – like e.g. those of Aldo Van Eyck with ‘primitive’ sculptures -, for they should not be

27
 Team 10 and its Context

taken at face-values but rather unravelled in all their colonialist complexities.

Critical voices

Following the lead of Kenneth Frampton, Team 10 is often qualified as offering an ‘internal
critique’ of the Modern Movement. Its protagonists indeed never positioned themselves
outside of this Movement, although they formulated quite severe criticisms of the initial
dogmas guiding the CIAM. It can be argued, however, that this position is entirely consis-
tent with the avant-garde logics which propelled modernism.
Basically there are two different ways to describe the avant-garde. Both take into account
the military origin of the term. Taken literally, the avant-garde refers to the front part of a
marching army, the scouts that first head into unknown territory. As a metaphor the word
has been used from the 19th century onwards to refer to progressive political and artistic
movements, which considered themselves to be ahead of their time. The different interpre-
tations come forth from a different understanding of the relationship between the political
and the artistic aspects of the avant-garde.
The more conventional interpretation does not stress overmuch the political stance of the
avant-garde, but rather points to its readiness to fight artistic battles. Renato Poggioli’s The
Theory of the Avant-Garde describes the avant-garde in this way. He sees it as characterised
by four moments: activism, antagonism, nihilism and agonism.24 The activist moment meant
adventure and dynamism, an urge to action that is not necessarily linked to any positive
goal. The antagonistic character of the avant-garde refers to its combativeness; the avant-
garde is always struggling against something - against tradition, against the public or
against the establishment. Activism and antagonism are often pursued in such a way that
an avant-garde movement finally overtakes itself in a nihilistic quest, in an uninterrupted
search for purity, ending up by dissolving into nothing. The avant-garde is indeed inclined to
sacrifice itself on the altar of progress - a characteristic that Poggioli labels agonistic.
More recently another, more politically charged interpretation of the avant-garde has taken
prominence, based upon the Theory of the Avant-Garde of Peter Bürger. According to this
author, the avant-garde in the visual arts and literature was concerned to abolish the au-
tonomy of art as an institution.25 Its aim was to put an end to the existence of art as
something separate from everyday life, of art, that is, as an autonomous domain that has
no real impact on the social system. The avant-gardists aimed to achieve the ‘sublation’ of
art in practical life:
‘The avant-gardists proposed the sublation of art - sublation in the Hegelian sense of the
term: art was not to be simply destroyed, but transferred to the praxis of life where it would
be preserved, albeit in a changed form. (...) What distinguishes them (...) is the attempt to
organise a new life praxis from a basis in art.’26

The avant-garde, says Bürger, aims for a new life praxis, a praxis that is based on art and

28
 Engaging Modernism

that constitutes an alternative for the existing order. This alternative would no longer organise
social life on the basis of economic rationality and bourgeois conventions. It would rather
found itself on aesthetic sensibilities and on the creative potentialities of each individual.
The avant-garde thus acts according to the principle of ‘Art into Life!’, objecting against the
traditional boundaries that separate artistic practices from everyday life.
It seems that Team 10 was (neo)avant-garde in both senses of the term. They pursued an
aesthetical revolution in an activist and antagonist way – struggling as well against the high
modernism of their predecessors as against the conventional tastes of the majority of the
public. Although nihilism and agonism are not part of their armour, they can nevertheless be
counted among those that continually renewed the aesthetical impulses governing mod-
ernism. Many Team 10 members can also be qualified ‘avant-garde’ in the political sense of
the term. For example in the work of the Smithsons and of Candilis-Josic-Woods it is
evident that they seek to diminish the distance between the expert culture of architects and
the aesthetic sensibilities of ordinary people, by looking for inspiration in popular culture
and vernacular or spontaneous dwelling patterns. Thus they appreciate the value of an
everyday reality which was not acknowledged by an earlier generation of modernists.

Paradoxes of history

On the one hand studying Team 10 now seems simply a matter of historical evidence: one
can see the existence of a law of historical distance that indicates that the past that is 30
or 40 years old begins to be worth studying (this probably has to do with the sequence of
generations and with the absence / presence of people able to recount the period). There is
on the other hand more to the study of Team 10. It is not just of historical relevance, but it
can also teach us something which is valid for our own day. To me this relevance of Team
10 relies in their ability to merge a sensibility for the concrete realities of everyday life with
their refusal to give up utopian hope. Whereas the first feature marks them as critics of an
earlier modernism, the second one nevertheless affirms their participation in the Modern
Movement. This utopian dimension of their work makes it particularly topical to study it
today. For the general mood of the day is anti-utopian, and this is something that should be
questioned.
As David Harvey remarks in Spaces of Hope, it is only by revitalizing the utopian tradition
that we will be able to fuel a critical reflection that will help us to act as conscious archi-
tects of our fates rather than as helpless puppets of the institutions and imaginative worlds
that we inhabit.27 There are vested interests that want us to believe that ‘there is no alterna-
tive’28 to the world as it is organized today, with a globalizing capitalist system that has far-
reaching and seemingly inevitable effects, ranging from the necessity of child labour in
upcoming economies in the East to the spread of unemployment and urban decay in the
West, not to forget the continuing misery in the poorest countries in the South. Therefore,
if we are not willing to support the status quo, we should recognize the need for a revitaliza-
tion of utopianism, because it is the only strategy that enables us to sound the depths of

29
 Team 10 and its Context

our imagination in order to explore the possibilities of the ‘not yet’.

Modernist architects and urbanists, among them Team 10 members, have contributed a
great deal to utopian thinking in the 20th century. Rather than blame them, we should
admire their courage to recognize and elaborate the political dimension of their architec-
tural beliefs. We should not turn a blind eye to the unavoidable problems that are intrinsic
to any utopianism that takes on a spatial form. As Harvey points out, spatial utopias that
materialize most often turn out as failures, because the social processes that must be
mobilized to build them cannot be completely controlled and cause a transformation of the
ideal that shatters the realization of its promises.29 And even if this were not so, even if it
were thinkable to realize a utopia in an unblemished form, even then we must see that there
is something contradictory to the very idea of utopia taking on a concrete form, for the effect
of its detailed description seems to be that it freezes life and thus prohibits the very free-
dom that it set out to establish.30
These flaws cannot be ignored. We should question, however, the all too easy solution of
simply doing away with utopian thinking because of its built-in tendency to turn into its
opposite or because of its totalitarian aspects. After all, it is through utopian thinking that
we train ourselves in imagining a better architecture that would correspond to an alternative
and better world. Even if it is perfectly predictable that this alternative will not be ideal either,
it is nevertheless crucial to explore it as a possible route to the enhancement of the good
life for all. That is also what constitutes for me the most important aspect of the legacy of
the Modern Movement and of Team 10: its capacity to criticize the status quo and its
courage to imagine a better world, and to start building it. Modern architects were admit-
tedly often naïve and over-simplistic in their architectural determinism. In as far, however,
that their utopian impulse was based upon a critical attitude and upon a genuine intention
to change the world, we should not denounce this dimension but rather seek to re-evaluate
it.31
1

30
Engaging Modernism
1
Quoted in Marshall Berman, All That Is
Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience of
Modernity, Verso, London, 1985, p. 242
2 10
My own work in this area is limited to an
in-depth study of Constant’s New Babylon
project and of OMA’s Exodus project (the
latter in cooperation with Lieven De
Cauter). My insights in Team 10 are
considerably influenced by discussions
with doctoral students who work on
related themes: Tom Avermaete
(K.U.Leuven) on Candilis-Josic-Woods;
Dieter De Clercq (K.U.Leuven) on theories
of the everyday and Dirk Vandenheuvel
(T.U.Delft) on the Smithsons.
3
This lecture is largely based upon an
earlier publication: Hilde Heynen, “Coda:
engaging modernism”, in Hubert-Jan
Henket and Hilde Heynen (eds.), Back
from Utopia. The Challenge of the Modern
Movement, 010, Rotterdam, 2002.
4
. Marshall Berman, o.c., p. 16
5
. Quoted by Matei Calinescu, Five Faces
of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde,
Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism,
Duke University Press, Durham, 1987, p.
48.
6 12
Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern
Design. From William Morris to Walter
Gropius, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987
(first published as Pioneers of the Modern
Movement, 1936)
7 13
Sigfried Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich,
Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton,
Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig, 1928;
translated by J. Duncan Berry, with an
introduction by Sokratis Georgiadis,
Sigfried Giedion, Building in France,
Building in Iron, Building in Ferrocon-
crete, The Getty Center for the History of
Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica
(Cal.), 1995.
8
. Antonio Sant’Elia, Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, “Futurist Architecture” (1914),
Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Programs and
Manifestoes of 20th century Architecture,
MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1990, pp.
34-38
9 16
Reyner Banham, “A Home is Not a
House” (1965), in Joan Ockman (ed.),
Architecture Culture 1943-1968. A
Documentary Anthology, Rizzoli, New
York, 1993, pp. 370-378; Alison en Peter
Smithson, ‘Where to walk and where to
ride in our bouncy new clothes and our
shiny new cars’ (1967), in: Alison
Smithson (ed.), The Emergence of Team
10 out of CIAM, Architectural Association,
Londen 1982, pp. 88-91.
William J.R. Curtis, for instance, in his
book Modern Architecture since 1900
(Phaidon, London, 1996), is rather
inclusive, although he mentions that he
does not deal with traditions such as the
Gothic revival in the United States or the
broad resurgence of neoclassicism during
the 1930s. Alan Colquhoun, in his recent
Modern Architecture (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 2002), specifies that he
understands it as ‘an architecture
conscious of its own modernity and
striving for change’ (p. 9). Not insignifi-
cantly, his history ends in 1965, whereas
the one by Curtis continues into the
nineties.
11
Within DOCOMOMO there is a tendency
to use the terms ‘modern architecture’ and
‘architecture of the Modern Movement’
interchangeably. See for instance Dennis
Sharp & Catherine Cooke (eds.), The
Modern Movement in Architecture.
Selections from the DOCOMOMO
Registers, 010, Rotterdam, 2000.
Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in
Architecture, Pelican, Harmondsworth,
1973; Giorgio Ciucci, “The Invention of the
Modern Movement”, in Oppositions, N° 24,
1981, pp. 69-91.
Reference be made here to Anatole
Kopp, Quand le moderne n’était pas un
style mais une cause, Ecole Nationale
Supérieure de Beaux Arts, Paris, 1988.
14
Sarah Williams Goldhagen, “Coda:
Reconceptualizing the Modern”, in Sarah
Williams Goldhagen, Réjean Legault
(eds.), Anxious Modernisms. Experimen-
tation in Postwar Architectural Culture,
MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2000, pp.
301-324.
15
See the subtitle of Sigfried Giedion,
Space, Time and Architecture. The
Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge (Mass.),
1980 (first edition 1941)
See his contribution to Back from
Utopia.
17
For a useful introduction see Patrick
Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.),
Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial
Theory. A Reader, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1994.
18
Edward Said, Orientalism, Routledge &
31
 Team 10 and its Context

Kegan Paul, London, 1978. MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1999, pp.
19
Couze Venn, Occidentalism. Modernity 151-174.
31
and Subjectivity, Sage, London, 2000 An attempt in this direction is undertaken
gives a good overview of the arguments in Amy Bingaman, Lise Sanders, Rebecca
in these analyses. Zorach (eds.), Embodied utopias.
20
Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics and Gender, social change and the modern
Design of French Colonial Urbanism, metropolis, Routledge, London, 2002.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1991; Zeynep Celik, Urban Forms and
Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under
French Rule, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1997; Patricia Morton,
Hybrid Modernities. Architecture and
Representation at the 1931 Colonial
Exposition, Paris, MIT Press, Cambridge
(Mass.), 2000; Lawrence Vale, Architec-
ture, Power and National Identity, Yale
University Press, New Haven (Conn.),
1992; Jean-Louis Cohen, Monique Eleb,
Casablanca, mythes et figures d’une
aventure urbaine, Hazan, Paris, 1998.
21
This argument is made by Sibel
Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation
Building. Turkish Architectural Culture in
the Early Republic, University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 2001, p. 4.
22
Zeynep Celik, “Gendered Spaces in
Colonial Algiers”, in Diana Agrest, Patricia
Conway, Leslie Kane Weisman (eds.),
The Sex of Architecture, Harry N.
Abrams, New York, 1996, pp. 127-140, p.
128.
23
See De Meulder’s contribution to Back
from Utopia.
24
. Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the
Avant-Garde (London, Harvard University
Press, 1982, translated from Teoria
dell’arte d’avanguardia, 1962)
25
. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-
Garde, Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1984 (translated from
Theorie der Avant-Garde, 1974)
26
. Peter Bürger, o.c., p. 49.)
27
David Harvey, Spaces of Hope,
University of California Press, Berkeley,
2000, p. 159.
28
Margaret Thatcher, quoted by David
Harvey, Spaces of Hope, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 2000, p. 154.
29
David Harvey, Spaces of Hope,
University of California Press, Berkeley,
2000, p. 173.
30
See e.g. my analysis of New Babylon:
Hilde Heynen, “New Babylon: the
Antinomies of Utopia”, in Hilde Heynen,
Architecture and Modernity. A Critique,

32
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

Ben Highmore

35
 Team 10 and its Context

introduction

I think that the organisers of this conference are right to situate the work of Team 10
between the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘everyday life’, and I think that although we will need to
investigate these terms it might be worth first noting the importance of this word ‘between’.
‘Between’ immediately begins to problematise these terms, treating them less as pack-
aged contents and more as relational tendencies, attitudes and proclivities, and crucially,
as questions. My job then, as I see it, is to start to sketch out what this between might
mean in the context of Team 10 and to fill out some of the content for such a vague and
amorphous term as ‘everyday life’.
I don’t think it is necessarily much of a claim to suggest that everyday life, or some such
cognate term, is in evidence in some of the crucial moments of the formation of Team 10.
After all the polemic thrust of the Smithsons’ 1953 Urban Re-identification grille, for in-
stance, necessarily reads as a critique of the abstractions of CIAM’s Athens charter, a
critique that might well be précised by the judgement that CIAM’s four functions (dwelling,
work, recreation, and transport) is inadequate for registering the particularity of everyday
life. For the Smithsons the lived-ness of urbanism falls through the net of functionalism. As
the signatories of Team 10’s 1954 Doorn Manifesto suggested: ‘Urbanism considered and
developed in the terms of the Charte d’Athènes tends to produce “towns” in which vital
human associations are inadequately expressed. To comprehend these human associa-
tions we must consider every community as a particular total complex’.1 ‘Vital human
associations’ and the ‘particular total complex of a community’; these are the cognate
terms that are in play here for that fluid and contested category ‘everyday life’. Team 10
then, as well as many other post-CIAM architectural groupings (Archigram, for instance),
might be seen as attempting to fashion a practice ethically responsive to the everydayness
of the experience of modernity.
What I want to do in this paper is to follow two lines of inquiry (while keeping in mind this
photograph of children playing in the street):
The first (and the one I’ll be spending most time on) involves a schematic and partial survey
of what I want to call (somewhat inelegantly) ‘everyday life as part of a European social
imaginary’ in the postwar years. I should point out that for this I don’t want to make any
particular claims about the influence on Team 10 of any of the materials I’m putting on the
table. Rather, in as much as I want to impressionistically sketch this social imaginary, I
want to simply place Team 10 within this constellation. So the particular determinisms
impacting on Team 10 is not the issue: instead Team 10 becomes one symptom among
many. But through this approach we might begin to assess the particularity of Team 10 by
the way they continue and conflict with other elements within this constellation. I should
also point out that I’ll be using some aspects of US culture for this sketch for a variety of
reasons, not least for the way that aspects of US culture are at this point territorializing
Europe in fairly fulsome ways.
The second line of inquiry is constituted by a question that I see as fundamental to avant-

36
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

gardism throughout the twentieth century. It is the question of how to be modern when
modernity itself is deeply problematic. In other words, how can a practice, an avant-garde
practice, maintain its crucial dynamism of being ‘ahead’, ‘in-the-forefront’ etc. at precisely
the moment when the dynamism of culture in general (and commercial culture in particular)
seems to be ahead of the art game and open to all forms of critique? Or to put it somewhat
differently again, how can you stave off the constant pull of the past, of nostalgia, as you
refute the myth of linear progression, and as you try to assemble a modern practice that is
linked to the longue durée (or at least longer durations) of social life? This is a question that
many avant-gardes faced, not least of course, surrealism - but here could also be placed
any number of postwar formations. And the way that this gets articulated around notions of
everyday life is very much to the point of this paper.

Everyday life as a European Social Imaginary

So let me begin with something of a schematic gesture for laying out some of the terms for
everyday life in the immediate postwar years - I’m going to sketch out three areas where
‘everyday life’ and ‘modernity’ might coalesce in dynamic ways: war, family, and techno-
logical commodification.

The War

First we need to insist on the importance of the cataclysmic events of 1933-45 (and be-
yond). In other words we need to foreground: war, the rise of Fascism/Nazism, death camps,
genocide, blanket bombing/blitz bombing, and so on. And we need to insist on what comes
after it: rationing, austerity, rebuilding, reconstruction, and so on.
Now the kind of reshaping of everyday life and, importantly to ideas about everyday life,
that this effects or performs should on what level be obvious. If one of the a priori assump-
tions of much sociology (Ethnomethodology, Social Interactionism, etc. - or more generally
sociological phenomenology) is that everyday life is the realm of the taken-for-granted, the
world of continuity and invisibility, then we can say that international and industrial ary
project, a call to revolution.
As well as making the everyday vivid, war offers an implicit critique of modernity. Images of
hopscotch of coronation celebrations, of the vagaries of community life in London’s East
End, need to be juxtaposed with bomb damage, with the image of technology directed to
truly terrible destructive ends - (Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau,
and so on).
As philosophers of the postwar era will insist (I’m thinking of Adorno and later Lyotard) such
atrocious acts puncture the dreams of technological progress. Everyday life as figured by
an image of children playing in the street signals continuity, locality, of making do with
makeshift arrangements and motley resources - a rejoinder against a vision of technologi-
cal progress that for some equals modernity.
While this image of children playing in the street comes from the early 1950s - the image

37
 Team 10 and its Context

of children playing in impoverished urban surroundings should remind us of the pre-war

Mass-Observation photography of Humphrey Spender - so while war makes this critical
rejoinder to a certain technological modernity vivid, it is already there as part of the culture
and found in Surrealism (think of the graffiti images of Brassaï) and in the surrealist inspired
work of Mass-Observation). I should point out in passing that the ghost of Mass-Observa-
tion continues in these photographs in the Urban Reidentification grille: they were taken
while Nigel Henderson’s wife, Judith Henderson, is working on a post-war Mass-Observa-
tion project called ‘Discover Your Neighbour’.

I want to claim that such images work in a number of ways:

1. They signal the pre-modern. The one time founder (along with Bataille and Leiris) of
the college of sociology (that bastion of dissident surrealism) would, in his Man, Play and
Games of 1958, offer the following information about hopscotch:
‘In antiquity, hopscotch was a labyrinth in which one pushed a stone - i.e. the soul - toward
the exit. With Christianity, the design became elongated and simplified, reproducing the
layout of a basilica. The problem of moving the stone became to help the soul attain heaven,
paradise, halo, or glory, coinciding with the high altar of the church, and schematically
represented on the ground by a series of rectangles.’2
2. In this then they also signal primitivism
3. They signal a tenacious resilience to impoverished environments. As Henderson
puts it - ‘a savage humility begotten of limited means’ (Henderson in Walsh 2001: 49).
4. They also signal a conservatism with a small c - they do not side with rational
technological expansion…

Incidentally I think that this side of twentieth century avant-gardism, what I think could be
called radical conservatism, or radical salvage operations, is absolutely crucial and very
much under acknowledged in debates about avant-gardism.

Reconstruction in its various European guises is partly framed as a return to order, to the
continuities of life, to family, to traditional roles. Reconstruction may be an opportunity to
implement progressive policies to some degree - but it is also a call to stability.
So looking at this image of children playing in the street or to consider the playground
building of Aldo van Eyck should make visible a double sense of the everyday as a histori-
cally embedded category:
On the one hand the difficulty of taking the everyday for granted: this street, these children,
this skipping rope, these roller-skates, are here precariously. They might not have been.
How could we stop them being in so much jeopardy again? …
Which is coupled with a re-valuation of the everyday. What had been insignificant, deval-
ued, is given a new significance a new value. Children, family life, the locality, habitat, take
on a new vividness…

38
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

The Family

The family is the second cluster I want to look at. The family becomes an arena for a whole
host of ideas and struggle - on the one hand it is used as the bedrock for a return to order,
on the other it is used to confirm and contest not just the sense of the ‘nuclear family’ but
also ideas about nation and about the world.
Alison Smithson’s first line in the preface to her collection of Team 10 materials, reads:
‘Team 10 know one another well enough not to get involved in our different person strengths
and weaknesses - i.e. [we] are a ‘family’ (Team 10 Primer, 1968: 4). Peter Smithson refers
to his and Alison Smithson’s collegiate relationship with Nigel and Judith Henderson, and
with Eduardo and Freda Paolozzi, as a family relationship. For the Smithsons, the second
half of the 1950s sees one family (Group 6) replaced (not acrimoniously) with another
family (Team 10).

But what does family in this sense mean; what were the connotations of family in the
postwar period. One immediate thing to point out is that ‘family’ registered in a number of
ways; it was a word that, to use Mikhail Bakhtin’s terminology, was (and still is) - multi-
accentuated. For Bakhtin this in itself is enough to register the importance of the word. We
might also note that ‘family’ in both its specific sense of parents-children, and in its more
perhaps metaphoric sense is etymologically about what is closest to hand: the everyday -
the familiar. The family takes us into the intimate spaces of the everyday…
Let me just jot down a few uses of the ‘family’:
Of course and perhaps most dominantly is the ideological notion of ‘family’ as hetero-
sexual, non-divorcing, child-rearing, mum-not-working, home-cooking unit. And alongside
this (and for some in opposition to this) is the notion of family planning. And we should not
ignore examples where ‘family’, ‘health’, and ‘play’ have come together within the frame of
progressive modern architecture. So the Peckham Health Centre (or the Peckham Experi-
ment, or the Pioneer Health Centre, as it was also called) would make an interesting
element of the back-story to this sense of architecture as an aid to a new understanding of
family and health.
But, and this is crucial, all this exists alongside a whole host of other notions of family:
1. Referring to the most local groupings and networks, for instance, is the way that
‘family’ gets used in the immensely influential book of 1957 Family and Kinship in East
London. So here in the streets of the East End (the very same streets, at the very same
time, that Henderson is taking his photographs, and when Judith Henderson is carrying out
her own anthropology of East End life) ‘family’ is brothers, sisters, mums, dads, grandpar-
ents, aunts and uncles, and so on - in other words family is extended working class family.
But it is also all those ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ with whom there are reciprocal child caring
arrangements, social ties and friendships. Family and Kinship, like the Urban Re-identifica-
tion grille, and like parts of the Casablanca grille, and like Jacobs’ The Death and Life of

39
 Team 10 and its Context

Great American Cities, privilege locality, immediate human associations, and spontane-
ous forms of sociability. This is Willmott and Young:
‘On the warm summer evening of the interview, children were playing hop-scotch or ‘he’
[‘it’ or ‘tag’] in the roadway while their parents, when not watching the television, were at
their open windows. Some of the older people were sitting in upright chairs on the pave-
ment, just in front of their doors, or in the passages leading through to the sculleries,
chatting with each other and watching the children at play.’3

You could find exactly the same sentiments (and the exact same wording to some
extent) in Jacobs’ book (and for that matter in a host of writing about the city, about
children at this time).
This is the family of the street, of informal yet stable forms of care and community, of
safety and monitoring, but not policing. It is an image that in the l950s was in danger of
fading - a concentration on this aspect of ‘family’ everyday life, signalled a warning that
new forms of habitat and environment (and Willmott and Young, and Jacob’s book is
intended to do just that) would wipe out something absolutely fundamental to human
sociability: a space of care, communication, and community.

2. But ‘family’ could also signal national groupings (the examples for these are ex-
clusively British though I’m sure that examples could easily be found for mainland Eu-
rope). George Orwell writing during the war (in 1940) in a long essay called ‘The Lion and
the Unicorn: Socialism and the British Genius’, wanted Britain to seize the opportunity of
this conflict to bring about a peculiarly English (he swaps from Britain to England throughout)
version of socialism. Part of his argument is that Britain is a family, but that this entails
lots of conflict, bickering, mixing and so on. Family is not a sign of absolute similarity but
of a unit that can accommodate difference. He can write from the position of a socialist
saying that ‘England is a family with the wrong members [the rich] in control’ (Orwell
1940: 105). The idea of a family as a mark of unity within difference is of course exactly
the kind of association that Alison Smithson is suggesting in the preface to the Team 10
Primer, or that the image of the ‘street’ offers to numerous commentators.
Crucially though this is a notion of ‘family’ that is metaphoric, but it is metaphoric in a
very particular way. After all one aspect of ‘family’ as a metaphor might well be a sense of
biological/genetic sameness, a notion of family that could be (and has been) mobilised
for specifically racist arguments. This is more like the idea of ‘family resemblance’ that
Wittgenstein puts forward in his later philosophy.
We might also note in passing that the 1951 Festival of Britain, that paean to a version of
new town-ist, garden-city modernisation, commissioned an official festival film about Brit-
ain. The film was by Humphrey Jennings, one time founder of the Mass-Observation
movement (which has a number of direct links forward to these photographs by Nigel
Henderson) and it was called simply ‘Family Portrait’.

40
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

3. Family though could also signal a more general, global sense of humanness as it
did for that international photography exhibition The Family of Man. The Family of Man was
the exhibition of the 1950s, curated by Edward Steichen, director of the department of
photography at the Museum of Modern Art New York. It toured the world for eight years,
was shown in 37 different countries over six continents. It was shown in most European
countries. It is perhaps the best example of the cultural and social ambitions of the US at
the time. The ideological and economic conditions of it have been subject to much criticism
(funded in part by Coca-Cola, and the international program at MOMA) it made its way
around the world offering a neo-liberal image of a world of difference united by a common
humanity.
The point here is simply to acknowledge how the exhibition promoted global humanity in
terms of everyday life. The photographs (which were from 68 countries) presented ‘man’ as
an everyday creature. The photographs were categorised under themes such as children,
work, love and so on. The images often by well-known photographers such as Robert
Doisneu, Dorothea Lange, and so on, were of ordinary, everyday people engaged in the
business of conducting their lives. Even those moments that puncture the everyday (birth,
death, war, for instance) are framed in terms of their everydayness (through anonymity,
repetition and so on). Here then the everyday has an ideological role, massaging contradic-
tion and conflict and veiling the systematic production of inequality. It is I think crucial to
remember that while ‘everyday life’ might function as a critical and problematising term
within certain philosophical and sociological traditions at this time (I’m thinking of Henri
Lefebvre and the Frankfurt School primarily) it’s more usual function in cultural life is politi-
cally and theoretically conservative. The Family of Man is, I think, one of the most vivid
examples of this: it attempts to construct a common everydayness that while evidencing
local differences and the specificity of particular environments and habitats, erases how
these differences are dominated by economic and ideological interests.
It is pertinent that at the very moment that this exhibition is declaring a common kinship
across the globe is also a moment of intensifying race hatred in the US, and a moment of
intensive decolonisation struggles in European, particularly French North African Colonies
[Morocco achieved independence in 1956, and the Algerian war for liberation was from
1954-62, ending of course in independence].

Commodities - Technologies

The third element of everydayness is one that is much more commonly addressed in
discussions of everyday life and modernity, namely the way everyday life is transformed by
domestic and social technologies (everything from washing machines to transportation
systems) and that these technologies are the shape that the commodity has taken. Lefebvre
gives one of the best descriptions of this when he writes that since the Second World War
the commodity has successfully colonised the everyday, with capitalism penetrating the
most intimate of spaces.

41
 Team 10 and its Context

So we are talking about on the one hand the speed by which domestic technologies be-
came widely available at this time and what this meant. And we are also talking about a
very particular American ‘styling’ of commodities (including cultural commodities -namely
films, music, and so on). And across Europe this was particularly ‘felt’ (in the form of neo-
colonialism for some, or in the form of a ‘brave new world’ for others) especially for countries
that were beneficiaries of Marshal Aid (France, Germany, Italy, etc.).
This process has been well documented in a number of books - including Kristin Ross’
Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, and by Richard Kuisel in Seducing the French - so I will only
briefly mention it here. All the best histories of modernity, though, have posed the question
of technological change not simply in terms of things like ‘time space compression’ (the
shrinking of the world due to transport and communication technologies) but also in terms
of what it has done to the experiential potential of humans, the human sensorium. And I
think the idea that technology has allowed for some sort of ‘species’ alteration has been
something that both theorists and avant-garde cultural practitioners have been particularly
interested in (for instance Banham and Archigram in the 1960s). For the moment I want to
point to some of the ways this notion of commodification, technological expansiveness,
and Americanization were taken up and inflected. Mainly I think that the words ‘ambiva-
lence and ambiguity’ have to be central to such an account.
Take for instance the way that US mass-culture is picked up by the Independent Group -
particularly in the work of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi - this sense of potential
(primarily I think the sensual expansion that might result from a streamlined, plug-in world)
is met consistently with some sort of ironic detachment - a sort of critical distance that
would stop it from being seen as merely a celebration of American capitalism.

Summary

So here we have a number of features, a constellation in a way, that figure the everyday in
particular ways. When I was writing about the way that everyday life gets used in a range of
cultural theory, I noticed that it only really comes into specific focus as a problematic term
in the shadow of war (the threat to everyday life) and it receives its most systematic elabo-
ration in the years immediately following the war. Now it strikes me that some sort of
everydayness emerges at this point in other fields besides cultural theory. Clearly film is an
easy example - from neo realism to the nouvelle vague - everydayness becomes a problem-
atic and productive term. It is also evident in the emergence of Team 10
Now the point of this impressionistic sketch is, I repeat, not to draw maps of influence, but
simply to sketch out a cultural context for measuring the particularity of Team 10. We
might usefully ask, for instance, how the juxtaposition of Alison and Peter Smithson’s well-
known collage for the Golden Lane project alongside a photograph of a long house in
Borneo, differs from similar kinds of juxtapositioning in The Family of Man.
Is this open to the same kind of critique as the Family of Man (naïve humanism, masking
domination, etc.) or is Team 10’s mode of continually addressing these connections/dis-

42
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

connections as problems enough to inoculate them from such readings?

Similarly are the forms of street, district and city associations that are being encouraged in
much of Team 10s writing (Shadrach Woods, and so on) experienced as a harking back, a
sort of terrified scream at the moment when forms of community are being wiped out? Is
this nostalgia dressed up as forward thinking, and even if the look of the imagined solution
doesn’t address itself to conservative forces, is the analysis of the problem one shared by
other constituents of more politically rightist groups? I don’t know the answers to this - and
I would think it is far from being a matter of condemning and condoning supposed ideologi-
cal misdemeanours.
The ideas of Family being suggested explicitly in some of the writing around street life in
1950s (Willmott and Young, and Jacobs) and more implicitly in the practices of Team 10
deserve a fresh airing. The idea of the Family has re-hardened into such a fortress unit that
any rupturing of this is at present truly radical. The ‘associational’ fight for the street was I
think lost for a whole host of reasons. I think that looking back on aspects of Team 10, the
idea of wanting to maintain the ‘texture’ of everydayness that can be found in some urban
working class areas, or in Mediterranean hillside conurbations, or in a village in Rumania or
Scotland becomes more and more radical, even if it could be called, on one level at least,
conservative. There is an ethics here that underpins (and perhaps undercuts) the aesthetic
decisions. The force is first and foremost social, cultural…
[We should also remember that for Marx it is Capitalism that is avant-gardist…]

Team 10 and Avant-Gardist Problematics

Now finally and very briefly I want to look at what I’m calling an avant-garde problematic:
namely how to be modern at the very moment when modernity seems to be stymieing you
at every turn. I mentioned briefly that ‘nostalgia’ is a particularly tricky position to take as
an avant-gardist, and for the most part I think that the idea of the avant-garde has been
(popularly) associated with a forward march rather than a backward one. After all, written
into the very term is the idea of the advanced and advancing guard.
Now one influential thesis about avant-gardism proposed in the 1970s by Peter Bürger is
that in its historical phase the artists of the avant-garde sought to re-unite the separation of
art and life, or more precisely to reintegrate art into life. The project foundered partly be-
cause of structural contradictions that couldn’t be surmounted by artists alone.
Of course Architecture is in many ways the integration of life and art. But it is not necessar-
ily the integration of ‘everyday life’ and art. The everyday is a way of signalling a problem
that architecture faces, and perhaps more importantly that urban planning faces.
So in conclusion let me first make a rough stab at what everyday life might signal for an
architectural group like Team 10 in the 1950s. I should note in this instance ‘everyday life’
is not always a positive (generative) term - it partly signifies by directing itself against
something else. So to say what the everyday is not is often as useful as trying to work out
what precisely it is:

43
 Team 10 and its Context

1. It should act like a flag that you wave to remind people of the messy actuality of their
environment, their desires, and their ordinary practices.
2. It should warn anyone over-enchanted with the progressiveness of modernisation
that there is another side to modernity, and another history that modernity can’t ignore.
3. It calls into the account the most intimate and the most social, the most immediate
and the most general, the very latest and the age-old. It doesn’t quite know where to look
but it knows how important ‘environment, habitat, and practice’ are.

The everyday is a problem and a challenge for the post war architectural avant-garde. The
problematic nature of is, to my mind, most vivid in the idea of the ‘street’:
‘In the suburbs and slums the vital relationship between house and street survives, children
run about, people stop and talk, vehicles are parked and tinkered with: in the back gardens
are pigeons and pets and the shops are round the corner: you know the milkman, you are
outside your house in your street.’ (A + P S, Grille 1953 section House + x = street)’

An interest in forms of association is at the heart of Team 10 and they speak vividly of the
bonds that are operative in the everyday. But how to stop this being simply nostalgia - how
to make this modern? This is Peter Smithson looking back on this moment of Team 10’s
emergence in his interview with Beatrice Colomina:
‘The street in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century was where the children were, and
where people talked and all that, despite the climate being against it. The street was the
arena of life. To perceive that the invention of another sort of house was the invention of
another kind of street, of another arena, or maybe not an arena, wasn’t a question of saying
the street must be revived. It is a matter of thinking what the street did, and what is the
equivalent of it if it is no longer necessary, if the street is dead.’4

To be modern, to engage with modernity, meant for Smithson and I would assume for
others in Team 10, a sort of invention, but also a re-invention. Avant-gardism (if that is what
it was) was tied to a revival, but a revival not of pre-given aesthetic and architectonic forms
but of essential social and cultural forms.

44
Between Modernity and the Everyday: Team 10

1
Bakema, van Eyck, van Ginkel, Hovens-
Greve, Smithson, and Voelker, ‘Doorn
Manifesto’ (1954) in Joan Ockman,
Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A
Documentary Anthology, New York,
Rizzoli, p183.
2
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games,
translated by Meyer Barash, Urbana and
Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2001,
p.82. Originally published in France in
1958.
3
Michael Young and Peter Willmott,
Family and Kinship in East London,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990, p38.
Originally published by Routledge & Kegan
Paul in 1957.
4
Beatriz Colomina, ‘Friends of the Future:
A Conversation with Peter Smithson’,
October 94, p9

45
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

Nicholas Bullock

47
 Team 10 and its Context

In the introduction to the first exhibition of post-war architecture, the Arts Council’s Ten
Years of British Architecture, ’45-55, John Summerson identified school building as the
most fertile field for the new radicalism he detected in British architecture, ‘a tendency to
go in search of principles. Not, it should be understood, theoretic principles, but principles
empbodied in actuality, principles announced as buildings’. In this emphasis on school
building he was only reflecting the contemporary enthusiasm for the architectural qualities
of the school building programme that was widely felt. J.M.Richards of the Architectural
Review: saww the new school architecture as defining the face of a new and especially
English architecture: ‘The newest schools illustrate the truth that good design is self-per-
petuating; that the essential condition for producing better modern architecture is the exist-
ence of enough modern buildings to give modern architects a common fund of experience.
In the development of modern school architecture...we can see at work the process whereby
architectural style is created’.
Education and school building, quite as much as housing and town planning provides a
field through which to study the terms in which reconstruction shaped the architectural
agenda of the first pre-war decade. In education as in housing, the same combination of the
destruction of the Blitz and the flying bomb attacks on the one hand, and the optimism that
accompanied the debate about rebuilding on the other, created a sense of opportunity of
what might be achieved when the war was over. In education the war created above all a
determination to implement the reforms that had been held up during the 1930s for want of
resources and for want of political will.

Reconstruction and Education

To understand the post-war programme of educational reform and the school building
programme that accopanied it, we must start with the war. In London, for example, by the
end of the Blitz around 10% of the county’s primary schools had been destroyed or seri-
ously damaged and in other towns and cities, too, school buildings were badly hit. And, as
with housing and town planning, the linkage between educational reform and reconstruc-
tion is forged before 1942.
As people contemplated the destruction of the old they thought not only how to rebuild
what had been but how to address the inadequacy of the old, the inequalities and injustice
that had disfigured British society of the 1930s. Reconstruction would not only provide
opportunities to rebuild but to address the educational agenda set, but not acted upon, by
the Hadow Reports of 1926 and 1931 and the Spence Report of 1938. These had demanded
the reorganisation of elementary schools and the establishment of some for of universal
secondary education. To these urgent demands were now added other key educational
aspirations: the replacement of the inadequate schools indentified on the ‘blacklist’ by the
local education authorities as long ago as 1925, and the raising of the school leaving age to
sixteen.
With education, as with housing and town planning, and also with national insurance and

48
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

health, the war-time debates saw the establishment of what in the first post-war decade
were to become the fondations of the welfare state. The educational plans debated from
1940 onwards were drawn up as a set of proposals published in1942 as Education after the
War, and were eventually to form the basis for the Education Act of 1944.
The importance of these proposals for post-war school building was recognised from the
start. If educational reform was not to be held back again as it had been in the 1930s, then
plans for a school building programme would have to be included in the plans for post-war
building that were already being drawn up. Plans for a post-war housing drive were being
discussed from 1940 onwards. By the spring of 1942 the Cabinet’s key reconstruction
committe, the IEP Committee, had agreed in outline the form of the post-war building
programme. This allocated the lion’s share of resources to housing, 60% of all building
labour and the materials, leaving but 40% for all other forms of building, including schools.
How this limited share might best be used needed to be considered as a matter of priority
and by January 1942 Robert Wood, the Deputy Secretary of the Board of Education had
established a committee to examine the problems of post-war school building. Published
in December 1943, the final report of this committee was of considerable importance for the
approach it took to post-war school building. Unlike the larger Burt Committee that had
been established to look at non-traditional forms of constuction for housing, had produced
details of different forms of construction and even constructed a number of prototypes, the
Wood Report said little about the actual form of school construction. But it did point up
unequivocally the need for ‘prefabrication of structural elements and the wide use of prefab-
ricated materials’ in school contruction. With the clear prospect of keen competition be-
tween different sectors for scarce post-war building resources, traditional forms of contruction
would no longer do for schools.

Non-traditional school building: Middlesex and Hertfordshire

But what was to be put in their place? Attempts by Wood to build an experimental school
in conjunction with Kent County Council and thus to develop the ideas set out in the Wood
Report came to nothing because of the shortage of resources in the South caused by the
flying bomb attacks. As the war drew to a close, the choice for most local education
authorities casting around for an answer to the pressing need for new school places was
either to accept the prefabricated classrooms, the HORSA huts, offered by the Ministry of
Education or to find a non-traditional system of school building. For counties like Middlesex,
Hertfordshire and Essex the issue was particularly urgent. War-time destruction had claimed
many schools, at the same time population growth even before the war had created a rapid
rise in the demand for school places, and to this had to be added the extra school places
to be provided for the raising of the school leaving age. How were they to meet this de-
mand?
At the end of the war the most clearly articulated views on non-traditional school building
were those of G.C.Stilman, country architect of West Sussex until his appointment as

49
 Team 10 and its Context

county architect to Middlesex in the spring of 1945. Drawing on his pre-war designs for
schools like those at Selsey or Littlehampton Stillman proposed a prefabricated bay sys-
tem for building classrooms. Based on a bay module of 8’3’ to give a 24’x24' classroom,
these classrooms were to be planned as a series of ‘fingers’ linked by lightweight covered
walkways to the school’s other buildings, the school hall, and the school’s offices which
might be made out of traditional construction.
These late 1940s Middlesex schools have a pinched, ‘utility’ look about them which even
today serves as a reminder of the shortages and the difficulties of the time. With the bland
repetition of the bays on the glazed elevation and the unrelieved run of the corridor on the
other, they are very similar to the classroom blocks Stillman was building in the 1930s but
built in less durable fashion and fitted out with cheaper components and finishes. But
Stillman’s hopes of large scale experimentation were frustrated by the particular nature of
the Middlesex programme. The restricted sites for many of the County’s schools favoured
‘one-off’ designs which precluded the use of mass-production on the same scale as
Hertfordshire. By the begining of the 50s Stillman’s designs were beginning to look dated.
As cost control of the school building programme became tighter from 1950 onwards, the
inefficiencies of the ‘finger’ plan with its high proportion of circulation space seemed less
and less defensible, and Middlesex eventually moved like other authorities to a more com-
pact system of planning.
The other county that was involved from the first in trying to develop a system of non-
traditional school building was the immediately adjacent county of Hertfordshire. Under the
leadership of John Newsom, appointed Chief Education Officer in 1940, the County had set
about planning for education after the war in 1943. In answer to government pressure to
draw up a programme of post-war school construction which would show how the County
would respond to the opportunities created by the 1944 Education Act, and taking account
of the growth of population in the area, Newsom and his planning team had recognised
early on that the County would need to provide for a massive increase in the number of
school places. Rather than rely on Ministry of Works huts, Newsom was convinced from
the start of the advantages of building cheap lightweight schools, along the lines suggested
by the experiments in school design by Stillman and others just before the war.
Without an Architect’s Department, the County was persuaded to establish a department
large enough to take on the design of the 176 schools that it was calculated in 1946 would
be necessary to meet the County’s needs. Having failed to attract Stillman, their first choice,
the County appointed Herbert Aslin, formerly Borough Architect at Derby. By the end of the
year of 1945, Stirrat Johnson-Marshall had been appointed as his deputy and with his help
a young hand-picked staff was attracted to Hertford, many coming direct from the services
or from schools like the Architectural Association.
The speed of development of the Herts system was astonishing. From late 1945 when
Johnson-Marshall was first appointed it took barely twelve months before the first school,
Cheshunt Infants School started on site, and only two years before this school and the

50
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

school at Essendon were ready for occupation. How was the Herts achievement possible?
Determined not to put their faith into a single proprietary system, the team chose to design
a system for the County’s use, as Andrew Saint puts it, ‘they wanted to compose not an
essay or a book but a language and vocabulary, and to write the first literature in it all at the
same time’. The key to this was the successful collaboration between the County team
and Earnest Hinchliffe of Hills and Company in West Bromwich who was already interested
in the opportunities for post-war reconstruction. In 1943 Hinchcliffe had designed and devel-
oped the Hills Pressweld House, built around a lightweight steel frame, and had approached
the Ministry of Education to see if a comparable system of construction would be of inter-
est to those responsible for post-war school building. By the time that the Herts team had
made contact with him through the Ministry of Education, Hinchliffe had already erected an
experimental classroom unit, based on an eight foot three inch bay, at his works at West
Bromwich and was preparing to manufacture a series of standardised components, clad-
ding slabs, roof and floor units, for this and his Pressweld houses.
The team were thus able to start with a system on which considerable development had
already taken place. But it was the foresight of the Herts group to see the potential of this
system and, as the programme developed, to rewrite the grammar of Hills original design to
produce a flexible yet coherent system that lead to the success of the Herts schools. In
many respects the original Hills design met the recommendations of the Wood Committee:
it started with the officially commended eight foot three inches module and used a light-
weight steel frame. But from the start the Herts group were certain that it could be im-
proved. The first major improvement was to change from the ‘bay’ system used by Hinchliffe
to the greater flexibility of a full modular grid system. It was the modular grid that made it
possible to standardise and prefabricate not just the classrooms but all the accommoda-
tion required for a whole school. It was this, despite the cumbrous nature of the eight foot
three inches module, that provided the key to the informality in planning that so appealed to
the educationalists under Newsom. With this grid system it became possible in a way that
simply was not possible with the rigidity of the bay approach to abandon the insistent
regularity of the finger layout for a freedom of planning on different levels, with classrooms
in echelon, or with classrooms and other spaces opening into one another. Here was the
practical evidence of the superiority of the grid over the bay for school planning and a
demonstration of the way in which prefabricated schools like those in Herts could meet the
changing needs of educationalists in a way that traditionally constructed schools could
not.
The first two schools built with the Herts system, the school at Cheshunt Infants School
and the village school at Essendon show both the characteristic qualities of the system
and the variety that could be achieved with it. The starting point for the planning of the two
schools is the same but their appearance is very different. In both junior classrooms open
off a corridor which houses coats and lavatories, in both the infants classrooms are treated
as virtually self-contained pavillions complete with their own entrances, outdoor space and

51
 Team 10 and its Context

cloakrooms. As a result the different proportion of infants to juniors in the two schools is
reflected directly in their layout. At Cheshunt the staggered infants classrooms on the flat
site give the impression of loose informality, of a blend of the open-air classrooms of the
pre-war years with a Scandinavian holiday camp. At Essendon the school stands on a
ridge overlooking a valley. It commands the site and its clearly visible form conveys the
order of its organisation.
However much the two schools differ in their appearance, they are made with the same kit
of parts. The same Meccano-like constructional system with its square fabricated columns
and light steel trusses is used to make the classrooms and the hall, the corridors and the
staff rooms. It easily accommodates all the major elements of school plans as varied as
Cheshunt and Essendon. Contemporaries admired the potential of the system but were
critical of certain details. The horizontal precast concrete cladding units, for example, at-
tracted particular criticism for the way which they seemed to deny the lightness of the
system. At Essendon the cladding gives the distinctly odd impression of a monolithic hall
supported on spindly lightweight columns. And one of the Herts team noted of the early
cladding system: ‘there are, however, inconsistencies resulting from present-day condi-
tions such as the necessity of cladding a very light fame with a clumsy intractable material
which is neither a panel nor a wall permitting a clear expression of the structure’. But the
strength of the Herts approach was that the design team could learn from its mistakes and
the system did then improve. Thus later schools were designed with different cladding: at
Croxley Green, the next school in the programme, the team tried vertical concrete cladding
panels and, more successfully at Aboyne Lodge (1949-50) stove enameled metal panels.

Shaping the programme: the links between central and local government

Much of the success of the British school building programme by the mid 1950s was due
to the work of the Ministry of Education and the relationship it had established with the
country’s 145 local education authorities. The contrast with the situation in housing could
not be clearer. Here the Ministry of Health, after 1951 the Ministry of Housing and Local
Government, had only loose links with the 1,500 local housing authorities. In contrast to
school building, the majority of these authorities did not have a separate architect’s depart-
ment and most housing, was not designed by architects, or at best by those working in an
engineer’s or surveyors department. Authorities like the LCC with an Architect’s Depart-
ment employing over 750 architects - 300 in the Housing Division alone - and supported by
2,000 technical and administrative staff, was quite exceptional. Most cities did not have an
architect’s department in the 1950s. It was not until 1954 that Birmingham, the country
second largest city, first established an independent Architect’s Department, and a city
like Cambridge had to wait until 1963.
The Ministry of Education established a very different pattern of working. Through its Archi-
tects and Buildings Branch, A&B Branch, the Ministry of Education was in the position not
only to advise local authorities on school design and to comment on their proposals for new

52
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

building, but crucially, with the establishment of the Development Group in 1949, to build
new projects. By building a series of experimental schools in conjunction with different
local education authorities, A&B Branch were able to influence the form of the modern
school, to show by example the way forward to new developments. Local authorities were
not coerced into adopting the views or the advice of the Ministry of Education, they retained
their individual identities and approaches and many went their own way. But at least those
who wished to do so could call on the assistance of central government.
The way in which A&B Branch and the Development Group worked in the early 1950s owed
much to the Hertfordshire schools programme. In August 1948 Johnson-Marshall left Herts
to join the Ministry of Education as head of A&B Branch, where he worked alongside
Anthony Part, a progressive civil servant of outstanding ability, under the informed guidance
of John Maud, the Permanent Secretary at Education.
By the time Johnson-Marshall left the Ministry of Education in 1956, A&B Branch had
already begun to affect the form of school building in three important ways. First, it was
responsible for circulating information on the most successful new developments and their
costs among different education authorities and their architects everywhere in England and
Wales. Following the success of the Post war Building Studies series, the Ministry of
Education in 1949 began to publish a series of Building Bulletins in which current thinking
was set out by those directly involved in the work. New Primary Schools, Building Bulletin
No 1, by David Medd, one of the first to join from Hertfordshre, provided a summary of the
Herts experience; Building Bulletin No 2 set out the thinking on secondary schools. Later
bulletins addressed questions of cost, primary school layout, as well as described some of
the Branch’s development projects.
Second, the way in which the A&B Branch affected the form of school building was through
the politically delicate, but critical task of securing better value for money in school build-
ing. The arrival in 1951, of the new Conservative government was met by loud calls for cuts
in government expenditure and the Ministry of Education was faced between 1951-54 with
the imperative need to reduce costs without compromising the school building programme.
This was a new departure. In the first years after the war when the immediate priority was
to increase the number of school places, costs had been less pressing than solving the
shortages of manpower and materials. In place of the ad-hoc methods of controlling cost
used before the war, the A&B Branch had instituted in 1950 a means of control based on
the cost per place. But to meet the call for cost savings involved calculating how much a
school actually cost to build and whether the newly established cost per place was reason-
able.
Central to this inquiry was the attempt to examine the wide variation in the costs of schools
built in different ways in different parts of the country. For the first time the separate ele-
ments of a building, the foundations, steelwork, cladding and roofing were costed indepen-
dently. This form of comparative costing was of no great value where a building was de-
signed and built as a singular, one-off assignment. But given the system of organising the

53
 Team 10 and its Context

school-building programmes and the increased use of prefabricated or rationalised building

methods, the value of this approach to cost analysis was greatly enhanced. An elemental
analysis of cost made it possible for the first time for the architect, and the client, to
understand how the overall cost of the school was allocated across the different elements
of a school and thus to determine at the design stage priorities for expenditure. This pio-
neering system of cost control developed by the Branch’s senior quantity surveyor, James
Nisbet, was described with exemplary clarity in Cost Study, Building Bulletin No 4.
The third way in which A&B Branch was to influence school building came as a comple-
ment to its increasingly sophisticated control of costs. To demonstrate that the cost tar-
gets being recommended could be met in practice the Development Group built a number
of prototype schools to show local authorities, who were generally too short of design staff
to experiment on their own account, how they might set about the design of the new
secondary and the new comprehensive schools called for by the 1944 Education Act. From
1949 to 1957, the Development Group was to develop five different school building sys-
tems. All were of lightweight rather than traditional construction: two of the systems were in
steelwork, one was in aluminium, and two were in precast concrete, all were based on the
3’4’ horizontal module adopted by the Ministry in 1948. The five development schools were
St Crispin’s School, Wokingham, designed in 1949-1950 as a further development of the
Herts system based on the Hills light steel frame; the Parks Secondary School in Belper
1953-1955. based on a hot-rolled steel frame and later developed further to form the basis
of the system used by the Consortium of Local Authority Schools’ Programmes (CLASP);
Limbrick Wood School, Coventry 1951-52, with an aluminium system developed from the
Mark I Bristol Aircraft Company; the Arnold Grammar School, Nottingham in 1957-59, with
a Laingspan prestressed and prefabricated structure, and finally Worthing Technical Sec-
ondary High School, 1953-55, built with the Intergrid prestressed and prefabiracted sys-
tem.

Local Authority School Building

Schools built by the Local Education Authorities with the advice and encouragement of
central government are still seen, as they were at the time, to have been a success. True,
the principle proponents of this view have been the educationalists and the architects closely
engaged in their creation. But notwithstanding the changes in educational ideology since
their construction, the reputation of the school building programmes of the 1950s remains
largely untarnished. In Education, the national, weekly journal of record in education in the
1940s-1950s, teachers and educationalists praised the new primary schools, and the smaller
number of secondary schools, for the sympathetic environment they provided for new devel-
opments in teaching. The architectural press, too, feted the new schools as the most
successful and the most familiar face of modern architecture. The Gran Premio con Menzione
Speciale which went to the small CLASP primary school at the Milan Triennale in 1960, is
a reminder of the way in which English school building was viewed in Europe, a token of the
international recognition of their qualities.

54
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

This success was due in part to the way the new schools answered the needs of teachers
and pupils. The approach to the planning of the primary school in Building Bulletin No 1,
The New Primary School, drew together the ideas of child-centered teaching practice that
had already gained momentum in the 1930s and emerged as the dominant educational
ideology by the early 1950s. To Christian Schiller, Chief Inspector of primary schools at the
Ministry of Education and a champion of these views, it was important that school buildings
should serve the child. The child and its education was central, and any investment in
building should serve this focus. In architectural terms liberation was as necessary from
the inhibiting effect of the inflexible buildings and rigid class layouts of the pre-war years, as
was a shift away from formality and architectural display.
The overlap of educational and architectural ideas is evident from the start of the series of
Building Bulletins. The New Primary School, the first bulletin written by David Medd fresh
from Hertfordshire, opens with a discussion of the new approach, ‘How can the architect
make his best contribution to the creation of this [school] environment? The basis of the
school design is not only a schedule of areas and building regulations but the needs and
activities of growing children and their teachers.’ In place of the conventional illustrations of
school architecture, it offers a series of hand-drawn diagrams of site layout, classroom
layout, equipment for playing, and different ways of using the building and using its spaces.
How successfully were the ideas of A&B Branch translated into practice? The overall im-
pression given by the eighty schools built by different authorities and shown in March 1953
at the ‘Britain Builds for Education’ exhibition arranged by the Building Centre, is of the
extent to which these values had penetrated the designs of private practice and the County
Architects who might, for other types of buildings, still be producing designs of pre-war
monumentality. In place of the axial symmetries and the self-conscious display of architec-
tural features, classical, arts and crafts, or 1930s moderne, the schools exhibited at the
Building Centre and those frequently illustrated in Official Architecture and Planning, the
Architects’ Journal, and the Builder, share an informality of layout and simplicity of purpose
that established, despite varieties in the configuration of plans and different approaches to
construction and detailed design, an overall impression of a common approach.
This resemblance was in part a reflection of common educational priorities and partly a
result of the way in which designers of schools, the LEAs and central government adopted
common responses to the need to reduce the cost of school building. The reduction in
funding begins in 1949 with the introduction of a cost limit per place. This was followed by
a succession of annual reductions in which lead to a halving of the real cost per place
between late 1949 and 1953. More effectively than was the case with housing, the damag-
ing effect of these cuts was countered by the changes made in the design of schools, not
in the standards of construction or in the overall quality of school buildings.
To meet these targets school architects and the architects of A&B Branch explored a
number of ways of reducing costs, the two major savings were to be found in reducing the
size of the building, and in cutting the costs of construction. Prompted by government’s

55
 Team 10 and its Context

general encouragement of non-traditional construction, many education authorities had

high hopes that lightweight construction and the extensive use of prefabrication would
lower costs. But in practice major savings were difficult to achieve. In 1955, despite the
work of the Development Group, the Ministry of Education estimated that only twenty-five
percent of schools were built using a complete system of prefabrication. The authorities
who favoured this approach were widely scattered. They ranged from the home counties,
where Herts with a rapidly rising school population regarded prefabrication as the only
means of meeting its targets for new school places, to rural counties like Cornwall were the
lightweight alumnium BAC system offered advantages of speed and cost over traditional
construction in an regions short of materials and labour. For most authorities complete
prefabrication was not cheaper than traditional building. The Hills and Intergrid systems, for
example, cost about the same as first class traditional building and offered the same
degree of durability and performance. Their principle advantage was that both were faster to
erect and needed less site labour than traditional building.
However these complete systems did not represented the sum of all non-traditional school
building. The publicity that the Herts achievements attracted has overshadowed the history
of widespread experimental work carried out by other authorities. Even at a time of steel
shortage, as at the start of the 1950s, local authorities across the country continued to
engage in an impressive range of experiments with different approaches to non-traditional
construction. Lancashire, a large authority, had the advantage of a big programme with
which to develop alternatives to traditional building. Smaller counties like Northampton
were also keen to experiment. Here, the County Architect opposed the use of a proprietary
system and his department was encouraged instead to use readily available prefabricated
components, RSJs and metal windows, alongside traditional materials like brick. In gen-
eral however, by 1955 the majority of education authorities were making extensive use of
prefabricated components, if not of whole proprietary systems, as a means of meeting the
reduced allowance per place or speeding construction.
Even more successful as a way of cutting costs was to reduce the size of school buildings
and architects, encouraged by A&B Branch, looked intensively at ways of doing so. To
reduce the cube of the building, for example, ceiling heights were trimmed, a limited though
relatively pain-free way of reducing cost. By far the most effective way to cut costs was to
reduce floor area, and to do so by reducing the amount of space used solely for circulation.
In secondary schools the use of double rather than single-banked corridors offered immedi-
ate savings. In primary schools real savings were made by the shift from the ‘finger plans’
of the late 1930s-1940s to more the compact layouts of the 1950s, a shift made possible
by the double use of the hall as dining room and circulation space. The Development Group
estimated that this reduced the proportion of the area given over to circulation from twenty-
three percent to seven percent, and in non-teaching accommodation from thirty-eight per-
cent to twenty-five percent. Overall, these new compact plans made it possible to reduce
the area per place by nearly forty percent in under five years without cutting the areas

56
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

available for teaching, thus enabling architects to meet the demands for economy without
compromising quality.
One result of this pressure to reduce costs was to encourage a convergence on successful
solutions to the layout of schools. With a large number of architects working on the design
of schools and with information on new buildings and new design ideas rapidly circulated
by the Ministry of Education and through the architectural press, a common approach, a
familial resemblance, though not necessarily a common ‘style’ for the design of the modern
school soon evolved, winning approval from professionals and public alike. Differences be-
tween the approaches of individual authorities remained: in Herts schools built under Aslin
looked very different from the schools built in the two neighbouring counties. Schools built
in Middlesex under Stillman and in Essex under Connoly differed from those in Herts - and
each other - in construction and in appearance. But schools in all three counties reflected
the same pressures to cut circulation and to replace the loose layouts of the late 1940s
with the more compact plans of the early 1950s. With flat, or gently sloping roofs, their
modest ‘domestic’ scale, large windows, the frequent use of lightweight and prefabricated
construction, bright colours, and with their generally light and spacious appearance, the
architecture of the new schools had much in common. It was this generic quality that was
recognised in the editorials and reviews of school building in the pages of Official Architec-
ture and Planning, The Builder, and the Architects’ Journal.

The Avant-Garde and School Building

Can we use this understanding of the school building programme to read the Smithsons’
achievement at Hunstanton? First a grasp of the contemporary debate on schools may
help us to see why two unknowns came to win the competition. Dennis Clark-Hall, a figure
whose reputation as a leading modernist school designer had been established as early as
1936 with his first prize in the News Chronicle’s School Competition and his design for
Richmond Girls Grammar School, was sole judge of the Hunstanton competition and had
just finished the design of the Cranford Secondary Modern School, Middlesex, with the
accommodation arranged around a covered court and with all the classrooms on the first
floor. Rejecting the finger plans as wasteful of space be had expressly commended the
Smithsons’ plan for its compactness in planning, an issue then at the heart of the discus-
sion of how best to reduce the cost per place in school building.

But if the Smithsons won the compeptition because of the apparent relevance of their
design for current issues, they then turned their back on the contemporary debate on
schools to concentrate on the eternal truths of architecture. Indeed we can point this up by
comparing their design on two key issues with one of the first Herts schools at Essendon,
designed at just about the same time: first on the critical issue of construction at a time of
severe shortages of manpower and materials; second, on the building viewed as a school
rather than as an architectural monument.

57
 Team 10 and its Context

Peter Smithson used to say with a kind of pride that their school took so long to build
because it swallowed the whole of Norfolk County Council’s steel allocation for four years.
True, the structure, designed using plastic theory, was as efficient and economical as a
frame might be. But how does it compare with the amount of steel used in a Herts school?
The Herts system may a measure of redundancy that comes from using a mass-produced
system in which the same section may do a different amount of ‘work’ in different condi-
tions. But overall it is my firm impression that the Hunstanton school uses more steel than
Essendon. Was this appropriate at a time of an acute national steel shortage?
In talking about the method of construction the Smithsons likened the way in which the
builder was being asked to treat the steel in the manner that a medieval carpenter might
treat wood: it was to be sized and cut to suit the particular context, the very antithesis of
system building, perhaps a suggestion of continuity to a rugged tradition of English build-
ing. But what did this mean in practice? This and the complete absence of applied finishes
made the school’s construction particularly taxing, a challenge willingly met perhaps, but
one requiring extra time and a continuous exercise of a high level of skill, not to mention
curious activities such as the cutting of storey height rebates in the brickwork so that the
steel and the brickwork might remain in the same plane. Here was a clear contrast with the
ease with which Essendon and other schools were built by semi- and unskilled labour after
the precision required for setting out the column bases. Keenly engaged with the making of
their particular monument and the integrity of its construction, the Smithsons approach
nevertheless exhibited a carelessness to the pragmatics of building in the 1950s, to the
larger imperatives generally shared across the school building programme to address non-
traditional construction as a way of keeping down the cost per place.
What then of the second point of comparison, the view of Hunstanton as school rather than
as monument or an acty of homage to Mies van der Rohe? Amongst the hagiographic
outpourings on Peter Smithson’s death in March this year, there was at least one former
headmaster of the school who remembered the terms in which the building seemed to
inhibit education. He recalls wrestling with its obstinate inflexibility and its insenstivity to
the needs of those teaching in it. Nowhere that I know is there any reference by the
Smithsons to the educational debates of the moment, or of the terms in which their design
would address the questions of teaching and education. Indeed lest the sight of the school
in use subvert the architectural order they had contrived, the Smithsons banished
teachers,children and all furniture from the published photographs of the building, a deci-
sion pointedly noted by even the Architectural Review.
At a time when the schools built by Herts and many other local education authorities were
begining to develop a radical form of building ordered around the processes of education, an
approach to architecture which was in some relatively unselfconscious way ‘other’, the
Smithsons appeared to cling to an old fashioned view of the architect whose prime respon-
sibility was to the art of architecture and to the integrity of their work in these terms. They
may have talked later about drawing inspiration from the rugged qualities of the everyday,

58
Reconstruction, School Building and the Avant-Garde

from the rush of urban life around them. But their engagement with the everyday remained
essentially aesthetic. Their’s remained a special everyday which spoke of an indifference
to the workaday world of everyman. At the very time when reconstruction was beginning to
change the old order of British society around them, they remained indifferent to the nature
of the new.

59
Team 10, the French Context

Catherine Blain

61
 Team 10 and its Context

Introduction

To date, there has been little investigation of the history of French post-war architecture and
urban planning1. That field is now being developed by several scolars interested by specific
themes and productions. In France, however, there is still a lack of serious research on the
history of Team 10 or even the post-war International Congress of Modern Architecture
(CIAM, Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne)2.
As an approach to such a study, it is useful to note that, in France, history of CIAM and
Team 10 is often reduced to a single simplistic idea: the utter failure of the principles set
forth within an emblematic document, the Charter of Athens written by Le Corbusier as a
conclusion of the 4th CIAM congress (1933)3. Indeed, since the mid 1970, modernist archi-
tects, especially the ones close to the CIAMs and Le Corbusier or defending the principles
of the Charter of Athens, have been blamed for all the ills of post-war architecture. As a
result, their history was rapidly relegated to oblivion even before it had been more closely
studied – as if the traumatic memory could be repressed or blotted out. The special issue
of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui of 1975 (‘Team 10 + 20’) was actually an elegant way of
encouraging this attitude. But now, as the period is emerging from obscurity, this interpre-
tation turns out to have been too simplistic.
Exploring this history more thoroughly, one might find it interesting to note two essential
myths which are connected with the post-war CIAMs – and are also related, to some
degree, to the earlier interpretation of the Charter of Athens.
The first is that of a generational gap, or, more accurately, serious differences in viewpoint
on the theme of Habitat between the CIAM old guard (founding members, like Le Corbusier)
and the young generation (the future members of Team 10, including Georges Candilis4).
According to this myth, at Aix-en-Provence, the younger architects formulated their inten-
tion to go beyond the simplistic model defined by the Charter of Athens (the four functions),
in search of ‘a complex model more responsive to the needs of identity’5. The work of Peter
and Alison Smithson (the ‘Urban Reidentification’ grid) and of the Moroccan and Algerian
teams is often cited as an expression of this intention. But what do we really know about
these works, within the context of the other projects presented at the Congress? Moreover,
have we ever examined the philosophical framework in which these differences of opinion
developed?
The second myth, which complements the first one, is that of the ‘murder of the father’:
parricide being the only possible solution to the intergenerational crisis which peaked in
Aix-en-Provence, at the 9th Congress (1953). This myth is supported by two emblematic
documents: a group portrait taken at the end of the last CIAM in Otterlo (1959) and a
pictogram sent by Le Corbusier to Bakema in 1961. In France, this idea is all the more
poignant since Georges Candilis worked with Le Corbusier and ATBAT from 1946 to 1954.
Then, it is almost as though the myth of the prodigal son had been merged with that of the
parricide. For although the CIAM, established in 1928, was widely viewed as ‘Corb’s world’
(according to Gropius), from a strictly French point of view, Team 10, emerging thirty years

62
Team 10, the French Context

later, could very well be seen as Candilis’ creation. However, one might notice that he does
not appear on the 1959 group portrait declaring the death of CIAM.
These two myths, as well as the idea of the failure of the Charter of Athens, are good entries
to open a discussion on Team 10 in France. In order to review the broader history of post-
war CIAM meetings and to investigate the work of their leading representatives, it is also
important to note that their debate, like the pre-war debate, was fostered in part by a
specific context. Therefore, to grasp this history, parallels should be drowned with the
architectural and urban condition, with the following questions in mind: How did this pro-
duction context reflected into the CIAM concerns? To what degree did it allow room for
ideas that suggested new ways of thinking and building?

The CIAMs and post-war France (1945-1953)

In 1945, a ravaged France was emerging from war6. It was urgent to implement sweeping
programs to deal with a shortage of urban housing, exacerbated by decaying housing
stock and a large population influx.
The government stepped into the breach. The first act of the Ministry of Reconstruction and
Urban Planning (MRU, Ministère de la Reconstruction et de l’Urbanisme, established in
November 16, 1944) was to draft a General Reconstruction Plan and institute a National
Fund for Housing Improvement. Then, in 1946, it published guidelines of the very first na-
tional Plan for Modernization and Amenities (Plan de Modernisation et d’Equipement de la
France, called Plan Monnet7). Efficiency was the watchword in the implementation of this
program. The MRU almost immediately set up task forces for various ‘development and
reconstruction projects in stricken municipalities’, with housing as a major priority.
Of course, the community of French architects was quite attentive to the evolution of the
discussion. This was especially true of the leaders of the Modern Movement, who had been
prominent in the pre-war CIAMs, grouped around Le Corbusier.

‘Corb’s world’

In 1945, Le Corbusier was 58 years old, and his years of rage and rebellion, marked by
emblematic projects and publications (including the Charter of Athens8), were part of the
past. It was now time for him to act rather than theorize.
This was the message conveyed by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, periodical to which Le
Corbusier was a contributor, along with other ‘great architects’ like Auguste Perret, Michel
Roux-Spitz, Jean Ginsberg, Georges-Henri Pingusson, Pol Abraham, Marcel Lods, Jean
Prouvé and Pierre-André Emery9. Indeed, the first issue of 1945 declared the advent of ‘the
great era [...] animated by a new spirit of construction and synthesis’. It called upon ‘de-
signers and builders, architects and urban planners, workers and technicians, industrial-
ists and investors’ to implement ‘logical, ingenious, sensitive, high-quality projects’ which
were to embody ‘a perfect harmony between Time and Place’10.
This statement of ideals reflects the enthusiasm alive in the Atelier Le Corbusier which, in

63
 Team 10 and its Context

1945, had been commissioned by Reconstruction Minister Raoul Dautry11 to design a housing
project in Marseille: the Unité d’Habitation. As a result of this commission, the office of Rue
de Sèvres embarked on an era of intense intellectual activity. In addition to writing numer-
ous of articles and books12, Le Corbusier designed a variety of projects — including some
directly related to the reconstruction effort, like the urban plans of Saint-Dié and La Roch-
elle-La-Pallice (1945-1946).
This excitement was almost immediately paired with a spirit of international openness.
Between 1945 and 1949, Le Corbusier and ATBAT (a multidisciplinary structure bringing
together architects, engineers, and technicians, founded in 1947 for the purposes of the
Marseille Unité project)13 welcomed a great number of young talents from all over the world.
Among them were architects Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods, Ionel Schein and
Guy Rottier, Jerzy Soltan, André Studer, and Roger Aujame, and the engineer Nikos
Chatzidakis14.
As we know, this fermentation eventually fizzled out: the Marseille Unité would for quite
some time remain the only real accomplishment of the enthusiasm of 1945. The reasons
for this failure were due in part to government guidelines set forth by the MRU for the
construction (or reconstruction) of housing.

MRU recommendations

In the early years of reconstruction, the rhetoric of the MRU made frequent references to Le
Corbusier’s Charter of Athens. Yet, it is not obvious that this reference served to inspire
‘well being’ and ‘beauty’, ‘harmonious and enduring works of Art’15 in the French land-
scape? In fact, the aims of the Ministry, which relied mainly on functionalist principles in
order to set guidelines for building, were quite distant from the spirit of the Charter.
On one hand, in order to address the urgent need to build mass housing, the government
adopted a policy of standardized models, so-called Buildings with no immediate purpose
(ISAI, Immeubles Sans Affectation Immédiate). They were easy to build and, most impor-
tantly, inexpensive. Research for such models was based in part on work by Pol Abraham,
a contributor to L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui who was in charge of the reconstruction of
Orléans. Indeed, after having defined a set of modular building standardization rules in his
book Architecture préfabriquée (1946), Abraham was involved in drafting a catalogue of
prefabricated modules and assemblies for use in construction (REEF)16. Support for this
trend also came from government-sponsored experimental competitions (CEX, Chantiers
EXpérimentaux), first in Noisy-le-Sec and Orléans (1946) and later in Creil-Compiègne,
Chartres, and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (1949, won by Marc and Léo Solotareff). This ex-
perimentation went hand in hand with the appearance of new building techniques, like the
Camus process which, in 1946, enabled the ‘dry-assembly’ of prefabricated components
on site. A new generation of dockside cranes made it possible to handle larger pre-fabri-
cated components (1949).
On the other hand, when it came to urban reconstruction, the main preoccupation of the

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Ministry was sanitation, rather than re-thinking the urban condition. Moreover, as a general
rule, urban planning tasks, like the housing construction contracts, were usually awarded
to architects linked to the Beaux-Arts tradition, whose concerns were far removed from
those of the CIAM. In fact, these architects design were mainly governed by the ‘theory of
composition’ — what Georges Gromort described as a ‘set of uncontested principles which
can be applied to any type of building whatsoever, and is called for regardless of the type of
construction being planned’17.
These attitudes prevailed throughout the 1950s, when the government instituted further
measures as incentives for the construction of mass housing. The Loi Courant (April 15,
1953) is a good example. Intended to facilitate the construction of low-income family hous-
ing units (LOGECO: LOgements ECOnomiques), this law instituted the use of catalogues
of typical plans for single-family and multiple-unit dwellings (plans-types)18. It also launched
two new Design-Build competitions, called MILLION and LOPOFA (LOgements POur les
FAmilles), whose goal was to reduce the cost of housing construction. In addition, in the
late 1950s, national legislation created a new framework for major development projects,
classifying large parcels of land as ‘priority urbanization zones’ (ZUP: Zone à Urbaniser en
Priorité, 1958)19.
Of course, a few of these reconstruction projects, awarded to Modern architects, stand out
as exceptions. Auguste Perret’s master plan for the reconstruction of Le Havre (1945-60)
and Marcel Lods’ project for the Sotteville-lès-Rouen housing area (1948-55) were often
cited as good examples. So was Le Corbusier’s Unité, which was indeed built in Marseille
within the ISAI procedure (1945-1955).
However, in most cases, the MRU reference to modernism, or even to the Charter of Ath-
ens, served to legitimize a reductive functionalist approach and the repetition of normative
designs. And this attitude, at the end, mainly engendered anonymous and monotonous
complexes of towers and apartment blocks with very little connection to specific geo-
graphic contexts or ways of life.

Within the community of architects, this choice of direction immediately attracted criti-
cism. Naturally, Le Corbusier and the other leading CIAM figures were among the first to
speak out.
Already at the 1947 congress in Bridgewater, the CIAM had issued a statement ‘reaffirm-
ing’ its aim to ‘work for the creation of a physical environment that will satisfy man’s emo-
tional and material needs and stimulate his spiritual growth’. In order ‘to achieve an environ-
ment of this quality’, its first task was to ‘enrich the aesthetic language of architecture’, to
‘combine social idealism, scientific planning and the fullest use of available techniques’
and ‘to ensure that the highest human and technical standards are attained in community
planning of whatever scale, from the region to the single dwelling’20.
At the 7th CIAM congress, held in 1949 in Bergamo, the failure of the majority of the recon-
struction projects to fulfill these aims was already generating frustration. Few French archi-

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 Team 10 and its Context

tects dared to express their dissent openly in front of their new Minister of Reconstruction
and Housing, Eugène Claudius-Petit, who attended the congress. Their positions, however,
were transparent in the selection of projects they presented, such as Marcel Lods’ recon-
struction plan for Sotteville-lès-Rouen or Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille21.
Criticism became more audible during discussions about ASCORAL’s Grille CIAM
d’urbanisme, presented by Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, Bodiansky, Wogenscky, Sive, Candilis
and Aujame22. In fact, beyond its aspect of a multiple-purpose tool for the analysis, synthe-
sis and presentation of projects, this grid invited field studies in order to compare different
ways for the ‘implementation of the Charter of Athens’…
At the same time, Georges-Henri Pingusson stepped forth to openly criticize the French
reconstruction program, in the name of the Union des Architectes Modernes:
Faced with the ugliness of our public buildings, the misery of our suburbs and our villages
[...], the art of our time should begin with urbanism. [...] Without urbanism, there cannot
really be any such thing as architecture. 23

The (foreign) experiments in Habitat

In the early 1950s, experimentation in foreign countries came to release some architects,
especially the young ones, who had been hemmed in their criticism of MRU policies. In
France, the trend towards international openness was promoted by L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, which assigned itself the task of covering good examples of construction in
Europe and abroad. The magazine had also become a forum for international debates,
especially those of the CIAM. Two experiments stood out as the greatest sources of influ-
ence for the new generation of modern architects: Le Corbusier’s plans for the new Indian
administrative capital of Chandigarh, and works in Morocco directed by the French archi-
tect Michel Ecochard (1905-1985), who had joined CIAM at the Bergamo congress.

A change of setting

For Le Corbusier, the turn of the 1950’s marked the beginning of another era. Already in
1949, after the completion of the design of the Marseille Unité, he had drastically changed
the structure of his office by reducing his staff. Some team members, like Candilis and
Woods, stayed close to him by moving to his technical structure, ATBAT, in order to super-
vise the construction of the Unité with Aujame and Rottier24. But in the office of rue de
Sèvres, it was really the start of a different design process. Subsequent commissions, like
the Master plan of Bogota, the Maisons Jaoul, the Maison du Brésil and La Tourette Mon-
astery, the Ronchamp Chapel and the other Unités d’habitation in Rezé-les-Nantes, Firminy
and Briey (with Pingusson), were designed within a small group of close employees (like
André Wogenscky and Fernand Gardien) and some younger architects (like Rogelio Salmona
and German Samper, Yannis Xenakis, Jacques Michel, Jean-Louis Véret and Balakrisnas
Doshi). The real turning point, however, came in December 1950, when Le Corbusier was
appointed as architectural advisor for Chandigarh. This mission, to build a capital city for

66
Team 10, the French Context

the new Indian republic, confronted the architect with an entirely different reality, quite
distant from French values and concerns: the wealth and complexity of India’s cultural and
architectural traditions, on one hand, and, on the other, the overwhelming poverty of ‘the
greatest number’ of Indians and the lack of building resources. This was a decisive encoun-
ter, which brought out the ‘other Le Corbusier’25, sensitive to the realities of the field. The
impact of that encounter was immediately perceptible in his projects. The Master plan of
Chandigarh, as well as projects like the Secretariat and Assembly buildings of Chandigarh
(site supervised by Pierre Jeanneret), the Millowners building and the Sarabaï and Shodan
houses in Ahmedabad (supervised by Véret and, later, by Doshi), quickly became models
for young French architects.
This experiment with distant lands echoed the work of Michel Ecochard in North Africa,
work which also raised questions about ‘the greatest number’. However, the situation
Ecochard faced as director of the Morocco Department of Urban Planning (1946-1952) was
quite different from that encountered by Le Corbusier26. Unlike the later, he had not been
commissioned to design emblematic buildings or a brand-new capital city ex-nihilo. His
task was to deal with the reality of an existing urban fabric and, more specifically, to solve
the housing problems due to overcrowding and slum conditions. In response, Ecochard
adopted a specific urban planning ethic, based on two essential precepts.
First: take existing structures into account. For Ecochard, knowledge of the social and
physical characteristics of the field was prerequisite to any plan: ‘the art of urban planning’
laid in ‘fitting into the reality’27. Therefore, he recommended two types of field studies: on
one hand, sociological and building surveys, used to shed light on the ‘human groups’ in ‘all
of their daily realities, be they pleasant or toilsome’; on the other, cartographic and statis-
tical analyses, used to identify ‘the city’s fundamental tendencies’, its vital fiber which
‘never loses either its strength or its rights’.
The second aspect of Ecochard’s ethic is his consideration for history and time. The archi-
tect distilled his approach as follows: ‘seize a passing opportunity, take advantage of a
fleeting moment of support. Then, waste time arguing’. This position led to an urban plan-
ning dialectic: on one hand, ‘touch [the existing city] as little as possible’ by ‘limiting
development to the large arteries vital to the city’s life and growth’; on the other, define ‘the
size and armature’ and study ‘in the greatest detail’ the housing projects in zones glazed
for development.
Along with Le Corbusier’s work in India, Ecochard’s work in Morocco was greeted with
enthusiasm by the architectural press and had an undeniable influence on the imagination
of young French architects. In fact, these two experiments were quickly perceived as the
antithesis of the methods fashionable in metropolitan France — those that Ecochard openly
denounced as ‘prescriptive formulas posing as modernism’, mere mind designs or abstract
schemes ‘designed to an ideal and imposed on reality’, providing only ‘static solutions’ to
real problems.28

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 Team 10 and its Context

French CIAM groups of the ’50s: a scattered family

In the 1950s, these experiments had more than a theoretical effect on French modern
architects. The most tangible impact was changes in its predominant figures, those gath-
ered around Le Corbusier and L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui and, more specifically, scattered
throughout Metropolitan France, Morocco and Algeria29.
Among these figures were numerous architects, both young and older, interested in build-
ing elsewhere something different then the MRU’s normative projects. Not all of them were
interested in joining the CIAM congress. But for some, especially the ones who went to
Morocco to work with Ecochard and ATBAT-Afrique (established in 1949 and placed under
the spiritual guidance of Vladimir Bodiansky)30, this change of scenery offered the opportu-
nity to join the French delegation. Among these were Pierre Riboulet, Gérard Thurnauer
and Jean-Louis Véret, who worked for Ecochard between 1949 and 1951 while still archi-
tecture students31. Also in this group were Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods, who
joined Jean-Jacques Honegger and the engineer Henri Piot at ATBAT-Afrique in 195132.
For these scattered architects, the 8th and the 9th CIAM congresses held in Hoddesdon
(July 7-14, 1951) and Aix-en-Provence (July 19-25, 1953) were important opportunities to
exchange views and to consolidate the portrait of the new French CIAM family.
This portrait will be clearly defined in Aix-en-Provence in 1953. On one hand, there were four
main intergenerational groups: ASCORAL (Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, Wogenscky, Chastenet,
Dubuisson, Zehrfuss et al.), BATIR (Lods, Bodiansky, Menkès, Honneger, Arsène-Henry),
CIAM-Morocco (or GAMMA, associating Ecochard with Bodiansky, Azagury, Candilis,
Woods, Piot, Kennedy et al., of ATBAT-Afrique) and CIAM-Alger (Emery, Miquel). One the
others, there were two younger groups, CIAM-Paris (Thurnauer, Riboulet, Véret, R. and E.
Aujame, N. and P. Chatzidakis, Rottier et al.) and ASCORAL B.A. (Alaurent and Perrotet,
Coulomb and Dufayard), as well as several individual members, like Jean Prouvé and André
Sive.33

The CIAMs of the new ‘conquering generation’

From the French viewpoint, the Hoddesdon congress of 1951, prepared under the aegis of
the British group MARS, marked the arrival of a new generation of architects, willing to
contribute to the modern debate on habitat.
The theme of the Congress, ‘the core of the city’, was a highly charged subject. For many
of those present, the ‘core’ (or the ‘heart’, depending on the interpretation34), raised ques-
tions about the social dimension of architecture and urban planning. Consequently, it chal-
lenged the approaches to ‘humanizing’ urban life35.

The ‘humanization of urban life’ (1951)

According to the report of the 8th CIAM36, three grids were presented by the French delega-
tion in Hoddesdon: one by Le Corbusier, and two others by Ecochard (CIAM-Morocco) and

68
Team 10, the French Context

by J. Alaurent (sociologist from Paris). Considered together, they are emblematic of the
new avenues being explored by French architects in their humanizing endeavor.
In the projects presented by Le Corbusier — the Master plan for the reconstruction of Saint-
Dié (France) and the Master plans of Bogota (with J.-L. Sert) and Chandigarh (with Jeanneret,
Fry and Drew) —, one might notice how the architect’s attitude shifted as a function of
context. More importantly, these projects revealed changes in Le Corbusier’s sensitivity to
human life. This was clearer in his oral presentation when, as he mentioned other built
projects, he sought to articulate his personal criteria for a good ‘urban center’: a ‘meeting
place for the Arts,’ the ‘spontaneous theater’ of ‘the expression of human life’, ‘the expres-
sion of the collective spirit and mind of the community’37.
The attention devoted to human life was even more characteristic of the contribution from
CIAM-Morocco, about Rabat-Sale, a project for the development and extension of Rabat in
the form of a ‘satellite city of 40,000 inhabitants’. That project revealed partly the enormous
work done by the Morocco Department of Urban planning at that time, based on surveys of
daily life and studies of traditional architecture in several parts of the country38. In fact,
under the guidance of Ecochard, that Department had several outgoing projects, some in
collaboration with ATBAT-Afrique. Master plans were being drawn up for Fès, Menkès, Safi,
Port-Lyautey, Agadir and Casablanca, in addition to a series of designs for infrastructure in
rural areas. And the 8x8 grid, an urban-planning approach developed by Ecochard and
ATBAT-Afrique and based on analysis of Moroccan traditional habitat (including the casbahs
and the medinas), was already proving its ability to construct ‘different types of housing
corresponding to different standards of living’39 in several places: Rabat (Yacoub El Mansour
district), Port-Lyautey (cleaning up a slum), Casablanca (Ain Chock district). Thus, at the
time, Morocco was indeed a laboratory for experimentation with habitat40.
The third contribution from the French was the ‘survey of daily life’ carried out in Paris by J.
Alaurent. It represents another offshoot of this reflection, more closely connected with
urban sociology. The discipline was then in its infancy, developing under the guidance of
Chombart de Lauwe41. The work of Chombart and his team, especially the surveys carried
out in Paris beginning in 1949, focusing on habitat conditions as a key to understanding the
social fabric of a large city, were to have a decisive influence on certain French architects.
It is often said that this 8th CIAM congress was an important sounding board, responsive to
new issues. One striking aspect of the French contribution was the aim to ‘humanize’ the
approach, by conducting various field studies. Their tools were historic and morphological
studies aimed at showing the complexity and diversity of existing cities, and sociological
studies aimed at understanding daily life. As a result, their work (especially that of CIAM-
Morocco) illustrated a truly innovative approach. As opposed to a reductive functionalism
(which carved urban life into functional elements), it considered the different levels of the
urban question (from village to metropolis) as parts of a whole. The task facing the planner
was then to restore the relationship between these parts, by considering both their material
and social aspects.42

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 Team 10 and its Context

Although these ideas tacitly questioned the individual’s relationship to the community, the
research barely touched the surface of the problem, which would later become central to
certain CIAM members, especially the youngest ones. They set out to understand ‘what
makes a community a community rather than an aggregation of individuals’: that is, they
reflected upon ‘the vitality essential and necessary to society, especially in its individual
and collective manifestations’43. From the outset, this important theme elicited an ethno-
logical or anthropological approach. It would become a central question at the congress of
1953.

The ‘Charter of Habitat’ and ‘human right to habitat’ (1953)

Being host of the meeting of Aix-en-Provence, which marked the 25th anniversary of CIAM,
the French delegates were in position to play an important role in the debates. The event
was organized by the ASCORAL group. Le Corbusier had then a great responsibility in the
theoretical orientation of the congress, especially when it came to define its theme, ‘The
Charter of Habitat; the dwelling’44, a clear response to the current concerns. But many
other French architects contributed also to that meeting on an individual basis. During the
congress, some of them were closely involved in commission work45. They also oriented
the debate by presenting nine grids over a global selection of forty contributions46.
In regards to the contributions of the previous meeting, as well as to the historians ideas
about the Aix congress, one might find most interesting to look closely to three of these
French grids: the ‘Moroccan habitat: housing for the greatest number’ grid by CIAM-Mo-
rocco (GAMMA), the ‘Bidonville Mahieddinne’ by CIAM-Algiers and the ‘Analytic study of
Boulogne-Billancourt’ grid by CIAM-Paris. Because theses grids served as the basis for
the 6th commission discussion on social issues, which led to the formulation of the prin-
ciple of a ‘human right to habitat’ (viewed as a permanent contract between society and the
individual):
‘Habitat must be an ongoing contract between society and the individual. The rights and
duties expressed by the contract must be reciprocal. The consequences of this contract
could be interpreted as a new concept: the HUMAN RIGHT TO HABITAT.’47
The first two grids, well known by historians, were an accurate illustration of the value of the
foreign experience for the renewal of French debate.
Considered in the light of the Hoddesdon contribution, the CIAM-Morocco’s grid, ‘Moroc-
can habitat: housing for the greatest number’, is a more detailed illustration of Ecochard’s
approach, grounded in the idea of ‘an absolute dependence between Habitat and Urban
planning’48. The grid was mainly built around an ongoing project conducted by ATBAT-
Afrique: the reconstruction of Casablanca’s ‘Carrières Centrales’ neighborhood, intended
to replace a shantytown slum covering some 250 acres of land (100 hectares). But it is
more than just a presentation of that project. Indeed, the panels divulged the specific de-
sign process: first, the consideration given to the findings of a field study (which included a
survey of existing construction and precise information about the inhabitants49); secondly,

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Team 10, the French Context

the studies that defined the principles of the ‘organized neighborhood’; and lastly and most
particularly, the type of habitat that was developed — strips of housing connected by alleys
leading to cul-de-sacs, referring to the traditional housing typology and built with new tech-
niques, which combined concrete walls and prefabricated components.
In a way, an echo of that approach can be seen in the ‘Bidonville Mahieddinne’ grid from
CIAM Algiers. Indeed, it presented findings from surveys on traditional or informal habitat
(the casbah, the slum), considered as the basis for the elaboration of various types of
habitat corresponding to a variety of lifestyles. But this work also stands on its own and
deserves a more specific study50.
Concerning the third grid discussed at the 6th commission, ‘Analytical study of Boulogne-
Billancourt’ from CIAM-Paris, there is much to be said since, until now, it has been abso-
lutely forgotten. This work was conducted by a young team of architects or related profes-
sionals who had worked either with Ecochard or with Le Corbusier and ATBAT51, and who
were highly interested by the sociological surveys conducted by P.-H. Chombart de Lauwe.
Because of these backgrounds and interests, their analysis of Boulogne-Billancourt (a
town on the outskirts of Paris) had a specific aim: to study, ‘from the perspective of daily
life’, the ‘ongoing relationship existing between individual and collective space in the heart
of the human community formed by the habitat’52. This analytical framework made an obvi-
ous link with the work shown by J. Alaurent and CIAM-Morocco at Hoddesdon. On one
hand, it referred to methods experienced by the urban sociologists in Paris; on the other, it
sought to transpose Ecochard’s approach to French metropolitan context. As a result,
using historic and analytic cartography, photographic surveys and schematic drawings, the
team brought out the essential characteristics of Boulogne: from its relationship to Paris
and its built fabric (with an emphasis on housing and uses) to its social structure and daily
life. This overview was meant to show that habitat was ‘an integral part of the social struc-
ture’ and, thus, that the role of habitat was to enable human beings ‘to develop, to express
personality, individuality and community instinct’.53 It led also to a clear conclusion state-
ment:
‘Habitat: the meeting point between sociology and architecture. Suitable housing cannot
exist in the absence of an organized environment.’54
On many issues, the intentions of these three French grids, which revealed a particular
attention to the realities of everyday life in both European and non-European contexts,
concurred the ones of other contributions discussed in the 6th commission on social is-
sues, like the two English grids, ‘Urban reidentification’ by P. & A. Smithson and ‘Rechampton
Lane Estate’ by Howell, Marlin, Wentfield Lewis, Colin Lucas, Bailey, Auris, Killik, Par-
tridge). For all that, could these grids justifiably be hailed as ‘the expression of a new way
of thought’? 55
To form a judgment, it would be necessary to survey the forty grids presented at the Aix
congress. Already, the titles of the other French contributions, like ‘Application of alumi-
num, Nancy’ (Jean Prouvé), ‘Experimental site: Aubervilliers’ (André Sive) and ‘Marly: Les

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 Team 10 and its Context

Grandes Terres’ (Marcel Lods), hint that they were shaped by other criteria, and more
closely related to the built reality. Therefore, it would be tempting to agree with the image of
a meeting marked by two major tendencies, concerning the subject matter as well as the
format of presentation. First, there was a pragmatic approach, presenting types of housing
project underway, according to the Grille CIAM d’urbanisme of 1948 (structured on the
basis of four functions). This was the case with the Lods grid, which reported on one of the
first project in France based on the idea of ‘the neighborhood unit’. Second, there was a
more theoretical approach, using a redefined grids of 3 or 4 levels which suggested new
analytical criteria. This was the case of the Smithson grid, which proposed a urban analy-
sis based on four levels of association (House, Street, District, City). Likewise, CIAM-
Paris, whose ‘working method’ incorporated a hierarchy of scales starting from the broad
and general and narrowing down to the individual on both the horizontal and vertical axes,
‘avoiding any arbitrary partitioning’56. But can we then conclude that this second approach
was provocative or subversive?
To answer that question, we have to go back to the preparatory discussions about the
congress. An interpretation key is given by the debate concerning the theme of meeting,
‘the Charter of Habitat’. One of the first aim of CIAM was, in fact, to define the term ‘habitat’,
understood by many as a ‘concept’ located ‘between urbanism and dwelling’57. From the
start, the idea was to refine the principles of the Charter of Athens and, thus, to encourage
the groups to investigate the meaning of one of the four functions: the ‘DWELLING func-
tion’, ‘the word DWELLING understood in the broadest sense’, considered as an ‘orga-
nized whole’, including the home and its ‘extensions’, ‘all that people organize and build for
the purposes of dwelling’58. Then, more interestingly, the problem was to define a ‘method’
which would enable the discussion and comparison of different researches on that matter.
In order to avoid abstract presentations, the organization committee recommended anchor-
ing the studies on reality, ‘on practical examples of projects or buildings’59. Yet, the prob-
lem was still to define the way such examples would be presented60. It quickly became
obvious that the four functions Grid of 1948 was not suitable for that purpose. A need for
change had already been expressed by the MARS group in Hoddesdon: although they
complied with certain general presentation directives, the group had already revised the
horizontal titles as a function of four ‘scales’ of considerations. The next step, at Aix-en-
Provence, was to put aside the 1948 grid. This idea was ratified in January 1953 by the
‘ASCORAL memorandum’, which clearly invited the groups to define a new grid of lecture:
‘The organizers of CIAM 9 refuse not only to impose, but even to propose a presentation
grid. Being premature, such a grid would necessarily be arbitrary, and thus liable to para-
lyze work within the groups. By allowing the groups to have total freedom, we can compare
the representation styles each group chooses to adopt, and, on that basis, determine the
valid functions of a definitive grid: the GRID OF THE DWELLING FUNCTION.’61
Thus, before the congress, the theoretical issue of that ‘dwelling function’ was already
being explored to a great degree. Moreover, new ways of presenting contributions were

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Team 10, the French Context

being devised. Indeed, the revision of the 1948 grid was attempted by the CIAM Committee
in February 195362, with a schema of three levels, corresponding to the themes ‘way of life,’
‘its material evidence’ and ‘technical implications’. Nevertheless, the freedom granted in
Aix was still relative. Indeed, in order to facilitate the interpretation and comparison of the
presentations, the groups were asked to ‘respect’ a ‘Work Grid’ which maintained three
standards:
1. A panel size of 21 cm x 33 cm (8¼’’x13’’), including a column on the right for expla-
nations;
2. An horizontal disposition of these panels, placed side by side (on 3 or 4 rows of
height), and their organization according to column headings;
3. A color coding for urban planning charts, roads and highways, and ‘architectural
elements’63

In light of these specifications, it appears that the young architects may have been the only
ones to seize the opportunity for expression. This might be why their work seems to be a
distinct departure from that of the older, more pragmatic groups who stuck to the format of
the 1948 grid — either out of conviction, laziness, or lack of time. Moreover, to go beyond
these differences, the various commission reports demonstrate a greater commitment to
certain key ideas, such as: the ‘essentially evolutive’ nature of habitat, its (necessary)
association with a given place and time, and, lastly, the ‘right to habitat’64 (as defined by the
6th Commission). Thus, according to Marcel Lods, it was urgent:
‘to satisfy at last the essential needs [...] both spiritual and material, currently denied to
most of the world’s population: the possession for each of a dwelling in which he can live a
normal life, a life of freedom and decency, a life of human dignity.’65
Of course, one might wonder whether these reports really reflect the debates which went
on between the 500 or so participants. Nevertheless, it seems clear that for many archi-
tects, especially the French, the identification of ‘elements appropriate to a habitat grid’
and the drafting of the Charter on Habitat had become the central issue for the CIAM. As
Wogenscky explains in the French publication on Aix:
‘The Charter of Habitat cannot define a single object. However, it can express universal and
permanent goals of that object, intentions, and performances, excluding momentary mate-
rial exigencies. In every era and under every sort of local condition, it is the duty of the
Builder to create Habitats which are as close as possible to desired performances. To do
so, the Builder applies his skill, sensitivity, and available technical and economic means,
to the best of his ability’.66

Epilogue. Future of CIAM, future of habitat

The analysis of the French contributions to the CIAM meetings of 1951 and 1953, place in
a more general overview of the post-war context, brings to light many elements that deserve
to be more examined closely by historians. Viewed within the French context, some re-

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ceived ideas about the Charter of Athens, the post-war CIAM debate and the emergence of
Team 10 appear to lose their accuracy.
In fact, the primary first myth about CIAM, that of a deep generational gap between mem-
bers during the post-war meetings and an intergenerational crisis reaching its peak in 1953
loses its pertinence. This myth is, in any event, contradicted by Candilis’ description of the
Aix event in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui as ‘a huge encounter between young and old,
students and professors’ who ‘as peers, discuss, seek, and analyze’ before biding each
other good-bye at a ‘big party held at night on the terrace of Le Corbusier’s Marseille
building La Maison des hommes, lit up like a beacon in the night, indicating the path of true
modern architecture to the young members of the CIAM’.67
The preceding analysis of French contributions shows more precisely how many young
and old CIAM members, having or not experienced foreign contexts or in the metropole,
shared a common aim: to go beyond the simplistic functionalist model (defined before the
war), in search of a more complex theoretical framework for the debate on habitat. What
remains valid of the crisis myth that this need for a change was, indeed, expressed most
clearly at the Aix congress, especially by grids of Moroccan, Algerian and Parisian groups.
Concerning the second myth, that of the ‘murder of the father’ supported by the ‘death of
CIAM’ group portrait of Otterlo (1959) and Le Corbusier’s pictogram (1961), more investiga-
tion of the final meetings is required before conclusions can be reached. Already, to go
beyond the strong image of that portrait, from which the French are absent, one should
refer to another document, often considered as the founding text of Team 10: the Doorn
Manifesto (or ‘Statement on Habitat’) written in January 1954 by young members in charge
of the organization of the 10th CIAM congress, who vividly denounced ‘urban planning con-
sidered and developed according to the terms of the Charter of Athens’ and asserted their
determination to ‘reformulate the goals of urban planning’68. Again, that document is prob-
lematic within the French context since a brief investigation shows that French delegates
were not involved in it. Does this mean, therefore, that Team 10 was intentionally created
without the French, or more precisely against its emblematic figure, Le Corbusier? Or does
it simply suggest that history should be questioned further in order to truly understand the
reasons why CIAM collapsed between 1953 and 1959?
The CIAM archives held at Foundation Le Corbusier reveal a debate that could be a starting
point for further research. That debate, opened by the CIAM Council before Aix-en-Provence,
concerned the ‘future of the CIAM’ or, more precisely, the ‘retiring of the older generation’
and ‘passing of the torch’ to the new ‘conquering generation’69. These questions had been
raised during a special ‘unofficial’ session of the Council held in May 1952, by a Le Corbusier
dismayed by the attitude of ‘the old ones’ at Hoddesdon (‘too rigid in their viewpoint, espe-
cially on social issues’). At that time, some young architects had joined the Council: Candilis,
Rogers and Howell were among them. Le Corbusier’s address was directly concerning
them. But feeling ‘not ready to act alone’, they asked that the ‘old gard’ remain to guide
them (Howell) and to continue the ‘natural evolution’ of CIAM, already started by the ‘intro-

74
Team 10, the French Context

duction into the Council of younger, more active members, who would replace the older
ones’ (Candilis). Agreeing to these demands, the older members had then proposed that
the 1953 event would be ‘a transitional Congress’, where ‘all doors’ would be opened to
youth (Le Corbusier) and where the older members, in order to maintain ‘continuity’ (Giedion),
would form ‘a cementing bond ‘(Van Eesteren).
This inner debate sheds a different light on the Aix congress. It certainly explains the arrival
of a huge number of new figures into CIAM at Aix, people like the young architects V.
Doshi, A. Neuman and R. Pietila70. It also allows an understanding of the constitution of
Team 10 as a part of that planned ‘natural evolution’. In fact, at the conclusion of the 1953
event, this evolution was based on two major decisions: first, a ‘young elite’ was created
within the CIAM Council (Bakema, Candilis, Howell, Emery, Lauritzen, Rogers, Steiner and
Wogenscky71); second, a group of young members was assigned to organize the next
encounter (it included some Council members, like Candilis, Bakema and Howell, and
other delegates, like Van Eyck, A. et P. Smithson, Voelcker, Gutman…).
In light of these facts, that reveal how the CIAM old guard tried to manage the transfer of
authority to the new generation, one might be tempted to reconsider some received ideas
about Team 10 and the Doorn Manifesto (the latter often presented as a declaration of war
to the older members). The message sent by Le Corbusier to the 10th CIAM congress held
in Dubrovnik in 1956 could be a philosophical framework for this discussion. Giving them
his parting blessing, he wrote:
‘Make the CIAM continue to thrive with creative passion and idealism; throw out the busi-
nessmen and the extremists. Good luck. Long live the CIAMS SECOND! Your friend, Le
Corbusier’72

75

1
On this period, see the following books:
Bruno Vayssière, Reconstruction
Déconstruction. Le hard french ou
l’architecture française des trente
glorieuses (Ed. Picard, coll. Villes et
sociétés, Paris, 1988), Danièle Voldman,
La reconstruction des villes françaises
de 1940 à 1954 : histoire d’une politique
(L’Harmattan, Paris, 1997), Gérard
Monnier (dir.), Joseph Abram,
L’architecture moderne en France, tome
2. Du chaos à la croissance 1940-1966
(Ed. Picard, Paris, 1999), Jacques Lucan,
Architectures en France (1940-2000) ;
histoire et théories (Ed. du Moniteur,
Paris, 2001).
2
An initial reading is supplied by
Rassegna, n° 52 ’The last CIAMs’, Dec
1992 (see, in particular, the contribution of
Jean-Louis Cohen, ‘The Moroccan Group
and the Theme of Habitat’, pp. 58-67) and
by the recent work of Eric Mumford, The
CIAM discourse on Urbanism, 1928-
1960, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass), 2000.
3 10
On the Charter of Athens, see the
interesting analysis by P.-G. Gerosa, ‘La
déclaration finale du IVe congrès des
CIAM’, in COLL., Actualité de la Charte
d’Athènes, (actes du 2e colloque sur la
crise de l’environnement et de l’habitat,
Couvent de la Tourette, L’Arbresle,
France, 22-24 October 1976), Ed. de
l’Institut d’Urbanisme et d’Aménagement
régional, collection Urbanisme et Sciences
Sociales, Strasbourg, n.d. [c 1977], pp.
27-103
4
In 1953, the group in charge of organiz-
ing the 10th CIAM was made up of
Candilis, Bakema, Gutman, Howell, Van
Eyck and Van Ginkel (later joined by P. and
A. Smithson, Voelcker, Woods, Studer and
Neuenschwander)
5
Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture,
a critical history, Thames and Hudson,
London, 1980, p. 253
6
In 1945, in France, nearly 1.5 million
apartment buildings were damaged and 5
million people were homeless or living in
makeshift homes (according to L’homme
et l’architecture, n° 1, July-August 1945,
p. 14).
7
An executive committee was empow-
ered to implement this program on January
3, 1946, with Jean Monnet as its chair-
man.
8
One should note that there were two
76
Team 10 and its Context
versions of this Charter: the first one,
published under the name of CIAM-France
in 1943 (Ed. Plon), and the second one,
reviewed by Le Corbusier and published
under his name in 1957. For a detailled
analysis, see: Pier Giorgio Gerosa, ‘La
déclaration finale du IVe congrès CIAM’, in
COLL., Actualité de la charte d’Athènes,
actes du 2e colloque sur la crise de
l’environnement et de l’habitat, couvent de
l’Arbresle (France), 22-24 octobre 1976,
Institut d’urbanisme et d’aménagement
régional, Université des Sciences
humaines de Strasbourg, coll. Urbanisme
et Sciences sociales, 1977, pp. 27-103.
9
In 1945, if these architects were
involved in the supervisory committee of
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, they were
also active in another periodical, Tech-
nique et architecture (directed by
Auguste Perret), while encouraging the
creation of L’Homme et l’architecture,
whose editor-in-chief, André Wogenscky,
would be Le Corbusier’s apologist.
Pierre Vago, ‘Un chapitre s’achève...’,
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n° 1, 1945,
pp.3-4. In this first post-war issue, AA,
founded in 1931 and led by André Bloc
(general director) and Pierre Vago
(chairman of editorial staff), reaffirm his
aim to be ‘a forum for exchange open to
all present-day tendencies with the
exception of academicism’. In facts, it will
be the main vehicle for the ideas of the
Modern Movement, while the ‘academic
positions’ were defended by other
magazines, such as L’Architecture
française or La construction moderne.
11
Raoul Dautry, a fervent admirer of Le
Corbusier, was followed as Minister by
Francois Billoux (1946), René Coty (1947-
1948), Eugène Claudius-Petit (Sept. 1948-
Dec. 1952), Pierre Courant (January-May
1953), Maurice LeMayre (June 1953-
Nov.1954), Roger Duchet (Feb.1955-
1958), Pierre Sudreau (June 1958-1959)
and J. Maziol (April 1962 Pompidou
cabinet).
12
These writings include Les trois
établissements humains (1945), Manière
de penser l’urbanisme (1946), Grille
C.I.A.M. d’urbanisme : mise en applica-
tion de la Charte d’Athènes (1948)…
13
ATBAT was founded in 1947 by Le
Corbusier, Vladimir Bodiansky (an
engineer), André Wogenscky, Marcel Py
Team 10, the French Context
(with Jacques-Louis Lefebvre, adminis-
trator). On its history, see Marion Tournon-
Branly, ‘History of ATBAT and its influence
on French architecture’, Architectural
Design, January 1965, pp. 20-23; Jean-
Louis Cohen, ‘The Moroccan Group and
the Theme of Habitat’, Rassegna, n° 52 :
The last CIAMs, December 1992, pp. 58-
67.
14
The agency ‘black book’ notes the
nationalities and periods of employment of
these staff members, in the order in
which they arrived: Roger Aujame (1940-
1949, French) and Edith Schreiber (1946,
American, soon to marry Aujame),
Georges Candilis (1946-1949, Greek),
Jerzy Soltan (1946-1948, Polish), Ionel
Schein (1946, French), Guy Rottier (1947-
1949, French), Shadrach Woods (1948-
1949, American), André Studer (1948,
Swiss), and Pirko Hirvela (ATBAT 1947-
1948, Finnish, soon to marry Chatzidakis)
and Nikos Chatzidakis (ATBAT 1948-1956,
Greek).
15
Le Corbusier, La Charte d’Athènes, Ed.
Plon, Paris, 1957: point 92
16
See Pol Abraham, Architecture
préfabriquée, Ed. Dunod, Paris, 1946.
Abraham’s research on prefabrication will
find a conclusion at the end of the 50’s,
with the publication by the CSTB (Centre
scientifique et technique du bâtiment) of a
Recueil des éléments utiles à
l’établissement et à l’exécution des
projets et marchés de bâtiments en
France. R.E.E.F. 1958 (diff. facs, 1958-
1961).
17
Georges Gromort, Essai sur la théorie
de l’architecture, Vincent Fréal & cie,
Paris, 1942 (collection of lectures from his
theoretical classes at the Beaux-Arts
school of Paris).
18
Ministère de la Reconstruction et de
l’Urbanisme, Logements économiques et
familiaux, Plans-types, 2 volumes: 1°
Logements individuels, (single-family
dwellings) 2° Immeubles collectifs
(multiple-family dwellings), June 1953. It
should be noted that these catalogues
were produced with contributions from
various architects, including R.O. Boileau,
J. Fayeton, A.G. Heaume, J. H.
Labourdette, M. Novarina, A. Persitz, A.
Sive, J. Sebag and B Zehrfuss (for
multiple-family dwellings), the Arsène-
Henry brothers, J. Hébrard, M. Joly, Le
Corbusier, J. Prouvé and J. Royer (for
single-family dwellings).
19
Other legislation on zoning and building
passed in the 1950s includes: the 1954
Code de l’urbanisme et de l’habitation
(1954), a Règlement national
d’urbanisme (1955) and the Règlement
national de construction (1955: this policy
on mass housing would remain in effect
until 1965). A number of agencies were
formed to follow up on activities (SCIC,
SCET, SEDES, and the ‘Sociétés de
développement Régional’, etc.).
20
‘Reaffirmation of the aims of CIAM,
Bridgewater, September 13th, 1947’ in S.
Giedion (ed.), A Decade of New Architec-
ture - Dix Ans d’Architecture
contemporaine, Girsberger ed., Zurich,
1951 [2nd enlarged edition, 1954].
21
These presentations are mentioned by
Eric Mumford, The CIAM discourse on
Urbanism, 1928-1960, MIT Press,
Cambridge (Mass), 2000, pp. 180-187.
22
Drafted in Paris by the members of
ASCORAL and adopted by the CIAM
Council at Easter, this grid was published
in June in a pamphlet entitled Grille CIAM
d’urbanisme; mise en pratique de la
Charte d’Athènes (Ed. De l’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, Paris, 1948). It opened with
the essay entitled ‘Reaffirmation of the
aims of CIAM’ (see note 21).
23
Georges-Henri Pingusson, ‘Manifeste de
l’UAM de 1949’, in J.-P. Epron (dir.),
Architecture, une anthologie, volume 1:
‘La culture architecturale’, IFA / Ed.
Mardaga (avec le concours de la SCIC),
Paris, 1992, p. 301. Note: UAM was
founded in 1934 (cf. ‘Manifeste de l’UAM’,
Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n° 7, 1934, pp.
7-10)
24
Thus the Unité d’habitation was the first
work by Le Corbusier and ATBAT. Staff
included: Vladimir Bodiansky, consulting
engineer, André Wogenscky and Jacques
Lefebvre (architectural planning),
Georges Candilis, Roger Aujame, Guy
Rottier (site supervision). Charlotte
Perriand and Jean Prouvé also worked on
the project.
25
See Kenneth Frampton, ‘L’autre Le
Corbusier’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,
n° 249, February 1987.
26
Trained at the Paris school of Beaux-
Arts in the inter-war period (1925-31),
Michel Ecochard began his career in Syria
77

(1932-42, city plan for Damascus), then in
Lebanon (1941-46, city plan for Beirut).
He directed the Morocco Department of
Urban Planning from 1946 to 1952. See J.-
L. Cohen and M. Eleb, Casablanca,
mythes et figures d’une aventure urbaine,
Hazan/Belvisi, Paris, 1998
27
The quotations which follow come from
Michel Ecochard’s book Casablanca, le
roman d’une ville, Ed. de Paris, Paris,
1955
28
Michel Ecochard, Casablanca, le roman
d’une ville, Ed. de Paris, Paris, 1955
29
One should remember that these North-
African countries were French at that
time: Morocco being a protectorate since
1912 (became independent in 1956) and
Algeria a colony since 1827 (war in 1954,
independence in 1962).
30
ATBAT-Afrique, a branch of ATBAT, was
founded in Tangiers, Morocco in 1949 as
an engineering firm. It then moved to
Casablanca and took shape as a team of
architects and engineers. From then on,
ATBAT-Afrique would develop a number
of habitat projects. See M. Tournon-
Branly, ‘History of ATBAT and its influence
on French architecture’, Architectural
design, January 1965, pp. 20-23 ; J.-L.
Cohen, ‘The Moroccan Group and the
Theme of Habitat’, Rassegna, n° 52 : The
last CIAMs, December 1992, pp. 58-67 ;
J.-L. Cohen and M. Eleb, Casablanca,
mythes et figures d’une aventure urbaine,
Hazan/Belvisi, Paris, 1998.
31
After their degree in common, on a
subject given by Ecochard (1952), Pierre
Riboulet, Gérard Thurnauer and Jean-
Louis Véret will pursue this foreign
experiment: the first two working with
Ecochard in Pakistan (University of
Karachi, 1955-1958) and the last one as
supervisor of the construction of the
Ahmedabad projects for Le Corbusier
(1952-1955). They established their own
office in 1958, with Jean Renaudie: the
Atelier de Montrouge (1958-1981). See
Catherine Blain, L’Atelier de Montrouge
(1958-1981); prolégomènes à une autre
modernité (PhD, Paris 8 University, 2001)
and ‘Un atelier à Montrouge’ (Colonnes,
n°16-17, sept. 2001, pp. 14-19).
32
Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods
will come back to France in 1954, to open
their own office in Paris with Alexis Josic
(1954-1970).
78
Team 10 and its Context
33
The detailed list of the groups is given
by the archival materials of the 1953
congress kept at Fondation Le Corbusier
[FLC]. A survey should be done for the
1951 congress.
34
The theme of the ‘core’ would become
that of the ‘heart’ when the acts of the
congress were published. Cf. J. Tyrwhitt,
J.-L. Sert, E. N. Rogers (ed), CIAM 8. The
Heart of the City ; towards the
humazisation of urban life, London-New-
York, 1951 [2nd ed : ‘Documents of
Modern Architecture’, Kraus reprint Ed.,
Nendeln, 1979]
35
See S. Giedion’s article ‘The Humaniza-
tion of Urban Life’ (1951) — published in
CIAM 8. The Heart of the City (1951); S.
Giedion, Architecture you and me (1952) ;
Architectural record (April 1952) ; Das
Werk (Nov. 1952) and in S. Giedion,
CIAM. A decade of contemporary
architecture - Dix ans d’architecture
contemporaine, 2nd enlarged edition,
Girberger, Zurich, 1954
36
J. Tyrwhitt, J.-L. Sert, E. N. Rogers (ed),
CIAM 8. The Heart of the City ; towards
the humazisation of urban life, op.cit.
37
This theme recurs in various reports
from the CIAM 8 — cf. Commission I
Report, session of 9 July 1951. President,
Le Corbusier [FLC D218/96]; Report from
Commissions I and VI, ‘Proposals on
hearts’ [FLC D218/119-120]
38
In 1950, the Morocco Department of
Urban Planning directed by Ecochard was
divided into two sections. The first, the
central unit, was itself divided between a
technical section (chief architect, J.
Maruret, and a team of architects: D.
Beraud, M. Barzat, E. Mauret, etc., and
draftsmen) and an administrative section.
The second unit was a regional inspection
department, with four branch offices:
Casablanca (G. Godefroy, inspector; P.
Mas, R. Pelletier and A. Nodopaka
architects), Fès (J. Delarozière inspector,
A. Degez and K. Hodel architects),
Marrakesh (R. Duru inspector) and Agadir
(R. Aujard inspector). For an overview of
the outgoing projects, see L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, n° 35, May 1951 ‘Maroc’.
39
Michel Ecochard, Casablanca, le roman
d’une ville, op. cit., p.105. The grid, which
includes streets and infrastructure
(sewers, etc.) makes it possible to build a
traditional dwelling (two or three rooms
Team 10, the French Context
and a patio). Using a variety of combina-
tions, it is intended to be flexible enough to
accommodate, in time, the creation of
other types of housing (individual or
collective).
40
It is significant that, in parallel with the
mass housing and re-housing policy, the
Morocco Department of urban Planning
was following up on other facilities, like
the civilian hospital in Rabat and the
Agadir city hall (a competition won in 1951
by Marcel Lods and L. Arsène-Henry,
Bodiansky engineer, from ATBAT-Afrique).
It was also in charge of a number of
apartment complexes, in Casablanca (J.J.
Honneger, J. Zevaco and P. Messina),
Marrakesh (A. Courtois) and Menkès (J.
Chemineau) — See L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, n° 35, May 1951 ‘Maroc’.
41
See, in particular: P.-H. Chombart de
Lauwe, S. Antoine, L. Couvreur, J.
Gauthier and al., Paris et l’agglomération
parisienne, PUF, Paris, 1952 ; Paul-Henri
Chombart de Lauwe (dir.), Famille et
habitation, 2 tomes (1° Sciences
humaines et conceptions de l’habitation ;
2° Enquête auprès des architectes),
CNRS, Paris, 1959-1960. Note that this
research, which was initially funded by
the Musée de l’Homme and the CNRS,
would also receive a grant from the
Ministry of City Planning and Housing.
42
One should note that this attitude was
promoted by the Charter of Athens, which
considered the city as ‘part of a social,
political, and economic ensemble making
up the region’ (point 1) and, likewise, as a
‘whole made up of parts’ which must
‘grow harmoniously’ toguether (point 84).
43
Comments from the Dutch (Bakema,
Hovens Greve and Wissing), reported by
J.-L. Violeau, Situations construites 1952-
1968, Sens et Tonka, Paris, 1998, p. 34
44
The sub-title was added at the February
1953 CIAM Council meeting ‘to avoid any
misinterpretation of the title’. See ‘Compte-
rendu de la réunion du Conseil CIAM tenue
à Paris, 35 rue de Sèvres, le 15 February
1953’ (by S. Giedion) [FLC D3 (2)328-
331]. Attending the Council were: Le
Corbusier, Giedion, Wogenscky, Gropius,
Emery, Honegger, Candilis, Howell,
Markelius, Rogers, Samuel, Steiner.
45
The French members were implicated in
three of the six commissions of the
congress, whose composition were as
follow: 1° Urbanisme, section A (Le
Corbusier and Sert chairmen, Aujame
secretary); 4° Industrialisation (Coates
chairman, Bodiansky and Lonberg-Holm
vice-chairmen, Honegger secretary); 5°
Législation (Lods and Ecochard chair-
men); 6° Questions sociales (Emery and
Candilis chairmen; members: A. and P.
Smithson, Jill and Bill Howel, Thurnauer,
Riboulet,…). They were also following
closely the discussions held in commis-
sion 2, Synthèse des Arts plastiques
(Giedion chairman, Tournon-Branly
secretary, members: Auer, Bagnal,
Bourgeois, Braeti, Chastanet, Coulomb,
Gregotti, Haefeli, Laidlaw, Maisonseul,
Richard, Sekler, Senn, Tamborini, Van
Eyck, Vert, Voelcker, Wicker) and in
commission 1, Urbanisme, section B (J.
Bakema chairman).
46
The nine French grids were: ‘Bidonville
Mahieddinne’ by CIAM-Algiers (P.A. Emery,
L. Miquel); ‘Moroccan habitat: housing for
the greatest number’ by GAMMA
(Ecochard, Bodiansky, Candilis, Woods,
Piot, Kennedy, Godefroy, Beraud); ‘An
analytic study of Boulogne-Billancourt’ by
CIAM-Paris (Thurnauer, Riboulet, Véret, R.
and E. Aujame, N. and P. Chatzidakis,
Rottier, Creswell, Le Lann, Raccoursier) ;
‘Hygiene study’ by Ascoral B.A. (Perrotet,
Coulomb, Dufayard) ; ‘Les Grandes
terres, Marly-le-Roi’ by M. Lods, J.J.
Honneger, X. and L. Arsène-Henry;
‘Experimental site: Aubervilliers’ by André
Sive ; ‘Application of aluminum in Nancy’
by Jean Prouvé; ‘Rouen, transformation
d’un secteur de 25 000 habitants’ by a
group of students meeting with M. Sylvy;
‘Etude: groupe Informations-Enquêtes’ by
Ascoral B.A. (J.P. Allain, M. Marcelli, J.
Denieul, J. Alaurent).
47
’CIAM 9 Aix-en-Provence. Commission 6
: Questions sociales’ nd. [private
archives; in capitals in the original]. Note
that the 6th commission also defined four
‘laws’ – ‘fundamental standards for the
dwelling’: ‘I. The dwelling is an organic
whole; II. The dwelling is made up of
elements. III. The dwelling is an element
within a set. IV. The dwelling evolves and
is transformed rationally.’
48
Michel Ecochard, cited by Georges
Candilis in ‘CIAM 9 Aix-en-Provence, July
1953. La Charte de l’habitat. Extraits des
travaux individuels. Quelques extraits des
79

travaux des 6 commissions’,
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui n° 49, Oct
1953, pp. IX-XII (with contributions from
Bodiansky, Ecochard, Le Corbusier, Lods,
A. & P. Smithson, B. & J. Howell). See
also: Georges Candilis, ‘L’habitat pour le
plus grand nombre’, Techniques et
Architecture, n° 11-12, 1953, pp. 8-16.
49
For a more detailed analysis of these
field studies, carried out by Pierre Mass
and Pierre Pelletier, see J.-L. Cohen and
M. Eleb, Casablanca, mythes et figures
d’une aventure urbaine, Hazan/Belvisi,
Paris, 1998.
50
On that specific contribution, see
Zeynep Çelik, ‘Learning from the
Bidonville: CIAM Looks at Algiers’,
Harvard Design Magazine, feb 2003.
51
CIAM-Paris was founded as an outcome
of the Sigtuna meeting of 1952, by Gérard
Thurnauer, Pierre Riboulet and Jean-Louis
Véret (who attended the meeting under
the group name of ‘Paris-jeunes’), former
Corbusier and ATBAT staff members Guy
Rottier, Edith Schneider-Aujame and Roger
Aujame, Pirko Hirvela-Chadzidakis and
Nicos Chadzidakis (engineer) and the anti-
conformists Jean Le Lann, Paul
Raccoursier and Denise Creswell (who
had worked with Pierre Jeanneret).
52
Annotation by Pierre Riboulet to the
document ‘CIAM 9, Critique à propos du
travail anglais’, nd. [private archives] — In
the margin of the text ‘the work should not
be based on a study of the functions, but
rather a study of human groups and
phenomenon of human relations’, Riboulet
wrote: ‘Quite right. This was our intention
in Boulogne. The neighbourhood would
seem to be the best terrain for this type of
study [...].Without absolutely no doubt, this
is one of the chief duties of the Charter.
The ongoing relationships between
individual and collective space in the heart
of a human group make up the habitat.
These relationships must be analyzed in
light of daily life.’
53
Jean-Louis Véret’s manuscript notes on
the Sigtuna Congress of 1952 [private
archives]
54
’CIAM 9. Grille du CIAM-Paris. Introduc-
tion à l’étude d’une grille de présentation,’
July 1953 [FLC F16/95-96]
55
Alison and Peter Smithson, ‘Collective
Housing in Morocco’, Architectural
Design, January 1955, p. 2.
80
Team 10 and its Context
56
’CIAM 9. Grille du CIAM-Paris. Introduc-
tion à l’étude d’une grille de présentation,’
July 1953 [FLC F16/95-96]
57
‘MARS, Proposals for CIAM 9’, 1952
[private archives; Cf. FLC- C24 : Les
documents de Sigtuna 1952]. Among
those who attended the Sigtuna meeting
(Sweden, June 25-30, 1952): Tyrwhitt,
Van Eesteren, Merkelbach, Van
Bodegraven, Van Eyck, Bakema, Hovens
Greve, Honneger, Roth, Schwartz, Suter,
E.N. Rogers, etc.
58
‘Programme du CIAM 9 à Aix-en-
Provence. Lettre circulaire de l’ASCORAL’,
January 11, 1953 [FLC D3 (2)476-479]
59
See ‘Programme de travail pour le 9e
congrès CIAM, l’habitat’, ns, nd [drafted by
A. Wogenscky, discussed during the
CIAM Council of May 1952] [FLC D2 (20)
323-325] ; ‘Programme du CIAM 9 à Aix-
en-Provence. Lettre circulaire de
l’ASCORAL’, January 11, 1953 [FLC D3
(2)476-479]
60
Cf. ‘Programme de travail pour le 9e
congrès CIAM, l’habitat’, ns, nd [A.
Wogenscky, 1952] [FLC D2 (20) 323-325]
; ‘Programme du CIAM 9 à Aix-en-
Provence’’ Ascoral memorandum, January
11, 1953 [FLC D3 (2)476-479] ; ‘Compte-
rendu de la réunion du conseil CIAM tenue
à Paris, 35 rue de Sèvres, le 15 February
1953’ (par S. Giedion) [FLC D3 (2)328-
331].
61
A memorandum circulated by Ascoral,
January 11, 1953 [FLC D3 (2)476-479]. It
was unsigned. However, at the time, the
following people attended Paris meetings
of the CIAM Council: Le Corbusier,
Gropius, Giedion, Candilis, Emery,
Honegger, Howell, Markelius, Rogers,
Samuel, Steiner and Wogenscky. Note
that, in 1952, Wogenscky had suggested
that three primary ‘vertical headings’ be
added to the grid: ‘1) the project’s
relationship to city development; 2)
material needs; 3) spiritual needs.’ The
proposal was refuted by the 1953
circular.
62
‘Compte-rendu de la réunion du conseil
CIAM tenue à Paris, 35 rue de Sèvres, le
15 February 1953’ (by S. Giedion) [FLC D3
(2)328-331].
63
The color charter was defined by
Wogenscky in 1952: for functions
(residences/yellow, open spaces/green,
social services/blue, commercial services/
Team 10, the French Context

red) and arteries (major roads/red, chaiman, Le Corbusier et W. Gropius vice-

secondary roads/orange, sidewalks/ chaimen, S. Giedion general secretary, J.
yellow) — See ‘Programme de travail Tyrwhitt secretary, J.J. Honneger
pour le IXe congrès CIAM, l’habitat’, ns, nd treasurer ; 2° Members : J. Bakema, G.
(A. Wogenscky, 1952) [FLC D2 (20) 323- Candilis, P.A. Emery, W. Howell, V.
325] Lauritzen, E.N. Rogers, R. Steiner, A.
64
ASCORAL, CIAM 9 (Aix-en-Provence Wogenscky.
73
19-25 July 1953); Contribution de ‘Message de Le Corbusier adressé au
l’architecte d’aujourd’hui à la Charte de 10e congrès CIAM à Dubrovnik’, 23 juillet
l’habitat, Ed. Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1956, 6 p. + annexe [FLC D3 (7)121-127].
Paris, nd (c1954) The 10th congress was held in Dubrovnik,
65
Marcel Lods, ‘Conclusion of the 5th July 19-25, 1956, under the title ‘Habitat.
commission’, reported by Georges Problems of relations. First CIAM proposi-
Candilis in ‘CIAM 9 Aix-en-Provence, July tions. Constations and resolutions’.
1953. La Charte de l’habitat…’, loc. cit.
(see note 49).
66
André Wogenscky, introduction of
ASCORAL, CIAM 9 (Aix-en-Provence 19-
25 July 1953); Contribution …, op. cit.
67
Georges Candilis, ‘CIAM 9 Aix-en-
Provence, juillet 1953. La Charte de
l’habitat’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n°
49, Oct 1953, p. IX
68
Extract of the first version of the
manifesto, untitled ‘CIAM meeting, 28-31
janvier 1954, Doorn. Statement on Habitat’
and signed by Bakema, Van Eyck, Van
Ginkel, Hovens Green, Smithson and
Voelker, published by Forum (n°7, 1959).
The text is quite different in the second
version, untitled this time ‘The Doorn
Manifesto’, but unsigned, published by A.
Smithson in Team 10 primer (Standard
Catalogue, London, nd., 1965).
6970
The quotations which follow come
from the note ‘Conseil CIAM, mai 1952.
Conseil extraordinaire et officieux’ [FLC
D3(1) 2-8]. At this meeting, organised by
Giedion et held at Le Corbusier’s office,
assisted Gropius, Tyrrwhitt, Giedion, Van
Eesteren, Wogenscky, Markelius, Wells
Coates, Samuel, Honegger, Steiner and
three new members: Candilis, Rogers et
Howell.
71
Detailled lists are given by the following
archives: ‘CIAM 9 : liste des membres des
différents groupes et adresse des
participants au congrès’ [FLC D3 (6)1-35]
and ‘CIAM 9, Aix-en-Provence. 24 juillet
1953. Liste des grilles’ [FLC D3 (3) 1-4].
72
The composition of the CIAM Council,
elected during the general conclusion
meeting of Aix, was published by Candilis
in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (n°49,
juillet 1953, p. XI) : 1° Bureau : J.L. Sert
chaiman, C. Van Eesteren honorific

81
Giancarlo De Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role, originality and

networking

Luca Molinari

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 Team 10 and its Context

It is rather difficult to introduce the figure of Giancarlo De Carlo in the realm of the postwar
Italian architectural culture, because on one side De Carlo is still an active presence within
the Italian debate (his recent Domus’ articles are the demonstration of an original point of
view) and on the other side the uniqueness of his position, as it is always presented by the
historians, should be soon confronted with a real, in depth archival research. As we all
know every author, even the most open-minded, likes to play with his story, to preserve and
to construct a topical passage of his intellectual and professional path designing an heroic
vision for the next generations. I don’t think that Giancarlo De Carlo played a lot with it, but
at the same time I believe we should go beyond the apparently individualist and autono-
mous position of De Carlo, as it is often presented, by confrontng it with a series of net-
works and actors that could help us to examine his role and the originality of his position.

1968

In 1968 De Carlo was invited to organise the XIV Triennale in Milan, one of the most impor-
tant and prestigious cultural events. It was to be occupied by a crowd of students. Giancarlo
De Carlo, at the peak of his career, decided to face the crowd alone and to start a debate
with the students. The title of the Triennale exhibition ironically represented its own des-
tiny: Il grande numero (The great number) – it turned out a large number of people intended
to squat and destroy parts of De Carlo’s project.

But at the same time ‘The great number’ represents the core of the theoretical research of
De Carlo during the 1950s and 1960s and one of the most original contributions within the
Italian context. The exhibition was partially organized around the works of a group of de-
signers he invited such as Arata Isozaki, Aldo van Eyck, Op ’t Land, L. Chadwick, A.
Gutnoff, Archigram, Alison and Peter Smithson, G. Kepes, R. Giurgola, S. Woods, UFO,
Hans Hollein. The exhibition ideally symbolizes the network of a leader who does not want
to be a leader; of an individual within a group of individuals. The destruction of the XIV Expo
symbolizes the loss of a chance for the Italian architectural culture and the defeat of the
cultural pre-eminence of De Carlo within the Italian and Milanese context versus the an-
tagonistic position of the emerging, neo-rationalist and marxist-structuralist young design-
ers and theoreticians such as Vittorio Gregotti, Manfredo Tafuri, Giorgio Grassi, Massimo
Scolari and Aldo Rossi (who will organize the XV Triennale on the Tendenza).

Italy 1950-1968

Around 1968 Italy has reached the peak of a fast and dramatic metamorphosis which
involved the whole country. As Paul Ginsborg says in his ‘History of the contemporary
Italy’: ‘Italy in the mid-1950s was still an under-developed country. Its industrial sector (..)
was limited both geographically, being confined mainly to the north-west, and in their weight
in the national economy as a whole. Most Italian still earned their living in the traditional
sectors of the economy (..) In 1951 the elementary combination of electricity, drinking

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Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

water and inside lavatory could be found in only 7.4% of Italian households. Agriculture was
still the largest sector of employment (with) 42.2% of the working population in 1951 (..) In
less than two decades Italy ceased to be a peasant country and became one of the major
industrial nations in the West. The very landscape of the country as well as its inhabitants’
places of abode and ways of life changed profoundly’.1

I give you some data:

Gross domestic product 1951-58 5.5%, and 1958-63 6.3%;
Industrial production doubled its level of production;
Common Market: exportation 23% in 1955, 29.3% in 1960, 40,2% in 1965;
Italy refridgerator production: 1951 18.500, 1957 370.000, 1967 3.200.000, largest pro-
ducer in Europe after USA and Japan;
From 1950 to 1970 pro capita income grew more rapidly than in any other European coun-
try: from a base of 100 in 1950 to 234,1 (France 136, GB 132);
Increasing of domestic durables: 1958 12% owned a television in 1965 49%
1950 to 1964 the number of private cars rose from 342.000 to 4.67 million and motorcycles
from 700.000 to 4.3 million.
Between 1951 and 1971 the location of Italy’s population underwent a revolution: 9.140.000
Italians were involved with dramatic consequences due to the level of population of the
Italian cities with an increase of the 30-40% as well of the 70-80% in the immediate hinter-
land. The same period lived a catastrophic change in the landscape and cityscape of the
Italian peninsula. Many of the historic centres of the Italian cities and towns were modified
irreversibly, their suburbs grew as unplanned jungles of cement and hundreds of kilometres
of coastline were ruined. Italy became in that period a unique example of a developed
European country split between the resistance of the traditional contexts and the rush into
modernization, showing a series of social and urban phenomena which will affect Europe in
1960s and 1970s.

I am introducing these elements because I believe it is rather impossible to focus on the

postwar Italian architectural culture, when we consider the debate within the late CIAM
congress, without considering the anomaly of post war Italian process of modernization.
The uniqueness of a series of themes debated in Italy in that period such as tradition versus
modernity, the role of preexisting conditions, continuity, human scale and some of the
architectural works produced could only be related to the particular Italian context between
mid 1930s and the end of 1950s.

The Italian architectural elite developed an ambiguous, and twofold attitude toward these
conditions: in short, a retreat in the design process, modern style as an image of a new
modernity, or the attempt to focus on new conceptual and operative tools to face the in-
creasing quantity of the social and economical phenomena.

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 Team 10 and its Context

Giancarlo De Carlo’s role and positioning within the modernist networks

De Carlo kept an eccentric position in relation to the traditional networks frequented by the
Italian modernist architects. De Carlo is strongly individualist, and politically he is an anar-
chist and attends the anarchists’ meetings after the end of 2nd World War2. In a certain way
De Carlo personalized the increasingly individualization which characterized all the mod-
ernist Italian networks after the end of the war. De Carlo followed an eccentric path that
linked anarchy as personal view world, modern architecture as a theoretical, living horizon
and the Einaudi group at Bocca di Magra as group of cultural relationship (Elio Vittorini,
Italo Calvino, Levi, Albe Steiner, Cesare Pavese, Franco Fortini, Vittorio Sereni, Marguerite
Duras, and Carlo Bo, writer and rector of the University of Urbino who became from 1951 his
main customer).

During the 1940s and 1950s, the role of De Carlo within the modern architectural networks
is mainly focused on the Milanese scene, especially in relation to the key figure of Ernesto
Nathan Rogers. Founder and member of the BBPR architecture firm, one of the main
leaders of the modernist Italian group MSA (Movimento Studi per l’Architettura), member of
the CIAM since 1936 and member of the CIAM council since 1946, director of Domus from
1946 till 1947, Rogers represented the ‘good-father’ of De Carlo at the beginning of his
career and at the same time a good friend and adviser.

Rogers introduced him in the Domus circle in 1946. De Carlo wrote his second book in
1947 in the series on Modern architects directed by BBPR. Rogers presented De Carlo at
the CIAM Congress in 1952 and De Carlo accompanied him as his junior partner during all
the meeting in the 1950s (the first, fundamental one is the ‘mythical’ meeting in La Sarraz
in 1955 when De Carlo met the other members of the emerging Team 10). Rogers will
introduce him to the MSA in 1948 and De Carlo will be the vice-president during Rogers’
chairmanship in 1950-51. Rogers invited De Carlo to be part of the board of Casabella-
continuità in 1953 until 1957 when De Carlo left again. presumably Rogers presented De
Carlo at the Triennale where he later edited the exhibition on the ‘Architecture without
architects’ in 1951 and the ‘Mostra di urbanistica’ in 1954. Most of the members of Italian
CIAM and MSA were teaching at the School of Venice directed by Samonà, where De Carlo
started teaching in 1954.

I would like to focus on three seminal events to evidence the progressive construction of an
original point of view which could describe the contemporaneously individualistic and col-
laborative role of De Carlo:
1945-47: the two books he edited on Le Corbusier and William Morris
1953-1957: the board of Casabella-continuità
1959: the Otterlo CIAM conference

96
Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

Each of these three events deals with a personal definition of the Modern Movement, of its
nature and scope, on its crises and value in relation to the new phenomena issued by the
changes in the postwar world. The core remains continuously the active and living role of
Modern architecture and at the same time the contrast to every experience of formalism
and ‘stylistic naturalism’. Modernity is seen as a living process, as a methodology applied
to reality which eventually leads to formal results.

By the end of 1950s’ De Carlo has definitively exceeded the complex and problematic
master-disciple relationship with Rogers and at the same time he has absorbed a series of
design and conceptual experiences that gives account of his position within the Italian and
the international contexts.

Some biographical notes on Giancarlo De Carlo

Born in 1919 in Genova, De Carlo spent his childhood in Tunis where he lived and studied
untill 1937. He then went back to Italy. In 1943 he graduated in Engineering at the Politecnico
of Milan, after which he moved to the Faculty of Architecture. From 1943 to 1945 he actively
participated in the Resistenza movement (Movimento di Unità Proletaria, MUP) and met
Giuseppe Pagano. In 1945, a few days after the end of the war, Rosa and Ballo Publishers,
an anarchist Milanese publisher, started a new series of publications involving Giulia Veronesi,
Albe Steiner, Paolo Grassi and Luciano Anceschi. De Carlo edited for the same series a
collection of writings of Le Corbusier and his wife Giuliana translated Frank Lloyd Wright’s
‘Architecture and Democracy’. In 1948 De Carlo moved from the Faculty of Architecture of
Milan to Venice together with Ignazio Gardella, and in 1949 he finally graduated. Between
1949 and 1950 he worked with Franco Albini and, in 1951, he opened his own office.

The first event 1945-1947: La casa dell’uomo / la casa per l’uomo / la misura dell’uomo

After the war De Carlo mainly focused on the works and writings of Le Corbusier, Frank
Lloyd Wright and William Morris. Why?
Browsing through the texts he wrote at that time we can point out some key concepts
which represent an interesting starting point in his development and which also overlap with
the themes carried out by Rogers with Domus-la casa dell’uomo and Elio Vittorini with Il
Politecnico.

As De Carlo wrote on Morris

‘Morris insegnando che l’architettura non può essere dissociata dale condizioni sociali
e morali dell’epoca a cui appartiene restituì all’architetto la coscienza della sua
missione tra gli uomini. Col suo lavoro e con l’esempio della sua vita egli mostrò
come fosse necessario per chi voleva costruire per l’uomo, essere vicino all’uomo,
partecipare dei suoi problemi e delle sue sventure, lottare al suo fianco per il
soddisfacimento delle sue esigenze morali e materiali. (..) E’ questa parte
dell’insegnamento di Morris che costituisce il fondamento etico del movimento
moderno.’ 3

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 Team 10 and its Context

At the same time De Carlo’s interest for Wright’s organicism represented, not necessarily
a formalistic reply to Functionalism, but rather the way how to come to terms with and to
give theoretical shape to the construction of a modern, human-size environment.

In the same year Rogers added the subtitle ‘La casa dell’uomo’(the house of man) to
Domus, originally conceived by Giò Ponti as the magazine of the moderate style of Mod-
ernism. ‘The house of man’ became a new methapore for the reconstruction of a different,
modern way of living and thinking in Italian society. As Rogers wrote in his first essay: ‘A
magazine can be an instrument, a filter for establishing the criterion of choice.(..) It is a
matter of forming a style, a technique, a morality as terms of a single function. It is a matter
of building a society.’4
The magazine became an instrument for a radical revision of the values and tastes of the
Italian society.

Rogers’ illusion that the revolutionary spirit of the Resistenza had imbued the Italian soci-
ety and gradually changed it, followed and influenced the theoretical structure of the maga-
zine. ‘The house of man’ immediately appeared on the main cultural horizon, as a metaphore
of the humanistic utopia of modern culture. As Rogers wrote in his first leading article: ‘A
house is no house if it is not warm in winter, cool in summer, serene in every season,
receiving the family in every harmonious spaces. A house is not a house if it does not
contain a corner for reading poetry, an alcove, a bathtub, a kitchen. This is the house of
man.(..) I want to have a house that may look like me (in better aspects): a house that may
look like my humanity.’5

In 1947 Elio Vittorini, one of the most interesting Italian writers after the war, edited the
weekly magazine Il Politecnico, with the economic support of the Einaudi publishing house,
and the political patronage of the left wing parties. Vittorini introduced a new form of journal-
ism of a high, cultural level, combined with an advanced attention to the visual and social
message. For the first time in Italy great attention was given to the graphic lay out of the
magazine and to the use of illustrations to draw the reader’s attention into the different
articles. The graphic structure experimented by Abe Steiner in Il Politecnico strongly influ-
enced the Italian magazines. The editors of the Politenico included artists and writers from
different backgrounds. The review published works of Carlo Bo, Guido Piovene, Ernesto
Rogers, Eliot, Pasternak, Eluard, Auden and Saba and, at the same time, interesting
reports on the social and political conditions in Southern Italy, the FIAT, the economical
crisis and the International situation. In the same period Domus introduced a different, and
more expressive use of its illustrations and graphic art.

Eventually, the political election of april 1948 ended an illusory, short phase of the political
life of the country based on a ‘governo di unità nazionale’. It meant a new phase influenced

98
Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

by the cold war and strong ideological oppositions. Rogers was fired by Domus and Il
Politecnico soon closed. But in Rogers’ opinion there remained the necessity of a maga-
zine as an ideological support for the Modern Italian networks mainly based on the group
that worked with him during the Domus period (Giulia Banfi, Marco Zanuso and De Carlo).
At the same time the theme of ‘The real man, the man’s size’ became a fundamental point
of discussion in the post war modernist Italian context. It was an attempt to exceed a rigid
and mechanical vision on Functionalism and at the same time to build a link between
society and Modern architecture, that was considered to be too elitist and too far removed
from society.

During the IX Triennale of 1951 Rogers and De Carlo edited two small but enlightening
exhibitions: Ernesto Rogers with Vittorio Gregotti, Lodovico Meneghetti and Giotto Stoppino
designed and edited a room entitled ‘La misura dell’uomo’ and De Carlo organized a sec-
tion on ‘Architecture without architects’ as an ideal follow-up on the former, fundamental
exhibition on ‘Rural architecture’ curated by Mario Pagano in 1936.
Both exhibitions dealt with the theme of humanity of modern architecture and on the neces-
sity to create a different link between society and modernity.

In those years Giancarlo De Carlo gradually shifted his theoretical vision from architecture
to the Urbanistica, a different vision of the city. Within this vision the core of the problem
was the great number and the quality of quantity within the new architectural programmes.
In 1954 De Carlo curated another exhibition for the X Triennale dedicated to the ‘Urbanistica’.
The core of the exhibition was constituted by three movies that he directed together with
Elio Vittorini and Lodovico Quaroni, in all of which we find the same themes. The main
focus of the movies is always the common man and the city as a cradle of growing com-
plexities. At the same time we can evidence a criticism on modernism as a technocratic
approach to complexity, a criticism on modernism as a rigid, deterministic methodology
against the comprehension of reality and its phenomena, a criticism on modernism as a
new academic formalism.

One year later De Carlo was asked by Rogers to become part of the editorial board of the
new Casabella-continuità.

The second event - Casabella continuità

In 1953 Ernesto Nathan Rogers, adding the subtitle Continuità to the Italian architectural
magazine Casabella, introduced one of the most important topics of discussion in the post
war international architectural culture. Continuità summarized a complex ideology progres-
sively theorized by Rogers in close relationship with parts of the Italian and International
modernist scene after the 2nd world war. But before going into this a short overview of the
main meanings given to these key words during the 1950s.

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 Team 10 and its Context

1. historical awareness
-Continuità as an ‘historical awareness’ of the modernist experience:
Continuità as continuity with the previous experiences. This is the basic significance;
Continuità is a motto that underlines the new life of Casabella and the continuity with the
Casabella of Pagano and Persico.

2. the modern tradition

- Continuità as an ambiguous defense of the work of the Modern masters and as idealist
continuity with the experience of the avant-gardes:
The ‘legacy’ Rogers expressed is a statement of continuity with the masters’ work as well
as with the tradition of the Modern Movement.
Rogers, following the ‘traditional’ enunciation stated by Hitchcock-Johnson and Giedion
during the 1930s, reinforced this ideal, hierarchical structure re-introducing the concept of
‘mannerism’ as an act of continuity with the work of the masters for the younger genera-
tions.
Casabella-continuità presented the masters’ work as exempla of a ‘living’ methodology.
The articles on the contemporary works of Mies van der Rohe (‘Classicità di Mies van der
Rohe’), Gropius/Tac (‘Un opera di Walter Gropius nelle preesistenze ambientali di Atene’),
Le Corbusier (‘Il metodo di Le Corbusier e la forma della cappella di Ronchamp’), F.L.
Wright and Alvar Aalto tried to strengthen the vision of the Modern Movement as a living
process submitted to an inner, natural evolution.

At the same time the individuation of a continuità meant the individuation of a history, of a
tradition of the Modern Movement. From 1946 BBPR directed a series of books titled I
maestri dell’architettura moderna which introduced in Italy, for the first time, monographical
publications on the works of European and Italian authors from the 19th century untill the
postwar period. The enlarged publication on the Modern Movement focused on the works of
Morris, Olbrich, Garnier, Mackintosh, Perret, Hoffmann, Boito and Henry van de Velde. It
was even further expanded in Casabella-continuità through some essays and monographic
issues which Rogers commissioned to some of the younger members of his editorial board
(Gregotti on Behrens, Rossi on Loos, Grassi and Canella on the Dutch School, Gregotti
and Rossi on Antonelli, E.N. Rogers himself on Perret and Van de Velde).

3. methodology and tool

- Continuità as methodology that could be individually applied in relationship with the differ-
ent preexisting conditions;
continuità as an ideological tool capable of bringing together tradition, context and moder-
nity:
The definition of a historiography of modernism ran parallel to the definition of Continuità as

100
Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

a methodological approach. Rogers tried to achieve an open methodology that considered

tradition as a form of ‘historical awareness’, and the preexisting conditions not as a limit to
be avoided but as the main sources for the contemporary designer.

4. the magazine
Casabella-continuità, born under these ideological conditions, and basically conceived by
Rogers as a magazine of tendencies, supported the work of the masters of the Modern
Movement on one side, and the new Italian design on the other. The polemics that emerged
from the issues of Casabella-Continuità clearly showed the problems generated by the re-
examination of the legacy of the Modern Movement after the 2nd World War, with the call
both for an oecumenical internationalisation and for a re-discovery of the national and re-
gional characters. The debate was moving between the definition of the modern style as a
statement of a new, modern world and the design process as an expression of a methodol-
ogy based on a strong ethical consciousness.

Continuità and crisi (or continuità and discontinuità) embodied the dramatic dichotomy
between an elitist dimension of the Modern Movement and the radical cultural, social and
economic change that was sweeping the Western world, that was employed by Rogers as
the terms and the borders of an ineluctable antinomy where the methodological characters
of the Modern Movement should be reframed.

In mid-1951 Maurizio Mazzocchi, owner of the Editoriale Domus and of the magazines
Domus and Casabella, invited Ernesto Nathan Rogers to be the director of the new Casabella
after a silence of five years. His strong international connections, a relevant role in the post-
war Italian culture and a good relationship with advanced Italian industry suggested Rogers
as the proper director for a new international architectural magazine. Rogers created with
Casabella-continuità an ideological umbrella able to embrace the theoretical debate and
design mainly expressed by the Italian CIAM group, the Movimento Studi per l’Architettura
(MSA), and the School of Architecture in Venice, where the CIAM Summer School was
carried out from 1954 to 1956, and where an important part of the modernist designers were
teaching (from Belgiojoso to Albini, De Carlo, Gardella, Samonà and Quaroni).

The first issue (n°.199) was published in the fall of 1953, the editorial board was composed
by Giancarlo De Carlo, Vittorio Gregotti and Marco Zanuso, with Julia Banfi as secretary.
The editorials by Rogers set the rhythm of evolution of Casabella signalling the changes
and the debate within the editorial board. Thus Rogers’ editorial direction (and not so much
Marco Zanuso, Giancarlo De Carlo and Julia Banfi who came from the first Domus’ experi-
ence) also became a fundamental ‘school’ for two generations of Northern Italian young
architects like Vittorio Gregotti, Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi, Gae Aulenti, Luciano Semerani,
Francesco Tentori and Guido Canella, who would be considered in the 1960s and 1970s to
be among the most influential architects in Italy.

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 Team 10 and its Context

It is important to underline that the use of the term Continuità is mainly related to the first
phase of the magazine from 1953 to 1959; Continuità is a fundamental element of the
discussion among Rogers, De Carlo and Gregotti and, after De Carlo’s resignation in 1957,
it would be used less, although remaining one of the main references of the theoretical
architecture planned by Rogers.

Around the concept of continuità there were not only two different interpretations of the
postwar Modern architecture but also a generational opposition between Rogers, critical
guardian of the Modern Movement which was he redesigned as an alive, changing process,
and De Carlo, supporter of the generational intolerance that considered the end of pre-war
rationalism as a prerequisite to radical reform.

In March 1957 De Carlo wrote his last article for Casabella ‘Una precisazione’ (A clarifica-
tion) which is the tip of the iceberg of a long, private discussion between Rogers and De
Carlo from 1953 to the end of 1956 on a series of themes moving from the difficult relation-
ship between him, as a critical voice within the group, and Rogers’ ‘guardians’ like Gregotti
and Banfi (as they were represented by De Carlo) to the organization of the magazine, and
most of all to the theoretical nature of Casabella.

De Carlo contested Rogers’ conservative vision and his use of the term Continuità as ‘ambigua
faccia della conciliazione’ of the contradictions within postwar Modern architecture. In-
stead he supported a contradictory and polemic approach to problems in order to open up
Modern architecture to reality. De Carlo conceived crises as a perennial, positive state and
condition. Continuità became for De Carlo the motto of Rogers’ identification with the maga-
zine and the narrowing of a larger debate on Modern architecture and its role in post war
society.

The third event - CIAM-Team 10 and Otterlo 1959

The same situation, naturally, occurred within the CIAM congresses with Rogers, Giedion
and others of the elder generation supporting continuità as a basic concept to define an
unbroken tradition of Modern Architecture and the arising Team 10 dealing with a critical
exceeding of the Modern Movement.

Casabella-continuità pointed out the ‘anomaly’ of post-war Italian design and its different
relationship with the use of history, publishing BBPR’s Museum of the Castello Sforzesco
in Milan, Casa alle Zattere by Gardella in Venice or Casa d’Erasmo in Turin by the young
Gabetti and Isola which was immediately considered as an expression of a return to ‘Lib-
erty’ as main visual precedents. An ‘anomaly’ which was also immediately pointed out by
Banham in Architectural Review as a ‘retreat from Modern Architecture’ in a violent polemic
with Rogers on the Italian Neo-Liberty6 and which anticipated the controversy with the

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Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

Italian architects during the Otterlo’s meeting7. We could consider the CIAM Otterlo meet-
ing in 1959 as an important borderline between two different phases in the history of
Casabella-continuità.

At the same time Otterlo showed a personal, independent position of De Carlo who pre-
sented one of the four projects of the Italian group (with BBPR, Gardella, Magistretti). Next
to this he presented his statement entitled ‘Memoria sui contenuti dell’architettura moderna’,
by which he closed a phase that started with the books on Le Corbusier and William
Morris, opening a new period of researches, projects and relations. In his Memoria De Carlo
stressed the idea of the definitive crisis of Modern Movement and CIAM giving his personal
view on how to overcome this.

Firstly he described the two main conceptual areas of the Modern Movement as core and
essence of the problem. A first group composed of William Morris/Arts and Craft, the school
of Chicago, Berlage and Behrens, Loos and German rationalism, who tried to elaborate
new theoretical tools to face the new, modern condition and who see style as a conse-
quence. A second group composed of Art Noveau, Wiener Secessionism, Futurism, Ex-
pressionism, Neo Plasticism and Le Corbusier who looked to the creation of an ‘autonomia
della forma’, and where all formal innovation arised from an individual intuition of reality.
Method versus Style.

The second, basic point of discussion is De Carlo’s vision on the city as the core of the
contradictions, problems as well solutions. The Urbanistica becomes the place where all
these issues are elaborated.

What seems to me very interesting is the contradictory relationship between the architec-
ture produced by Giancarlo de Carlo echoing the Italian context (see Comasina houses
and Casa Zagaina Cervignano in relation to the contemporary works of Albini and Gardella)
and the originality of his theorization which will be an important contribution to the Team 10
discourse. De Carlo reflections on the human scale, on the big number, on the design
process as ‘architettura partecipata’ (attended architecture)(de Carlo started the first ex-
periments in 1955 at Bocca di Magra as a direct consequence of his cultural and anarchist
views), just like the Italian debate on tradition, preexisting conditions, on national and local
architecture, all this will be part of De Carlo’s contribution to the international modernist
debate and even more so to the Team 10 discourse.

Of the same period the Campus Design proposal for Urbino reflects the intensive exchanges
and the debates: in the Collegio del colle we could notice the consequences of the reflec-
tions on the human scale as well on the connecting spaces (spazi di relazione) theorized
by the Smithsons. And at the same time the language experienced in those projects moves

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 Team 10 and its Context

between a reflection on Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s architecture, Le Corbusier’s Maison

Jaoule and the early works of James Stirling showing a different generational attitude to-
wards modernism and history as well a mature personality.

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Giancarlo de Carlo and the postwar modernist Italian architectural culture: role originality and
networking

1
Paul Ginsborg, A history of contemporary
Italy. Society and politics 1943-1988.,
Penguin Books, London, 1989, p.210-211
2
On the relationship between architecture
and anarchism, See: Angela Mioni, Etra
Conie Occhialini (eds.).
Giancarlo De Carlo. Immagini e frammenti.,
Electa, Milan, 1995, pp.2-5; Franco
Buncuga. Conversazione con Giancarlo
De Carlo. Architettura e libertà., Eleuthera,
Milano, 2000.
3
Giancarlo De Carlo. William Morris,
pioniere dell’arte sociale, in, Domus
, n.211, 1946
4
Ernesto Nathan Rogers.
Programma: Domus la casa dell
’uomo, in, Domus, n.205, 1946
5
Ibidem, p.1
6
Reyner Banham, Architectural review,
no.747, April 1959; Ernesto Nathan
Rogers, Casabella continuità no.228, 1959
7
Ernesto Nathan Rogers, I CIAM al museo,
Casabella continuità, no.232, 1959

105
An Encounter with History: the postwar debate between the English Journals

of Architectural Review and Architectural Design (1945-1960)

M. Christine Boyer

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

Architectural debate in England concerning postwar reconstruction of towns and cities was
contained within a language of ‘Englishness’. This discourse involved issues of national
identity, and the relationship of England to its past and future, as well as to the American
present. 1 Adjustment to postwar circumstances was painful for England: it was forced to
give up its empire, marginalized with the rise of the USA and USSR as new world powers,
and it was deeply troubled over the effects American mass culture might have on its social
stability. One observer of postwar England noted “1945 saw the greatest restoration of
traditional social values since 1660.”2 Social change – or so it was believed — could be
managed by keeping to English ‘traditions’ which were ordinary and simple. 3 England was
‘an unassuming nation,‘ made up of “quiet, private and ordinary people defined by their
modesty, kindness to others, loyalty, truthfulness, straightforwardness, and simplicity.” 4

Townscape analysis, or the English Picturesque, which the editors of Architectural Review
[AR] promoted, was tied to this plain and simple language of ‘Englishness’. AR argued in
its editorials that the man in the street wanted a picture of the postwar world that the
planner was designing for him yet he was denied such a visual policy. Even though there
existed a national picture-making aptitude embedded within the 18th century Picturesque,
this theory had never been applied to the urban scene. Hence AR set itself the task to
develop a series of townscape principles that would ameliorate the surface antagonisms
that appeared along the streets of English towns and cities. The Picturesque was a blend
of popular modernism with English traditionalism, an aesthetic theory that enabled people
to see functionally incoherent objects in convincing visual relationships. AR’s editorial policy
maintained that the English Picturesque was an art of compromise, a specifically English
form of synthesis. Such a compromise gave satisfaction to all tastes, both the amateur in
the backyard and the professional in his regional plans.5

At the same time as the reinvention of the English Picturesque, and in part as a reaction to
its full realization in the Festival of Britain in 1951, as well a rejection of their elders advocat-
ing the provincial legacy of ‘Englishness’ with its stifling stress on tradition, a younger
generation of artists and architects developed an alternative method of looking at cities and
their commercial environments. Some of their discussions would take place within a small
group – known to us today as The Independent Group – that met informally and intermit-
tently at the Institute of Contemporary Design between 1952 and 1954. In their first meet-
ing, the group explored Eduardo Paolozzi’s series of images, which he called ‘found im-
ages’ or cut-outs from American magazines and comic books. Their clear fascination with
American commercial art and its crash consumer culture was a strong provocation to set
against English traditions. These icons from a more consumer oriented mass production
society offered an escape as well from postwar austerity and continued rationing and they
were hopeful indications for the immediate future. As two members of the group, Alison and
Peter Smithson, claimed “[m]ass production advertising is establishing our whole pattern

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and Architectural Design

of life – principles, morals, aims, aspirations, and stand of living. We must somehow get
the measure of this intervention if we are to match its powerful and exciting impulses of our
own.”6 This bountiful aesthetic would eventually find an expressive outlet in the pages of
Architectural Design [AD].

Besides this debate over the relevant images to exploit in pursuing a postwar policy of
design for the built environment, there were more fundamental issues to confront regarding
the nature of the newly established welfare state facing the task of reconstruction and
planning the good society. Change was to be orchestrated through a series of compro-
mised legislations. For example, the Garden City Movement, a product of the turn of the
century, gained a new lease on life with respect to the reconstruction of town and country
during the 1940s. This movement culminated in the New Towns Act of 1946 and was the
conceptual home for such progressive thinkers as Raymond Unwin and Patrick Abercrombie
who mingled traditional forms with modern agendas. Abercrombie appeared to be “a re-
gional gardener, planting New Towns, trimming pre-war housing sites: ‘these slabs of hous-
ing should be welded into real communities, their ragged edges rounded off, social and
shopping centers properly planned, and local green belts provided.’” 7 Here too, architects
were not venturing far from English tradition as the conveyor of modern architecture. 8

Yet architects concerned with aesthetics in postwar England had other reasons for con-
cern.9 First was the increasing reliance on technological solutions to architectural prob-
lems that might potentially lead to the elimination of architects in favor of engineers. And
second, the growth of town planning as an independent profession, that relied increasingly
on expertise beyond the control of architects. Since 1932, the Town Planning Institute held
the authority to examine candidates who no longer needed to first pass examinations set
by architects. In either case it was feared, the aesthetic discourse about postwar recon-
struction might lead to the marginalization of architects, especially those who advocated a
modernist stance.

In addition, architects were outraged over intentions embodied in the language and regula-
tions of the Town and Country Planning Act, framed in 1943, 1944 and 1947. The Act gave
final say over all future development to plans conceptualized by local authorities whose
interest and training were far from those architects held. In all of the 120 sections of regu-
lations found in the Act, only six dealt with aesthetics: two concerning the preservation of
buildings of historic or architectural interest, two focusing on limiting controls of signage on
buildings, and the final two referring to trees in developing areas. In summary, then, these
are a few of the many concerns that formed the background in which the aesthetic debates
about postwar reconstruction took place.

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

Encounter with history in the Pages of Architectural Review

The mouthpiece for English modernism before and after WWII was Architectural Review
[AR ] owned by Hubert de Cronin Hasting with an editorial staff that included J. M. Richards
and Nikolaus Pevsner, and artists John Piper and Gordon Cullen. Its pages became a
forum for advocating the English Picturesque tradition as a critical tool to be used against
the government’s policy of reconstruction. In 1959 Joseph Rykwert described AR as “prob-
ably the most striking architectural publication appearing anywhere in the world”. 10 With its
‘ship-shape look’, ‘close print’, ‘colored pages’ it offered readers the impression that each
and every issue was packed with solid ideas and coverage of recent projects. Its interna-
tional reputation, was primarily due to the prolific draughtsman, Gordon Cullen whose ‘pho-
tographic eye’ cut the field of vision to the most arresting and striking passages: “the
people look like dolls, the buildings like models, the landscapes positively dinky.” Rykwert
called this style artificial and perverse, albeit catching and attractive. 11

One of the most important editors of AR, was J. M. Richards who began as assistant editor
in 1935, and remained in editorial control for nearly four long decades.12 He announced in
1971, the year after he had been fired as editor by Hastings, that the battle for modernism
had been won for “we are all modernists now, through what that means I am not sure that
we know, nor whether what it means any longer matters.” 13 Richards likened an architec-
tural magazine to “a bridge, carrying traffic in both directions. It can help to span the
distance between architects and the public they serve, on the one hand by informing the
public about architecture’s potentialities, objectives and techniques, and on the other by
giving architects a better understanding of the public’s needs and discontents.”14 One of the
major struggles for or against Modernism with which AR engaged was the promotion of the
English Picturesque or the development of townscape principles.

AR became an ardent promoter of townscape principles based on the belief that the town
was a visual field of operation in which local officials and the general public had more
control over the battle than architects did. As a bridge, it fell to AR to educate those who did
not have an architect’s trained eye about the potentialities for compromise and defeat in the
built domain. Consequently AR published an assortment of guidelines for visual conduct to
enlighten the architects’ clients. But simultaneously, attention to townscape details was
intended to enlarge

“the architect’s range of perception: from the individual building to the relationship
between buildings, from the consideration of limited architectural values to the con-
sideration of values related to the whole environment – a conveniently indefinable
word recently brought into fashion to express architecture’s wider connotations, which
has also been officially adopted” 15

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An Encounter with history: the postwar debate between the English Journals of Architecural Review
and Architectural Design

The struggle over townscape analysis had many strands to it. One was training both the
clients and the architects to have a ‘reconstructed eye’. But the battle over visual effects
extended to its many articles on architectural history – the province of Pevsner. In this
manner AR believed it was offering both architects and clients alike a better understanding
of the place old buildings had in the modern town and the vicissitudes a town might expe-
rience while maintaining its continuity and identity. At least this was the rationale that lay
behind the re-discovery in the 1940s of the 18th century theory of the English Picturesque
now applied for the first time to the town and its genius loci. It was hoped that no modern
architect would subsequently demand a tabula rasa on which his buildings must rest.
Moreover, visual pleasure was not restricted to the application of well-known patterns and
forms, but enhanced by chance and surprise as well. Consequently, another aim of AR was
to sharpen visual perception of architects and clients alike

“by surprising the eye with unexpected images from the widest variety of sources.
“…”The Review’s continual experiments over the years with layout, type-faces and the
treatment of pictures have not been simply pride in its own craft; they have been based
on the desirability of using visual images — just as an architect does – to establish
moods and reflect the spirit of the occasion; to arrest the eye and accustom it to take
nothing for granted.” 16

A specific irritant in the debate over townscape analysis was the role that ‘history’ held in
architectural criticism. John Summerson noted that architectural history made significant
advances during WWII

“Unlike the first World War, the second World War gave great encouragement to new
ideas in architecture and the arts. Between 1939 -1945, a great many people found
that they had time on their hands…. At the beginning of the war, there was a general
shutdown, waiting for air raids, but gradually a mini-Renaissance developed during
the war years. Paperbacks, intelligent paper-backs produced especially by Penguin
had just been introduced and a considerable section of the population suddenly
discovered intellectual values and spheres of thought and activity which never dawned
on them. All through the war there was a certain amount of writing and lecturing which
kept this interest afloat and, in fact increased it.” 17

For example, Nikolaus Pevsner had been a student at Birmingham University in 1936
where his subject was the English tradition in industrial design. A few years later he was
introduced to Allen Lane, who had just set-up Penguin Books in 1937 and there began a
long association between the two, which resulted in many fine books, including Pevsner’s
monumental series of Buildings of England. Paperback books persuaded Reyner Banham
that he should transfer from being a student of engineering to architectural history. As he
recounted, one day while waiting in a blitz-happy queue in Bristol, leaning on a bus stop, he
was so absorbed in reading a paperback book that the bus came and went. There he

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

remained perusing Pevsner’s Outline of European Architecture. This autobiographical story,

Banham asserted, is

“symbolically relevant” [for the] “whole call-up group who acquired Pelican Outlines
straight off the press in 1943. We were the first generation to come to the live study of
architectural history uncorrupted by previous contact with Banister Fletcher. For us it
was never the embalmed death-roll of mislabeled styles that old BF made it; for us it
was always a snap-crackle-pop subject. The Outline changed the outlook for good,
and quite as much as cheap colour photographs.” 18

“The paperback was always an expendable product with me, used to destruction and
replaced by a new edition, or a new reprint. But while it was in paperback, it was a
sharp-edged weapon, like J. M. Richards’s Introduction to Modern Architecture or C.
H. Waddington’s Scientific Attitude — all sharp enough to slice through fatigue, men-
tal staleness, the noise of war and transport, the hostile atmosphere of barracks and
digs, to slice right through to the heart of all forms of aesthetic fuddy-duddiness. To do
that the Outline needed those crammed pages of type, where the facts and argu-
ments crowded close after one another, it needed the thin pocket format to go any-
where and be picked up at a moments notice.”19

So imagine how shocked the younger architects was when Pevsner, their hero of the paper-
backs, wrote articles in AR and delivered radio talks on the BBC defining a new national
style of architecture and town planning, entitled the English Picturesque! This was a group
of mature architectural students who had interrupted their training in order to fight a war but
they now felt betrayed and abandoned upon returning to their studies in 1948. J. M. Richards
and Nicholaus Pevsner were harshly attacked for “their debased English habits of compro-
mise and sentimentality”.20 First of all, Richards published a strange book in 1946, Castles
on the Ground, a celebration of the English taste for suburban life; while Pevsner, who
assumed the editorship of AR when Richards joined the war effort in 1942 and would remain
on the editorial staff until 1965, began to write in the 1940s and 1950s, a series of articles
in the pages of AR on the English Picturesque to which he assigned the arcane label of
“Sharawaggi’ 21

A war broke out between the architectural ‘establishment’ who manned the editorial staff of
AR and a generation of battle-worn, hard-edged, mature students who wanted nothing to do
with the visual disarray of the English suburbs or the compromises of the Picturesque. The
students, however, did not have a magazine in which to vent their disgust until Theo Crosby
joined Monica Pidgeon on the editorial staff of Architectural Design [AD] in 1953. Conse-
quently little of their early opposition ever appeared in print.22 Compared to AR, AD was
poorly financed and understaffed but it was the vehicle for the younger generation to vent
their opinions, and it followed more closely the trends of the times.

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An Encounter with history: the postwar debate between the English Journals of Architecural Review
and Architectural Design

If AR’s outspoken advocacy of the Picturesque was not bad enough, in 1954 Pevsner
made an infuriating comparison in the pages of AR when he proclaimed “the Modern revo-
lution of the early twentieth century and the Picturesque revolution of a hundred years
before had all their fundamentals in common.” 23 The younger generation was furious, quickly
sallying forth behind a letter published in AR and signed by Alan Colquhoun.24 They were
deeply offended because Le Corbusier and continental rationalism were the classicizing
standards some could march behind in their battle against the compromising and debilitat-
ing effects of the English Picturesque. Then followed Pevsner’s most vicious attack: his
Reith Lectures on the BBC given in October and November of 1955 entitled “The English-
ness of English Art”.

In the end, however, the anti-Picturesque movement being young and energetic was strug-
gling on too many fronts and moving in too many different directions to wage a prolonged
and consistent attack on the bastions of AR with their debilitating compromises. One
direction followed the classicizing thrusts of Colin Rowe after his inaugural sortie “The
Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” was published in AR as early as March of 1947. A few years
later, another group marched under the banner of science and technology playing with
concepts and subjects they half understood such as Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’,
topology, the concept of ‘open-endedness’, and Karl Popper’s The Open Society.25

The final break with Colin Rowe’s position – the classicizing tendencies of the Modern
Movement — came

“ when the Smithsons – the bell-wethers of the young throughout the middle fifties –
declared their rejection of proportion and symmetry and embarked on a period of very
equivocal relationships with such previously admired classical imagery as Poussin’s
architectural backgrounds or the planning of Greek sacred sites, which Peter Smithson
finally decided were organized by function and circulation, and not by any mathemati-
cal system.” 26

The Picturesque movement was incredibly strong and nauseatingly repetitive, and its audi-
ence, reached through the pages of AR, far wider than anything AD could envision. Yet
Banham blames the eventual revenge of the Picturesque and its triumphant victory entirely
on the Smithsons because they were the leaders of the younger group of architects during
the 1950s, yet they never advocated a specific position with which to wage a sustained and
consistent war against their enemies. Their stylistic development was marked by absolute
discontinuity approaching each new design problem with no formalistic preconceptions
and solving each problem by taking it back to first principles. As Banham outlined, the
Hunstanston school [1949-1954], an uncompromising exercise in the manner of Mies van
der Rohe, opened their career and brought them fame. It also brought them the label of
arrogance when they announced they hoped to do Mies one better and avoid some of his

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excessive formalisms. 27 Within two years, Banham continued, they had abandoned Mies
and adopted a more informal approach, stemming from inspirations that ranged from Jack-
son Pollock’s drip paintings, to art brut of Dubuffet and Eduardo Paolozzi. But they soon
abandoned this direction as well, and by 1953 were thoroughly immersed in the study of
Pop culture. 28 By 1960 they had landed the commission for The Economist Building in
London (1959-64). Here too they would follow their principles and Banham concluded: “their
aim is always to create an image that will convince and compel. When they demand that
every building must be a prototype, an exemplar, for the cities of the future, they intend this
not only to be read functionally, but visually too.” 29

Encounters with History in the pages of Architectural Design

Armed with a methodology gleaned from the pages of Hitchcock’s and Johnson’s Interna-
tional Style, Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement, Giedion’s Space, Time and
Architecture, the younger generation of postwar architects set out to look for a new set of
principles on which modern architecture could stand; principles that reflected the humanis-
tic concerns of the time. Looking back in order to move forward they began to re-evaluate
the heroic period of modern architecture in the 1920s and 1930s and to understand that its
forms and images were more complex responses to social and cultural concerns. They
sought out forgotten architects and little known architectural forms such as Gaudi, the
Futurists, and the Berlin Expressionists.

The mouthpiece for this younger generation would be Architectural Design. To imply, how-
ever, that there were no crossovers between the two journals is to make an erroneous
assumption. After all, Reyner Banham wrote primarily for AR and Colin Rowe’s seminal
essay “On the Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” appeared in that journal. While articles on
traditional settlements often appeared in the pages of AR they turned up in AD as well.
Several AD issues in 1948 carried articles on the “Prospects for British Architects in the
Empire” that ranged from Australia to Africa, and special issues were devoted to Tropical
Architecture in 1955, to the work of Fry, Drew and partners in West Africa in 1955, and to
architecture in the Middle East in 1957.

In the 1930s, AD had been known as Architectural Design & Construction and it covered
pragmatic issues such as housing, office blocks and hospitals. Monica Pidgeon ghosted
for its editor Tony Towndrow during WWII, and when he departed for Australia in 1946, she
became editor on her own right. While Pidgeon may have seen that professional involve-
ments with CIAM conferences and Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA), were ad-
equately covered, this was balanced by Theo Crosby who was more concerned with the
relationship between fine arts and the popular arts and the impact of mass communication
and information on architecture.30 A common theme shared by both magazines, however,

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An Encounter with history: the postwar debate between the English Journals of Architecural Review
and Architectural Design

was an encounter with history. Crosby recounts there were many discussions in the early
1950s about the role history held for contemporary architects and their interest in the
recent past made them travel throughout Europe to study the buildings of modern archi-
tects in situ. “Ours was a history of beginnings”, he remembered, so we set out to discover
alternative routes to follow.31 Banham would also reminisce about these early 1950s travels

“… the kilometers we must have tramped around the suburbs of Paris and Amsterdam,
the millions of francs the concierges and caretakers must have accepted in bribes to
let us in ! Outside of the business of design itself, history was the most turbulently
active of the mental disciplines immediately adjacent to architecture — ..” 32

Due to these travels and the wild imaginations of the younger generation, traditional settle-
ments in the third world countries would erase the sweet nostalgia of the English Pictur-
esque, America would replace Sweden as an idol of admiration, and science and technol-
ogy would bring a different opening toward the future.

One of the early influences on the AD generation came from reading E. A. Gutkind’s Revo-
lution of Environment published in 1946 and Community and Environment published in
1953.33 Instead of viewing architectural form as solid lumps of stuff, Gutkind suggested
taking a process view, thinking about things that were going on such as production, mar-
keting, communication, and human associations. Thinking in processes meant seeing
relations between things and understanding how these processes interacted with the con-
sciousness of man.

“The goal is ‘wholeness’ and not a mere adding together of details collected at ran-
dom. How to work out a relationship with the external environment and see it as an
every-changing pattern of phenomena and events?” 34

As an investigator of settlement patterns in different countries, Gutkind hoped to gain a

deeper awareness of the strata of transformations through which the world was passing. As
the center of gravity shifted from the West to other parts of the world in terms of population
growth and the extension of science, technology and industrialization to areas hitherto
primarily agricultural, he wondered how world unity would be reformulated and peace main-
tained in the postwar era. Already he saw seeds of future conflicts and uneven develop-
ment: slums, unemployment, insufficient social services, dullness of suburban life, ribbon
development were among the ills he recounted. “Lasting international cooperation,” he ar-
gued “is feasible only if we reshape our environment so that it is flexible enough to absorb
the impact of forces from outside.” 35 His investigations into settlement patterns in different
countries had a twofold purpose: to reveal the need for flexible adaptation of the environ-
ment throughout the entire world as it adjusted to changing conditions and to show by
historical surveys that we need not fear far-reaching changes. He raised the following prob-

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

lem: how to restore human values to the pattern of the environment and how to move
beyond the conditions of uneven development which colonialism bequeathed to the post-
war world.

After undertaking a survey of settlement patters throughout the world, Gutkind came to the
following resolution. The result of Einstein’s space-time relations has a revolutionary im-
pact on spatial conceptions. Architects and planners must now provide a flexible frame-
work for existence that will not break down under the impact of dynamic life. Each unit of
the configuration [town, village, street, building or room] must express its functional signifi-
cance in a distinct fashion. It is important to understand the link between these space-
relations, not the dull repetition of static forms. 36 “Housing fulfils a stationary function as
opposed to the function of the street which serves the mobile traffic. Each function needs
different and even contrasting prerequisites if the most effective results are to be produced.”
37
Streets, Gutkind argued, have been given primacy over buildings in the layout of a town,
relegating houses to the space between them. This ‘cult of the street’ has led to traffic
congestion, lost time, road accidents, air pollution, noise and uniformity. The solution must
break up this traditional relationship and return the street to its basic purpose thus allowing
traffic to move along it. Then services to buildings can be reinforced so they adequately
provide the stationary elements.

In 1953, Gutkind wrote a series of six articles for AD on “How other peoples dwell and live”
ranging from the houses of the South Seas, Japan, China, Africa, Arab nations, and Native
Americans. 38 He explained that the intent of this series of articles was to examine the
interplay of ideas that moved people in different parts of the world to build their homes and
to formulate the language of forms in which these ideas were expressed. His was a specu-
lative and selective method questioning the “dogmatic self-righteousness of modern archi-
tects’, and stimulating them to think afresh about present-day architecture. He did not
mean to offer a pattern book of styles that architects could easily mimic, nor did he intend
to present superficial stimulation of the fashionably new. There were more serous inten-
tions behind his series of articles: first was the lack of awareness and subsequent neglect
of the need for millions of adequate houses around the world and second, to aid architects
when they did take up the banner for housing, to take into account the varying needs,
customs and aspirations of people who were to be the recipients of such aid. A standard
universal solution which modern architects promoted was no longer applicable. While the
West may have lost the values which bind people together in a spirit of community, still in
primitive and past societies, housing formed a part of the social and spiritual life of the
people, of the group and the whole community and this Gutkind warned must be respected.

Yet as Gutkind developed his account, he often drew comparison between traditional settle-
ments and modern architecture and spoke directly to architects. He found the ‘membrane-

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and Architectural Design

type of house’ of the South Seas and Japan, relevant for modern architects. They too
developed ‘open-air interiors’ not separated from their surrounding environments and formed
mere “stepping stones to Modern Architecture’. In the South Seas, houses often consti-
tuted a block of flats where all families of the village lived together: a forerunner of Le
Corbusier’s communal housing experiment at Marseilles but one that would be offensive to
Garden City enthusiasts. Gutkind concluded “it is reassuring to know that the use of the
third dimension, to build higher in order to reduce the ground-area, is not the personal whim
of a few modern architects but one of the elementary ideas of mankind.” 39

Gutkind had utmost praise for the extreme simplicity of the Japanese house, its concentra-
tion of functions and elegant proportions, its sliding screens that like a membrane divided
the wholeness of the house. “But the really essential factor is the unique perfection with
which the illusion of wholeness and infinity has been blended with seclusion and limitation.”
40
Gutkind could not make generalizations based on the many different types of African
dwellings he studied, although he found Africans in general to be without of a concept of
abstract space which they could deploy as an architectural element. Yet he noted “[h]ardly
anywhere else have the elementary functions of building been more clearly and more con-
sistently expressed than in the dwellings of the African tribes. Their simplicity is their
beauty and the clarity of their form cannot be surpassed: purpose, function, and form are in
perfect harmony.”41 He noted that it was unfortunate that anthropologists paid no heed to
architecture because it was essential that the physical environment be transformed to-
gether with the social and economic structures if “grave tensions are to be avoided which
may easily make all efforts on our part illusory.” 42

The many definitions of “New Brutalism”

It is easy to make the connections between Gutkind and A&P Smithson in one of the first
articles they wrote for AD entitled “The Built World: Urban Re-identification” in June of 1955.
The key concepts they used were, ‘identity’, and ‘association’. Every form of association,
they argued, has an inherent pattern of building that can be used to reinforce identity and
community. They were looking for a new sense of order, a structuring system of relation-
ships that would overcome the anonymity and loss of place in the city that destruction of
both bombs and reconstruction had created. They, like Gutkind, were also concerned with
identity in a mobile society. The core of these ideas had been put into place in their 1952
competition entry for the Golden Lane Housing project. A sense of community they argued
could be re-introduced — or re-identified—around the ordering device of ‘street decks’. All
kinds of communal activities plus individual yard-gardens connected to these streets in the
air transformed them into places. Acknowledging their debt to Corbusier’s Unité, under
construction since 1946, they utilized a similar technique employing a construction rack
into which individual dwellings were inserted. Le Corbusier’s solution, they proclaimed,

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contained the seeds of what they wanted to do

However, the functional city of CIAM that Le Corbusier still advocated, separated space into
distinct units of housing, work, leisure and transportation, while the Smithsons sought an
order that linked space – it was the relationships and processes that counted. So they
stated: “Without links to our fellows we are dead” 43 There were four city elements, or
patterns of association, clearly defined in their new system of relationships that structured
the city, a system that followed the outlines of Gutkind: the house, street, district and city.
They defined the first city element to be the house, the shell that fits man’s back, it looks
inward to the family and outward to society and its organization should reflect this duality.
44
The street, is the second city element, the new idea being the multi-layered arrangement
of streets in the air. The third element is the district where our circle of friends resides, and
finally the ultimate community, the city, becomes an arrangement of such districts.
Gutkind’s influence on the Smithsons goes further than rethinking the street and the pat-
terns of association, for it helps to unravel the conundrums that swirl around any definition
offered of “New Brutalism”. If we think back to the series of articles appearing in AD on “How
other peoples dwell and build.” in which Gutkind drew linkages to modern architecture, in
hindsight the associations become clear, albeit not to the editors of AD. In order to clarify
what the meaning of this new label, which appeared in common usage before anyone
understood its true associations, the editors of AD asked the Smithsons as prophets of
this new movement to supply a definition, which was published subsequently in an editorial
in January of 1955. 45 The Smithsons offered the following series of considerations: “New
Brutalism” is a development of the modern movement – its main practitioner is Le Corbusier
starting with the ‘béton brût’ of the Unité; but fundamentally because he utilized the yard-
stick of Japanese architecture, its underlying ideas, principles and spirit. They explicitly
mention as influence Le Corbusier’s purist aesthetic, use of sliding screens, continuous
space, and power of white and earth colors. Secondly they note: “It is this reverence for
materials – a realizing of the affinity which can be established between building and man —
which is at the root of the so-called “New Brutalism””. They draw another lesson from
Gutkind: what is ‘new’ about this movement is that its closest affinities are found not in past
architectural styles [in reference to the dastardly policies of AR advocating the English
Picturesque, New Monumentality, New Empiricism, New Sentimentality, etc. 46] but in-
stead rests in peasant dwelling forms. “It has nothing to do with craft. We see architecture
as the direct result of a way of life.” It is as Gutkind outlined the result of how people dwell
and build.
Then the Smithsons add a series of considerations to be included in an expanded field of
“New Brutalism”.

“1954 has been a key year. It has seen American advertising equal Dada in its impact
of overlaid imagery; that automotive masterpiece, the Cadillac convertible, parallel-
with-the-ground (four elevations) classic box on wheels; the start of a new way of
thinking by CIAM; revaluation of the work of Gropius; the repainting of the Villa at
Garches.”

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By the next December in the pages of AR, Banham added his voice to the field of forces
attempting to definitively work out the parameters of this new movement around “Brutalism”.
47
He opens and closes his article with Le Corbusier’s proclamation: « L’Architecture, c’est,
avec des Matieres Bruts, établir des rapports émouvants. » But his concern returns us to
the issue at hand : what have been the influences of contemporary architectural historians
on the field of architecture? Have they introduced as much confusion and distortions as
Marx did to capitalism or Freud to psychology? Banham’s answer is twofold: they have
invented the Modern Movement and they had classify ‘isms’ into two categories: the first
utilizes the label as a descriptive term applied by critics and historians to a body of work
while the second is utilized by the members of a movement as a banner or slogan adopted
by the group. The trouble is “New Brutalism”, Banham allowed, tries to be both at once.

“New Brutalism”, he argued, must be understood against the background of the most re-
cent history of architectural studies, particularly that of the Modern Movement. It was a
term first used by the left to decry the Modernist vocabulary of flat roofs, glass, exposed
structure, and anything that deviated from “the New Humanism” and the Picturesque. Then
the term was re-appropriated and took on a degree if precision: it drew Le Corbusier’s
‘béton brût’ and Dubuffet’s ‘Art Brut’ into its purview. As it did however it became confused
trying to be both a description of the movement and a banner behind which to march. The
trouble for Banham lay in the fact that the Smithsons were talking basically to each other,
deploying the term long before anyone else had seen anything of its practice. Not until
September of 1954 when the AR first published photographs and plans of the Smithsons’
Hunstanton School did its readers have visual evidence of what “New Brutalism” was all
about.

Banham offered the following definition: “New Brutalism” meant a clear exhibition of struc-
ture and plan and an uncompromising treatment of materials ‘as found’. Put together these
two aspects tell how a building works and what the play of its spaces are. The most
important aspect is, however, the ruthless logic, which enables the spectator to grasp the
entire entity as a ‘visual image’. Here Banham’s wit gets the better of him for he calls the
Smithsons’ a-formal approach merely playing with the idea of topology because relation-
ships are their only concern, and analogously speaking ‘beauty’ is displaced by the Brutalist
‘image’. But now Banham circles back to Le Corbusier and the use of the history of the
modern movement. It is Le Corbusier who established that memorability of an image af-
fects the emotions, clear exhibition of structure determines the relationship of its parts, and
the use of materials ‘as found’ are the raw materials. Even though “New Brutalism” follows
these definitions offered by Le Corbusier, Banham accedes, it nevertheless is an architec-
ture that speaks not to his time, but to ours.

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Things would not remain without further clarification and yet more confusion. AD re-entered
the field in 1957 by publishing first an opinion piece on “New Brutalism” in April and second,
three additional ‘Thoughts in Progress” in its October, November and December issues
which included anonymous points of view on the subject. 48 AD proclaimed that it was
difficult to determine the meaning of “New Brutalism” for the movement did not stand still. At
first during the time of Hunstanston school and the small house planned for Soho [that is
the early 1950s], it seemed to mean a revolt against postwar British architecture and their
lack of rigor and clear thinking whether evidenced in romantic Picturesque pastiches of the
1951 Festival of Britain or the free empirical manner borrowed from Sweden. It was a call to
order, to a basic classical organization of the parts of a building assembled into an appre-
hensible image to which nothing could be added or taken away. “The Brutalist method of
achieving this classic wholeness was by a close concern with the qualities of materials ‘as
found’ and by a passionate moral earnestness about the clear exhibition of structure.” 49

Banham’s 1955 definition of “New Brutalism”, however, destroyed this neat definition by
implying the movement had abandoned classical symmetry for an a-formal approach based
on the high mathematics of topology. But AD found there was no evidence that topology,
which regards a brick and a billiard ball or a teacup and a gramophone record as being the
same shape, has ever been applied to architecture. Moreover, if one sticks to the a-formal
aspect of the definition then Hunstanton school does not belong to the Brutalist canon.
Such is the inherent problem with a movement that has produced no buildings but only
words. The true pioneers of the Modern Movement had been better activitists, they could
put behind their words something they or their associates had actually built.

Thus the debate reduced itself to a situation in which the “Brutalists’” ideas were the only
things that could be evaluated. Here too, it was felt most of these were derived from Vers
une Architecture except for a-formalism and topology, which appeared to be new. But the
Smithsons’ words led to further confusion: what did they mean by the phrase ‘to create an
architecture of reality’ without explaining the ‘reality’ word? Did the meaning of the state-
ment “the affinity which can be established between building and man is at the root of
Brutalism” reduce itself to a watered down version of Humanism? Still further what does a
peasant style of life have to say about life in a complex society? Vagueness of terms had
not helped the cause of “New Brutalism”.

To return to first principles was a helpful and admirable gesture but “New Brutalism” should
not have stayed there. Young architects were intent on stripping off all symbols of Church
and State to get down to the human being – but to penetrate even deeper to the skeleton,
to the fundamental bones was impossible and could be done only when a person was
dead. The three ‘Brutalist’ dogmas: a-formalism, truth to structure, and materials ‘as found’
only touched the fringe of architecture, leaving the problems of creating specific buildings

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unsolved. Thus AD summed the situation up: “New Brutalism” was an immature, ill-defined
movement at this moment in time and may have reached a dead-end.

AD continued the discussion a few months later introducing a new topic: the gap between
technology and inspiration. They understood that architects in general were searching for
an architectural ‘philosophy’, for a close connection between theory and practice. Theory
gives a sense of security to the practicing architect because it assures him that his work
relates to a coherent system of ideas. This is why “New Brutalism” was so troubling as a
movement. Yet AD allowed that in the beginning architectural theory has to be vague before
anyone can write it down and accept it. Within these vagaries, however, there still was need
for a few signposts, a few basic maxims, a few accepted ways of looking at things, to come
to the aid of architects wandering in the no-man’s-land between blunt technology on the
one hand and individual inspiration on the other. Therefore AD invited an anonymous panel
to continue the discussion “summing up the New Brutalism” in the next three issues.

This would introduced still further questions.

“In letters to AD, the Smithsons said they hoped to drag a rough poetry out of confused
and powerful forces; and Mr. Voelcker that the architect must be almost passively
receptive to the sequences of situations in which he finds himself. All this is character-
istic of our day and, though it is perfectly possible for any individual architect to say
‘What the hell,” to all of it and go his own way, we must recognize that the down-
grading of the architect to a modest, anonymous co-operator is something which a
great number of architects — and especially those most concerned with contempo-
rary problems — accept as being in the nature of things.”50

There is a problem, AD assumed, with accepting that anonymity, passivity and modesty
are the keynotes of the time. It bestows on society a decadent air. Primal responses
become so faint and bonds holding society together so weak that artists have no natural
sustenance and either turn to destruction hoping it will be creative or retreat from society
searching for something more fundamental to hold onto without knowing what that might
be. AD warned, architecture is a social, outward-turning art it cannot look to or benefit from
the other arts that are inward turning “Architecture must, therefore, it would appear, cut its
own way back to the great primordial responses.”51

AD was strong in its opinions: architects must provide solutions to specific problems that
exist within society and industrial processes. “It should be possible to state the true rela-
tion between buildings of a high intensity and vernacular buildings, but there is an unknown
term in the equation.” In counter-distinction to the positions that AD promoted, AR has
suggested that in the eighteenth century, “the whole apparatus of classical architecture

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was brought into play to balance this equation. It provided not only a grammar, but also
social, cultural and historic overtones and a wide range of emotional references.” 52 Yet AD
maintained to the contrary, this grammar narrowed the field of creative decisions by spell-
ing out the rules of vernacular architecture set down in pattern books. Such rules could not
be the response to today’s unanswered problems. Even though the pages of AR revealed
that beneath the vernacular of the pattern book there lay another vernacular, that projects
executed by unself-conscious craftsmen working within the shared and inherited tradition
of wheelwrights and carpenters, nevertheless industrialization had wiped out all craft tradi-
tions and allowed no possibility for their re-animation. What we do need, AD continued as
if following the counter-examples provided by Gutkind, was a set of motivating ideas about
how people lived, worked, played, moved and grew: a language derived from the best that
could be thought and built assisting in the creation of a decent environment. AD reiterated:
these motivating ideas must be of a kind different for architecture than they are for the other
arts, because architecture is a public art and susceptible to social influences. “Ideas are
particularly important in a formative period like the present when the need for a vernacular is
generally realized, but the necessary architectural language is not yet there. The only way
to advance is through the general acceptance of standards of value and a proper under-
standing of the role of high intensity, monumental, poetic buildings.” 53

AD suggested that perhaps the younger generation of architects would eventually find
certainty by rejecting the canons of the Modern Movement and searching about with suffi-
cient passion and intensity “amid the detritus of our civilization, to which it seems they are
bound to stand on a curious love/hate relationship.” But even so they cannot escape the
“dangerous encounter with machine technology”. 54 Certainty will not come from accepting
the most outrageous manifestations of industrial society. They must look to the building, to
the site, to understand how the problem has been solved, and how the gap that looms
between inspiration and the use of modern technology has been bridged. The conclusion
then is to “focus on the social, economic, topographical, technical and architectural factors
that will affect the building, everyone of what have been called the ‘objects found’…. The
architect has to be true to this unified and total concept of his building, whether it is hovel
or cathedral, and must work in harmony with its laws…. to state as clearly as he can as
many as possible of the implications of what it may be convenient to call the ‘objects found’
philosophy.” 55

Having showed their hand that after-all AD was concerned with specifying the set of prin-
ciples an ‘as found’ philosophy might include, they continued.

“Every building has at its heart an image, a generating idea, which must express itself
through every part and every detail. Though ‘Truth to Structure’ may be a limiting
fallacy, it can illuminate the basic architectural task if structure is taken to include all
the laws of a specific building, derived from all the facts about site, materials, func-
tions, cost, and environment.”56

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However, this cult of simplicity and getting down to brass tacks is not sufficient in itself
because it cuts the architect off from other important responses. Technology and its inspi-
rations must also be based on the wishes of a client, the human situation as a whole and
the way man’s various activities can best be accomplished in a given environment. The
architect must question and try out everything, holding on to only that which is good. There
must be harmony achieved between the architect and the planner as they both focus on the
same processes. No building is absolutely sufficient to itself either in town or village. The
links and the spaces between the buildings and the relations of one to the other, of new
buildings to old in space and time, are just as important and just as worthy of architectural
study as the new building itself. Thus the position advocated in the pages of AD may not
have been so different from the general framework of ‘Englishness’ that engendered the
townscape discussion in AR for AD continued:

“This empirical approach by study and analysis is one that has always been favoured
in ENGLAND. We have shown examples of the works of the past partly to remind
ourselves of the integral place that architecture has held in English culture. …. The
immediate past is there for them to react against as violently as they can, the rest is
open for the occasional raid for raw material, not to be pastiched but to be ground up
small in the creative process. Only the ‘objects found’ philosophy can, … regenerate
English architecture and create buildings that will solve specific English problems
and not merely adapt, as far as possible, something that looks impressive some-
where abroad. For the past thirty years, English architecture has been trying to catch
up with what has been going on in Europe and America. It is time that we thought
about what we really want ourselves.”57

AD, however, needed to remind the architectural reader that a gulf existed between the
architect and the layman who generally does not understand the ‘as found’ philosophy.
Other arts can survive in a void, but architecture cannot. Architects must remember that
architecture is above all an art, an art that constantly affects people’s lives.

“A critic …. [has ]to cut a path through all the nebulous talk and theorizing back to the
first principles of the modern movement, to re-state them in our terms and to see
which if any, are still valid to-day. Moreover, he must see buildings in terms of ‘objects
found’. It is up to him to show how these disparate objects have been fused into a
whole, into a work of architecture. He must penetrate through the communicating
elements of a building to its motivating ideas.” 58

“In fact, architecture is more than an art and more than a science; it takes in the whole
of human experience. Almost as soon as a primitive society reaches consciousness,
it begins to create architecture. Only the architect has the chance to use the most
recent scientific developments in the service of a discipline that was already ancient
when the pyramids were built. The architect is the only direct and continuous link
between the life of home and market-place, and the most austere and esoteric fast-

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nesses of art. He has no reason to apologize for his existence, no need at all to
present himself as a self-effacing assistant in a technological process. He has his
work to do and no-one else can do it.” 59

An encounter with America in the pages of AR and AD

Alongside of “New Brutalism” and the role that architectural history held for modern archi-
tects and in spite of the encompassing framework of ‘Englishness’ they both shared, America
would be another battleground in which the two journals found themselves to be on oppo-
site sides. In 1950, AR decided to turn its visual eye on the landscape of America, devoting
an entire issue to Machine-made America. 60 As advocates of the Picturesque, AR contin-
ued to believe that “the picture a nation creates of itself out of, and upon, its landscape is a
more realistic self-portrait than many of us like to admit” 61

Exhibiting deep European misgivings, AR was shocked by what it saw in America: untram-
meled visual chaos reigned supreme. This youngest, wealthiest and most powerful nation
in the world had not been able to produce a culture that amounted to anything other than a
“symbol of promise, the question mark.” 62 Americans were moreover alarmingly compla-
cent about their symptoms of disease, exhibiting an audacious failure of will to control the
spread of materialism. 63

Instead of creating a new paradise and experimenting with a new way of life, America was
concerned merely with “thinking bigger, going faster, rising higher, than the Old World;
without improving on the Old World, ….it has merely raised to the power of ‘n’ the potential
of the old…” 64 This crash materialism and gigantism destroyed the dream that Europeans
held of America. Instead, American laissez-faire democracy produced a ‘visually scrofulous
waste-land’, spreading “a combination of automobile graveyard, industrial no-man’s land
and Usonian Idiot’s Delight” across its entire broad continent. 65 Heroic in her handling of
postwar European chaos under the Marshall Plan, America nevertheless required everyone
to speak her language, reduced to a baby-talk of dollars and technological development.
AR’s survey proved that the American landscape exhibited these same symptoms of infan-
tilism and arrested development and in the end that Americans may have nothing to offer
Europeans other than dollars and crooners.66

As if the Picturesque theory was not sufficient oil on the fire to enflame the younger genera-
tion, AR’s arrogant treatment of their American dreamland and the outright distain for her
popular culture added fuel to an already impossible situation. England in the early 1950s
was still climbing out of the debris of WWII, rationing was not over until 1954, and the
supply of household appliances and products in short supply. Living in coldwater flats,
confined by the educational strictures of how visual design must be taught, the young

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generation turned to America as a land of luxury exemplified in the abundant supply of glossy
images of consumer products that poured out of the cornucopia of every American maga-
zine. America was the future and the younger generation basked in the images of Hollywood
glamour, Detroit styling, Borax designs, comics and westerns adventure stories. If AR could
praise American Popular art, and consider that “comics were less lethal form of escape than
gin”, it drew a sharp distinction between the Popular and Fine arts, the ‘world’ from the ‘spirit’
proclaiming that America had shown little indication of concern for the latter. Americans were
big children, who needed to be constantly reminded that their frontier days were over and that
they “no longer galloped in ten-gallon hats after Redskins”. They were scolded for not apply-
ing themselves to the development of sedentary values and attending to their visible environ-
ment. 67

Some of the younger generation wanted none of this: Banham would recall that

“[o]ne of the great trainings for the public’s eye was reading American magazines. We
goggled at the graphics and the colour-work in adverts for appliances that were almost
inconceivable in power-short Britain, and food ads so luscious you wanted to eat them.
Remember we had spent out teenage years surviving the horrors and deprivations of a
six-year war. For us, the fruits of peace had to be tangible, preferably edible. Those ads
may look yucky now, to the overfed eyes of today, but to us they looked like Paradise
Regained – or at least a paper promise of it.” 68

Lawrence Alloway, an assistant curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art [ICA] and a
member of the Independent Group [IG ] collective that formed in the spring of 1952 and met
intermittently until the summer of 1955, apparently created the term ‘Pop Art’ in 1954 to refer
to the popular imagery two other members of the IG, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton,
were exploiting as material. He attributed this popular imagery to a deep interest in the
symbol-thick scenes filled with human-activity that busy city streets provided. ‘Pop Art’ was
above all an urban art, the art of the crowd, fashions, and automobile styling. It was an art of
representation concerning signs and media images that flowed into Britain from American
sources.

Alloway made his debut in AD with an article on Paolozzi in April of 1956. He would continue
to write about art and exhibitions until he departed for America in 1962. Alloway claimed that
Paolozzi more than any other artist in England, “integrates the modern flood of visual sym-
bols, a primary fact of urban culture, with his art.” 69 His vision is that of the photographic eye.
Like everyone who has grown up with movies, newspapers, and ads, however, Paolozzi
combines this material in a new way. The mere quantity of these ephemeral images enables
the artist to make connections between unlikes. His images are multi-evocative because
they offer a new way of seeing wholes extending the image towards new limits. Thus “the
head is a head, a planet, an asteroid, a stone, a blob under a microscope; it is big and small,
one and many.” 70

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The same year, some members of the IG [now disbanded] participated in the exhibition of
“This is Tomorrow” organized by Theo Crosby, the technical editor of AD as a collaborative
effort between architects, painters, and sculptors. Reviewing the exhibition for AD, Theo
Crosby proclaimed this is merely a beginning: “Our environment is a mess because most
people have eyes that do not see; they do not feel the need for visual organization. The
exhibition is evidence of attempts towards a new sort of order, a way towards that integra-
tion of the arts that must come if our culture is not merely to survive, but come truly to life.”
71
As an exhibition of ‘artless things’, the manner it mimicked mass reproduction tech-
niques and its promiscuous collages, ‘This is Tomorrow’ was blasphemous to some art-
ists. But this was the arena the IG had sought out: giving ordinary banalities a new mean-
ing, accepting ‘things as they are found’ with wonder and curiosity, sometimes irony and
fun.

While the exhibition was proclaimed to be a group event dependent on quick glimpses and
novel perspectives, Alloway noted that rather than collaboration, the better notion was
‘antagonistic co-operation’ because the ideal synthesis of artists and architects had yet to
be achieved, and hence the focus placed on the future or ‘this is tomorrow’. No universal
design principles were on display. Each one of the 12 groups suspended their respective
specializations in order to experiment with ‘several channels of communication” at once
yet simultaneously avoid any totalizing idea of a synthesis. Consequently, different chan-
nels competed as well as complemented each other. As an exercise in communication,
the exhibition was addressed to the spectator who was exposed to “space effects, play
with signs, a wide range of materials and structures, which, taken together, make of art and
architecture a many-channeled activity, as factual and far from ideal standards as the
street outside.” It is the responsibility of the spectator to interpret in an open-ended manner
the many messages the exhibition delivered over its widely dispersed communication net-
work.72
A few years later Alloway tackled the relationship between the fine and popular arts directly.
The contemporary situation brought artists face to face with ‘hugeness’ – mass society,
mass housing, and universal mobility. The elite, bound up with a precise set of aesthetic
standards, could no longer dominate all aspects of art, especially the arts of the mass
media. “It is impossible to see them clearly within a code of aesthetics associated with
minorities with pastoral and upper-class ideas because mass art is urban and democratic.”
73
High art critics cannot deal with the mass arts – they term them kitsch, ersatz, and
commercial.
“In fact, stylistically, technically, and iconographically the mass arts are anti-academic.
Topicality and a rapid rate of change are not academic in any usual sense of the word,
which means a system that is static, rigid, self-perpetuating. Sensitiveness to the
variables of our life and economy enable the mass arts to accompany the changes in
our life far more closely than the fine arts which are a repository of time-binding
values.” 74

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Popular art is geared to technological change which takes place violently and experimen-
tally. The rise of small screen TV, for example, challenged the cinema, causing the latter to
experiment with wide-screen formats [CinemaScope] and depth [Vista Vision]. Color is
another technical advance improving the channels of mass communication: color TV, color
printing in American magazines, color in a range of paperback books. High redundancy is
another communication factor in the mass arts: repetitive and overlapping structures en-
able marginal attention providing room for other simultaneous activities, and satisfying the
desire for intense participation which demands paying attention to discriminating nuances.
Fantasy is another realm in which the mass arts excel – it resides for example in the
glamour of film stars, perfume ads, and sexy woman. Alloway claimed that at times, this
can be tolerated by the high arts if they conceive of it as a substratum of the folk and the
primitive. But they misunderstand: this is not evidence of a national vernacular such as
‘Englishness’for the mass-produced folk arts have become international. Moreover, fantasy
is always dressed in the topical. It “orients the consumer in current styles, even when they
seem purely, timelessly erotic and fantastic. The mass media give perpetual lessons in
assimilation, instruction in role-taking, the use of new objects, the definition of changing
relationships…” 75 They enable acceptance of the increasing number of technical facts
produced in the 20th century because everything in this world changes – be it the cybernetic
revolution, space travel, the movies, the whole complex of human activities – and this forms
the basic material of the popular arts.
Alloway noted that this very complex of activities generates the fear expressed by the high
art because they find the popular arts tend to spread and encroach on their high ground.
Thus a critic bemoaned “’Shelter, which began as a necessity, has become an industry and
now, with its refinements, is a popular art.’” 76 Alloway to the contrary contended that
turning West Coast domestic architecture into a symbol of modern living, was not the
achievement of artists, but was spread through association with stylish interiors, leisure
time activities and the good life that American magazines for women and young marrieds
sold. Thus Alloway advised the high arts must understand their role as only one of many
different forms of communication in a framework that now included the mass arts.
In the spring of 1958, Alloway made his first trip to America, visiting dozen of cities in the
land of wishful fantasies. For many members of the IG collective, this year marked the
beginning of direct contact with their icon of modernity: the Smithsons would visit America
that year, and Banham in 1961. The trip offered Alloway an opportunity to respond directly
to AR’s scurrilous attacks promulgated in “Man-made America” and he did so in “City
Notes” published in AD of 1959. 77 He begins his offense by singling out the architect, who
is misled by theory to think that he has control over most of the built environment. The
architect is mistaken, for in reality, he controls not more than a single building, and occa-
sionally a block. Secondly, the architect is arrogant and thinks of the user of his buildings
as interference when he spreads his paraphernalia about, he is reduced to noise in a
system the architect has perfected. Alloway allowed, these ‘human factors’ are obstinate

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and may signal a change in the architectural outlook.

Alloway continued his argument: cities are much more than mere buildings, they are a
piling up of people’s activities. In crowded cities permanent formal principles of architec-
ture, the kind the English Picturesque advocated, are not likely to survive intact. The popu-
lar environment is full of neon displays of signage, drug store windows filled with small
bright packages, gigantic motor cars that flood the streets – this is far more exciting than
the picturesque towns and villages that AR was so adamantly supporting. “Architects can
never get and keep control of all the factors in a city which exist in the dimensions of
patched-up, expendable, and developing forms.” 78 Alloway concluded that city images
found in the mass-media are more responsive to transmitter-audience feedback than archi-
tecture. In other words the mass arts contribute to ‘the real environment’ of the city in
important new ways. A magazine for women presents an article that not only informs an
urban bachelorette about serviceable clothes and crisp make-up, offering tips about restau-
rants, theaters and good books, but also explains the history of technology that has im-
proved her status from sewing machines to the telephone and electric typewriters.

In praise of American cities, Alloway found them geared to technological change not nostal-
gic retreat. They displayed a series of linkages between different media in their communi-
cations-saturated environments. For example, Los Angeles broadcasts at peak hours, “Op-
eration Airwatch’ telling motorists from a helicopter the traffic jams to expect on the freeway
and what spots of traffic to avoid. The narrow corridor of neon that stretched along American
streets was another communication device that enabled strangers to find their way.

“To the compilers of Architectural Review’s ´Man-made America’ this would be ‘unin-
tended squalor’, intolerable to people living the architectural way. In fact it is one
stretch of lighted street which runs across America. It starts in New York, runs with only
marginal regional differentiation across the continent of 3, 000 miles, and ends in San
Francisco’s Market Street…. The Great White Way, in a sense, belongs to all urban
America, just as the hotels … provide a predictable standardized services form coast
to coast.” 79

Alloway’s icon of leisure environments was Los Angeles with its low, open houses and
nature-admitting patios, its diffuse suburban spaces easily accessibile by car from the
freeways. “It works and works well for the Los Angeles resident who uses the car like a
cowboy used his horse, as a natural adaptive extension of his legs.” 80 No matter what the
architects of AR thought, especially when they made attempts to extend the program of
the picturesque to the American city, the latter “seems to be unplanable in popular terms,
precisely because of its extension in time and the way people keep moving.” 81 It is impor-
tant for architects to remember that

“Popular art in the city is a function of the whole city” and if architects try “to adopt its

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and Architectural Design

playful and odd forms, without their spirit, without their precise functions, [they] will
make a solemn travesty of the environment in which pop art naturally thrives.”82

The Smithsons’ romance with automobiles

Returning to the additional items that the Smithson’s included in their 1955 definition of
“New Brutalism”, they singled out 1954 as the year that American advertising struck them
with its overlaid imagery, the Cadillac convertible captured their imagination, and Team X
began a new way of thinking that would rock the foundation of CIAM. The Smithsons were
interested in ‘the status of ideas’ – taking accepted ideas and reorganizing them, adding to
them, or reformulating them. Such, for example, was the new way of thinking that 1954
marked. It brought about a re-definition of the process by which architecture relevant to the
contemporary world could be approached and it drew not only on ideas developed by Gutkind,
but those advocated by Alloway in his definition of ‘Pop Art’ as an urban art of mass com-
munication networks.

In 1956 the Smithsons began in the pages of AD to clarify their thinking in an article entitled
“An Alternative to the Garden City Idea.”83 That year Team X had begun to tackle the prob-
lem of ‘habitat’ and the multiple relationships that existed between the dwelling and its
environment. Gutkind must certainly have been one of their guides. Always stressing their
‘art-historical’ curiosity, however, the Smithsons began by noting that individual housing
blocks such as the Weissenhof Siedlung in Stuttgart of 1927 could no longer provide a
solution for the problem of housing ‘the greatest number’. Now the form of housing must
communicate a pattern of life; and the town must provide a pattern of association unique to
each people, place and time. Communities were not formal abstractions or patterns on
paper, but ‘associations’ of people. Moreover town planning was about patterns of growth
and change, not static plans. The principles that applied to a town as it grew resembled a
conch shell, a constant reassessment at each change in its scale. These principles, as
Gutkind had shown, gave the evolving organism consistency and unity.

The Smithsons continued their discussion of a new shape for the community the next year,
this time in article published in AR entitled “Cluster City”.84 They proclaimed that while they
were still functionalists this was not the mechanical sense of thirty years ago, and although
they still responded to the dream Le Corbusier revealed in his 1925 Voisin Plan for Paris,
his city was colossal, an axially organized chessboard, and his starting point that of ex-
citement. To the contrary,

[“w]hat we are after is something more complex, and less geometric. We are more
concerned with ‘flow’ than with ‘measure’. We have to create architecture and town

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planning which, through built form, can make meaningful the change, the growth, the
flow, the vitality of the community.” 85

Their new idea was ‘cluster” defined as “a close knit, complicated, often moving aggrega-
tion, but an aggregation with a distinct structure” that could grow yet still retain a clear
legibility at each stage of development.86

The Smithsons’ interest in mobility extended not just to the car, and individual freedom of
movement, but to the entire concept of a fragmented, mobile society. The road system
became the generative structure of urban form as Le Corbusier had advocated, an idea that
led from street deck housing to urban re-identification as the Smithsons’ had shown. But
now their concerns extended to the writing-in of automobiles, mechanisms and services
within architecture itself. Louis Kahn had shown the way with his vehicular movement
studies for the center of Philadelphia, graphically depicting the ‘stop-go’ system of streets,
decks and bridges in the center of the city. But visiting America to the first time, Peter
Smithson proclaimed in “Letter to America” published in AD in 1958, he had to examine the
situation ‘as found’ and interpret it anew.87

Although Americans still held to their basic belief in “square, ‘rational’ architecture”, known
as the International Style, Peter Smithson found there was an active socioplastics going on
that did not add up to the old rational style.

“As to its imagery, the magic having flown from the rectangle, it is much freer in its use
of form, more rough and ready, and less complete and classical.” 88

“Its key words are: cluster, growth, change and mobility. Around which stones you can
roll your own snowballs.” 89

Peter Smithson believed that Americans had a deep folk-need for ‘squareness’ and ‘bi-axial
symmetry’ which he found expressive of metal working peasants such as Mies van der
Rohe and Philip Johnson, but Americans seem closer to design truth when it came to their
cars than to their buildings.

“All successful American cars are rectangular in plan and on all four elevations, and
are roughly bi-axially symmetrical (projection of the bonnet and boot are more or less
equal). From the top of buildings car-lots and streets are a mosaic of coloured rect-
angles – the origin of ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ is, for sure, the view from the top of
the Empire State looking down into the streets and parking lots below.” 90

Just as Alloway suggested, Peter Smithson also found that American values were commu-
nicated through imagery without self-consciousness whether it was that of the city, an

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and Architectural Design

automobile, or the paintings of Jackson Pollack, but the same could not be said of their
architecture. The most telling landscape for him was the Jersey Flats:

“a dream world of refineries and factories and marshlands, criss-crossed with Sky-
ways. This is the supra-image of the American landscape – the urban excreta squeezed
out from the old city over the last fifty years – and something like this is the industrial
landscape norm.” 91

Yet for all his enthrallment with this backyard landscape of waste, he still believed that the
American cityscape and its suburbs required an idea of permanence to set against its
constant backdrop of movement and flux. Some sort of ‘fix’ was required, a system of
permanent reference points to which transient points could relate. It demanded something
‘BIG’, a controlled background of forests, agricultural lands, unused space or freeways
against which the throw-away immediate environment and transient aesthetic could be set.

Continuing to work on their fascination with movement and cars, and reporting from America
as well, Alison presented her thoughts on “Mobility” in AD in 1958. 92 Mobility, she argued,
must be the key to all town planning, because the symbol of freedom in the new age was
the motorcar. Because roads are ‘BIG’, they are important and have the same power as
any big topographical feature. They can create geography or social division, they can be-
come a unifying system or destroy a community’s social structure. In their Hauptstadt
Plan for Berlin, which the Smithsons developed the same year, they drew together these
ideas of motion and motorcars into a system that generated a variety of visual experiences.
Cars became the spectacle as pedestrians looked down on their roads; people became the
spectacle as passengers looked up to see them moving on escalators and looking over
terraces — people and objects in motion and change were both the stuff and decoration of
the urban scene. So they argued, in 1949 Jackson Pollack provided a new ordering system
in his drip paintings, which were complex, n-dimensional, and multi-vocative. Urban order-
ing implies “a writing - in of vehicles, mechanisms and services into the idea of the city” —
a new sensibility of human patterns and collective built forms.93

Conclusion

The debate between AR and AD not only considered an encounter with history and tradi-
tion, Englishness and American culture, but it also encompassed two different models of
cognitive mapping based on two different communication theories of how the spectator
derives and remembers information received from the city. The conventional model under-
stands cognitive mapping to result from the manipulation of symbols in accordance with
pre-existing computational rules. It can be argued that Kevin Lynch’s image of the city and
the townscape principles advocated by AR are based on such symbol manipulating proce-
dures. This traditional form of cognitive mapping assumes that information flows in a linear

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and sequential manner. On the other hand, the connectionist model of cognitive mapping,
which AD, Alloway, and the Smithsons implicitly advocated, produces a cognitive map
expressive of the complexities and nonlinear dynamics of image-based urban terrains. In
this case, cognitive mapping is the result of activities spread across a communication
network of interconnected units. It is the connections or associations between these units,
rather than the units per se, which take on the pivotal role.

Assemblages represent this form of associative thinking. Created by the liberal use of
photocopy machines, silkscreen printing, Polaroid cameras, an assemblage suggests that
categorization is based on human experience and imagination. Thus associative gram-
mars are erected on strategies of analogy and circumlocution facilitating unexpected juxta-
positions and overlapping images which make suggestive conjunctions. Associative think-
ing is not linear, progressive, rational, nor conclusive. It is engendering, utilizing recursive
reflexivity, loops, and returns as the many open-ended definitions of “New Brutalism” imply
or the multi-vocal images of Pop Art exploit. Furthermore, associative memory is based on
storing a given piece of information next to similar information, not the standard pigeon-
holes of the library grid or a tree-structured encyclopedic recall. Thus embedded within the
pages of AR and AD and long before these computational theories of symbol manipulation
or connectionist theories became common currency, these two magazines were staking
their claims for the use of history and the physical evidence of the built environment on two
very different models of mapping the city, models that would challenge the course of archi-
tecture in the subsequent decades to come.

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and Architectural Design
1
Andrew Law, “English Townscape as
Cultural and Symbolic Capital,” in Andrew
Ballantyne (ed.) Architectures: Modern-
ism and After (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd., 2004): 202-226. David
Matless, Landscape and Englishness
(London: Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2998). Bill
Schwarz, “Englishness and the paradox
of modernity,” new formations 1 (Spring,
1987): 147-54.
2
Anthony Howard. Quoted by Jeffrey
Richards, Films and British National
Identity: From Dickens to Dad’s Army
(Manchester University Press, 19997):
129.
3
“All the culture that is most truly native,
centers around things which even when
they are communal are not official – the
pub, the football match, the back garden,
the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’.”
George Orwell, “England Your England”
(1941). Quoted by Christ Water, “’Dark
Strangers’ in Our Midst: Discourses of
Race and Nation in Britain, 1947-1963,”
Journal of British Studies 36 (April,
1997): 211.
4
Christ Water, “’Dark Strangers’ in Our
Midst”: 211.
5
The full discussion of Englishness is cut
to the bare bones in this article butis
covered in a more extensive version of
“An Encounter with History”.
6 18
A&P Smithson, “But today we collect
Ads,” ARK 18 (November, 1956): 49-50.
“Advertising fell into the role the church
once played: we had to somehow get the
measure of this intervention if we were to
match its powerful and exciting impulses
with our own.” Alison and Peter Smithson,
Without Rhetoric: An Architectural
Aesthetic 1955-1972 (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1974): 12.
7
Patrick Abercrombie, Greater London
PlaN 1944 (London: 19454): 13. Quoted
by David Matless, Landscape and
Englishness: 204.
8
With the passage of the Town and
Country Planning Act 1947, many of the
younger architects home from the war
moved into public service jobs. By 1950,
over 50% of all qualified architects
worked in the public sector.
9
Ian Horton, “Pervasion of the Pictur-
esque: English Architectural Aesthetics
and Legislation, 1945-1965” in Non-Plan:
Essays on Freedom Participation and
Change in Modern Architecture and
Urbanism edited by Jonathan Hughes &
Simon Sadler (London: Architectural Pres,
2000): 66 – 78.
10
Joseph Rykwert “Review of a Review”
Zodiac 4 (Fall, 1959): 13.
11
Rykwert “Review of a Review”: 13.
12
AR Special Issue “The First 100 Years”
AR 199 (May, 1996): 54-69. J. M. Richards
was editor of Architectural Review for
more than 30 years – and his flat was
filled with his interests that ranged far
idea that architecture was not about style,
but about people and a commitment to
social improvement through design and
technology. “J. M. Richards, 1907-1992.
Tributes by Mark Girouard, Sir Denys
Lasdun and Myfanway Piper,” AA Files
25 (Summer, 1993): 30-32.
13
J. M. Richards, “Retrospect” AR 149
(Feb., 1971): 69.
14
Richards, “Retrospect”: 70.
15
Richards, “Retrospect”: 70.
16
Richards, “Retrospect”: 71.
17
Interview with Summerson, quoted in
John R. Gold, The Experience of
Modernism: 168. For example, the 1942
“Living in Cities” traveling exhibition on
planning and reconstruction was
accompanied by a Penguin paperback that
sold 134,000 copies. Gold, The Experi-
ence of Modernism: 170.
Reyner Banham, “WORLD, the; book to
change, a” The Architects’ Journal 132
(Sept. 8, 1960): 809.
19
Reyner Banham, “WORLD”: 811.
20
Reyner Banham, “Revenge of the
Picturesque”: 265.
21
During WWII, Richards went to Cairo to
work for the Ministry of Information. While
there he read Hardy and began to write a
book about ordinary architecture and the
enduring qualities it has, as distinct from
architects’ architecture. Alone in Cairo,
far from England, he wrote what critics
have called ‘this strange piece’ on the
virtues and values of suburbia. In The
Castles on the Ground: the anatomy of
Suburbia (1946), Richards wrote “[t]he
dog, summoned from the shadowed
porch, the cheerful tea table, the quiet
between the passing car lights, there is
the essence of the modern English
domestic scene.” His latent humaneness
was coming to the fore. So it has been
argued by his biographers, this book was
161

not nostalgic, but contained his modernity,
his sense of the future and the past, his
knowledge of ultra-modern building and
his awareness of the importance in public
and domestic buildings of the vernacular.
See “J. M. Richards, 1907-1992. Tributes
by Mark Girouard, Sir Denys Lasdun and
Myfanway Piper,” AA Files 25 (Summer,
1993): 30-32. The early AR articles
written by Pevsner on the Picturesque
were. “Picturesque = Heritage of
Compromise,” AR (Feb 1942); “Genesis of
the Picturesque” AR (Nov. 1944];
“Humphry Repton – a Florilegium,” AR
(Feb 1948), and with S. Lang “Sir William
Temple and Sharawaggi, AR (Dec, 1949).
22
Monica Pidgeon “Remembered 1941-
1975”AD 71, 2 (2001); 94-99.
23
Pevsner, AR (April, 1954). Quoted by
Banham, “Revenge of the Picturesque”:
267.
24
Alan Colquhoun, AR (July, 1954): 4.
25
Banham, “Revenge of the Picturesque”:
270.
26
Banham, “Revenge of the Picturesque”:
270.
27
Reyner Banham, “A propos the
Smithson” New Statesman (Sept., 9th,
1961): 317.
28
Banham, “A propos the Smithson”: 317.
29
Banham, “A propos the Smithson”: 317.
30
Theo Crosby, originally from South
Africa, arrived in London in 1947. He
worked for time to time with Jane Drew
and Maxwell Fry on projects such as
Harlow New Town, schools for Ghana,
and the Festival of Britain. He was friends
with Peter Smithson, whom he met in
Florence in 1948, and was associated
with the Independent Group at the ICA in
1952. The following year he became
technical director of Architectural Design
with Monica Pidgeon as editor. Theo
Crosby, “Night Thoughts of a Faded
Utopia,” The Independent Group: Postwar
Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty: 197-
199. Theo Crosby stayed as Technical
Editor of AD for eight years. He designed
the magazine covers: the first contained
an image by Eduardo Paolozzi. He started
a little magazine called Upper Case which
ran for five editions. In 1956 he dreamed
up “This is Tomorrow” exhibition in which
he organized artists and architects into
working groups. He also mounted a Le
Corbusier exhibition at the Building Centre
162
Art the Everyday and the Media
in London. Monica Pidgeon “Remembered
1941-1975”AD 71, 2 (2001); 94-99.
31
Theo Crosby, “Night Thoughts of a
Faded Utopia,” 199
32
Reyner Banham, “The History of the
Immediate Future,” JRIBA (May 1961):
255.
33
E. A. Gutkind, Revolution of Environment
(London: Keagan Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co., Ltd., 1946) and E. A. Gutkind,
Community and Environment: a Dis-
course on Social Ecology (London: Watts
and Co., 1953).
34
E. A. Gutkind, Community and Environ-
ment: xii.
35
E. A. Gutkind, Revolution of Environ-
ment: 4.
36
E. A. Gutkind, Revolution of Environ-
ment: 72.
37
E. A. Gutkind, Revolution of Environ-
ment. 76-7.
38
E. A. Gutkind, “How other peoples dwell
and build: 1 Houses of the South Seas,”
AD 23 (Jan. 1953): 2 – 4; “How other
peoples dwell and build: 2 Houses of
Japan, “ AD 23 (Feb. 1953): 31-4; “How
other peoples dwell and build: 3 Houses
of China,” AD 23 (Mar. 1953): 59-62;
“How other peoples dwell and build: 4
Indigenous Houses of Africa,” AD 23
(May. 1953): 121-34; “How other peoples
dwell and build: 5 Mohammedan Houses,”
AD 23 (June. 1953): 159-62; and “How
other peoples dwell and build: 6 Houses
of North American Indians,” AD 23 (July.
1953):193-97.
39
E. A. Gutkind, “How other peoples dwell
and build: 1 Houses of the South Seas,”
AD 23 (Jan. 1953):4.
40
E. A. Gutkind , “How other peoples dwell
and build. 2: Houses of Japan,” AD 23
(Feb, 1953): 33.
41
.” E. A. Gutkind, “How other peoples
dwell and build. 4. Indigenous Houses of
Africa, “ AD 23 (May, 1953): 124.
42
.” E. A. Gutkind, “How other peoples
dwell and build. 4. Indigenous Houses of
Africa, “ AD 23 (May, 1953): 124.
43
Alison and Peter Smithson, Ordinari-
ness and Light: Urban Theories 1952-
1960 (London: Faber and Faber, 1970):34.
44
A&P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light :
44.
45
Editorial ,”The “New Brutalism”” in AD
(Jan., 1955.):1
46
A&P Smithson, Without Rhetoric:
An Encounter with history: the postwar debate between the English Journals of Architecural Review
and Architectural Design

footnote 2, page 2. Tomorrow” AD 26 (September, 1956):

47
Reyner Banham, “The “New Brutalism”,” 302.
72
AR (Dec., 1955): 354-61. Lawrence Alloway “Design as a human
48
Opinion :”New Brutalism” and Opinion activity” AD 26 (September, 1956): 302
73
“Thoughts in Progress: Summing Up 1,” Lawrence Alloway, “The arts and the
“Thoughts in Progress: Summing Up 2,” mass media,” AD 28 (Feb. 1958): 84.
74
“Thoughts in Progress: Summing Up 3,” Alloway, “The arts and the mass media”:
AD (April, October, November, December, 84.
75
1957): 111-2; 343-4; 395-6, 435-6. Alloway, “The arts and the mass media”:
49
Opinion, “New Brutalism” AD (April, 85.
76
1957): 111. Alloway, “The arts and the mass media”:
50
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing 85.
77
Up 1”: 344. Lawrence Alloway, “City Notes, “ AD 29
51
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: (Jan, 1959): 34-35.
78
Summing Up 1”: 344. Alloway, “City Notes “: 34.
52 79
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing Alloway, “City Notes”: 35.
80
Up 2” 395. Alloway, “City Notes “: 35.
53 81
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing Alloway, “City Notes “: 35.
82
Up 2” 395. Alloway, “City Notes “: 35.
54 83
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing A. &P Smithson, “An Alternative to the
Up 2”: 396. Garden City Idea,” AD 26 (July, 1956):
55
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing 229-231
84
Up 2”: 396 A &P Smithson, “Cluster City: A New
56
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing Shape for the Community” AR 730 (Nov,
Up 3” 435. 1957):
57 85
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
Up 3” 435. 130.
58 86
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: Summing It created a new image of the city, an
Up 3”: 436. idea they borrowed from Kevin Lynch
59
Opinion “Thoughts in Progress: who first mentioned Cluster City in 1954.
Summing Up 3” 436. A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
60
“Introduction” AR Special Issue man 131.
87
made America (Dec., 1950): 341. Peter Smithson “Letter to America” AD
61
AR Special Issue: Man made America: March 1958 Quoted in A& P Smithson,
341. Ordinariness and Light: 135-141.
62 88
AR Special Issue: Man made America:: A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
339-40. 136.
63 89
AR Special Issue: Man made America: A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
340. 137.
64 90
AR Special Issue: Man made America: A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
340-1. 139.
65 91
“Conclusion” AR Special Issue: Man A& P Smithson, Ordinariness and Light:
made America: 414-5. 139.
66 92
AR Special Issue: Man made America : A, Smithson “Mobility” AD October 1958.
416. Quoted in A& P Smithson, Ordinariness
67
AR Special Issue: Man made America: and Light: 144-153.
93
416. A&P Smithson Without Rhetoric: 98.
68
Reyner Banham. Quoted by Anne
Massey, The Independent Group:
Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain,
1945-59 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1995): 84.
69
Lawrence Alloway, “Eduardo Paolozzi,
“ AD 26 (April, 1956): 133.
70
Alloway, “Eduardo Paolozzi,”: 133.
71
Theo Crosby, “Preview: This is

163
Art and the Everyday: The London Scene

Anne Massey

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

Introduction

This paper looks at the work of the Independent Group. What was this?

· An intellectual project which centred around a nucleus of young, ambitious archi

tects, artists, designers and writers at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London
from 1952 until 1955. The Group is highly significant for the history of Team 10, as it
involved Alison and Peter Smithson and John Voelcker. Conceptually the Indepen
dent Group’s work is important for our discussions at this conference in three ways.
· Firstly, the Group re-evaluated modernism in architecture, design and art taking their
cues from a diverse range of sources, including Sigfried Giedion, Le Corbusier and
French Art Brut.
· Secondly, the Independent Group took an all-inclusive look at visual culture – noth
ing was debarred from its consideration.
· Thirdly, the Group also managed to dissolve the barriers between high and low cul
ture in a highly sophisticated manner.

I have had a personal involvement with the Group since the late 1970s – it formed the basis
of my PhD and my book, published in 1995. I think what has kept the obsession going over
the years is the fact that, to quote Lawrence Alloway, the ideas are ‘developable’. The
Group’s open approach to the everyday – to mass culture was, and remains, refreshing. As
part of this introductory consideration of the Group, the involvement of creative couples in
the project is worthy of attention. Like Charles and Ray Eames, at the Group’s core was a
close network of partners, so women enjoyed an unusually high level of influence for that
time.
For example, the Group all met informally in each other’s homes, in pubs, bistros and also
at the ICA in Dover street, London. The main protagonists were: Eduardo and Freda Paolozzi;
Nigel and Judith Henderson; Richard and Terry Hamilton; Lawrence Alloway and Sylvia
Sleigh; Peter Reyner Banham and Mary Banham; John McHale and Frank/Magda Cordell.
They created paintings, drawings, buildings, photographs and critical writing which reflected
their obsessions with reworking modernism and mass culture. The Group’s deep and criti-
cal understanding of modernism is admirable. Ways of deconstructing and understanding
visual culture were explored by the Group in groundbreaking ways. The Group’s relation-
ship with American and European culture defies the usual analysis offered by traditional art
history. This is why this conference on Team 10 is so important, as it adds to the new
thinking about the importance of the group beyond the conventional ‘Fathers of Pop’
categorisation – recently reinforced, suprisingly by Hal Foster in New Left Review.
What I have chosen to focus on in this paper partly reflects my own current research and
moves within the fields of art history, design history and cultural studies to respond to the
challenges laid down by post-modernism, to consider culture in a broader sense, as a set
of paradigms which reflect identities constructed by race, class, gender and sexuality. My

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Art and the Everyday: The London Scene

argument is that by using the same conceptual approaches as the Independent Group,
complemented by an understanding of the everyday proposed by the anthropological disci-
pline of material culture, the Group’s relationship with the everyday will be revealed.

Re-evaluating Modernism

The first important concept that the Independent Group worked with was the re-evaluation
of modernism. Think of Reyner Banham’s in-depth analysis of early modernism in Theory
and Design in the First Machine Age of 1960, based on his PhD thesis at the Courtauld,
plus the numerous articles he wrote for the architectural and art press, particularly Archi-
tectural Review. The Group’s second set of meetings, held from October 1953 to February
1954, looked at Aesthetic Problems of Contemporary Art in which the problems identified
were the challenge of new technology. This challenge was regarded by the Group as
rocking the philosophical foundations of modernism, as understood at that time and largely
as it is understood today. The Group argued that no everlasting notion of ‘good design’
could exist, no form of painting was aesthetically purer than any theory. The concept of
timelessness was anathema to the Group. The Group looked at painting, and ‘high modern’
painting at that, as being inextricably linked with its context. Such art, design and architec-
ture could not be timeless, it was always of a time, it could not transcend reality, it was part
of the construction of that reality.
The ideas of the pre-war modern avant-garde were perpetuated at the newly founded Insti-
tute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The intellectual driving force was Herbert Read. This was
at a time when the popular perception of modernism was of something dangerous and
foreign.
Apart form Herbert Read an alternative take on modernism did inform the activities at the
ICA – for example Roland Penrose’s 1953 exhibition, The Wonder and Horror of the Human
Head. However, there is still a sense in which Penrose is looking at objects beyond his own
everyday reality as an eccentric country squire with a substantial house in London off
Kensington Church street. The objects he chose to exhibit at home or in his gallery or form
into collages are not part of his real world.

Parallel of Life and Art

But how did the Independent Group’s approach different? There is the contestation of time-
lessness, but also the Group’s involvement with reality. I would argue that the Group mem-
bers had a more intimate, a more dirty, a more involved relationship with things and with the
everyday. When Nigel Henderson photographed scenes of his Bethnal Green neighbourhood
during 1948 to 1952 he was actually living there. His wife, Judith Henderson was an anthro-
pologist and was based there as part of a project led by the sociologist, JL Peterson. The
shop fronts are grubby and the advertising displays set in this working-class areas of
London re chaotic. This is the mess of ordinary, everyday life. Henderson is photographing
these scenes ‘as found’, as the everyday, as the material culture of the population without

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judgement. Similarly, his collage work of this period is messy – it is messes with the
photographic medium and mixes this with oil, scrawling into the surface. This affirmation of
the messiness of everyday life challenges the modernist search for perfection.
The approach of the Independent Group can be closely allied to the newly emerging disci-
pline of material culture. This has its origins in nineteenth century anthropology and en-
tered discussion about visual culture in the 1980s, particularly in the work of Daniel Miller.
He argued in 1987 in Material Culture and Mass Consumption:
‘The argument that there is a thing called capitalist society which renders its population
entirely pathological and dehumanized, with the exception of certain theorists who, al-
though inevitably living their private lives in accordance with the tenets of this delusion, are
able in their abstracted social theory to rise above, criticise and provide the only alternative
model for society, is somewhat suspicious. The clear lesson from the history of modernism
is that the academic left is quite capable of fashioning a central instrument for the reproduc-
tion of the interests of the dominant class at precisely the moment when it is making the
most strident claim to the contrary.’

Unlike the older generation of modernists linked with the ICA, from its foundation in 1946
who still dominated during the 1950s, the Independent Group did not come from the tradi-
tional, upper-class or middle-class south of England, white, northern European backgrounds.
The Group was more diverse – think of Paolozzi’s Italian parentage, Magda Cordell was
central European, Hamilton, Banham and Alloway were from lower middle class back-
grounds. Members of the Independent Group used things and images of things from their
everyday culture in their art work – advertising images, Hollywood cinema and packaging
were used to create an immediacy, rawness and messiness which was different to the cool
art of the British Surrealists. This approach can be found in the Art Brut work of Eduardo
Paolozzi form this period, including the sculptures Forms on a Bow (1951).
The architects Peter and Alison Smithson staged an important exhibition with Henderson
and Paolozzi in 1953 entitled Parallel of Life and Art at the ICA. Here again, everyday
images of everyday life were taken and represented as coarse, grainy black and white
photographic photographs in a jumbled environment. Microscopic views of tumours, X-rays,
images of non-western habitats were thrown together. A discussion of the exhibition took
place at the Architectural Association in Bedford Square on 2 December 1953 led by Reyner
Banham. He referred subsequently to the debate in his article on ‘New Brutalism’ which
showcased the work of the Smithsons: ‘…students at the Architectural Association com-
plained of the deliberate flouting of the traditional concepts of the cult of ugliness and
denying the spiritual in man.’ New Brutalism was also informed by contemporary work in
Paris, particularly the writing of Malraux and sculpture of Giacommetti. It is important to
remember that members of the Independent Group, Paolozzi, Turnbull and Henderson had
all visited Paris during the early post-war years and gleaned important influences form their
meetings and gallery visits there. This continued to be supported through the ICA links –

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Penrose was cultural attaché to the British Embassy in Paris in 1954 – and through read-
ing and exhibitions in London.

This is Tomorrow

The anthropological approach was central to the Independent Group enquiry. It helped
inform the Group’s deconstruction of traditional, modernist cultural hierarchies. The Group
proposed that all aspects of culture be arranged along a continuum and that every experi-
ence was worthy of further examination and understanding. For the Independent Group
things were of interest whether they were traditionally categorised as high culture or low
culture.
The exhibition Man, Machine and Motion was held at the Hatton Gallery at King’s College,
Newcastle in 1955. Lawrence Gowing, who was Head of Fine Art there, was dubious about
the show, writing to Roland Penrose:
‘We have not yet decided how far we can should the costs which he (Richard Hamilton)
envisages, and I have myself not decided whether the rather limited theme in which he is
interested can be said to fall within the province of our gallery without the addition of a
certain amount of material of a more general artistic character. However, Richard is evi-
dently determined to persevere with his plans.’

The culmination of the Independent Group’s work was the exhibition, This is Tomorrow,
held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956. This consisted of twelve distinct areas which
were then filled with a particular environment by a team of three – one architect, one sculp-
tor and one painter. Part of the exhibition consisted a British Constructivist celebration
while other areas celebrated an Art Brut approach – like that created by the Smithsons,
Henderson and Paolozzi. The display by Lawrence Alloway, Toni del Renzio and Geoffrey
Holroyd consisted of an early interpretation of the work of Charles and Ray Eames, with a
pin board and early communication theory.
The poster Hamilton designed for section 2 of the show underlines my initial point about the
independent Group being about more than Pop Art. The Group challenged modernism,
overturned the thinking of the earlier avant-garde, looked seriously at mass culture and at
design within the same parameters as art. Lawrence Alloway wrote in Introduction to the
catalogue ‘Design as a human activity’:
‘A result of this exhibition is to oppose the specialisation of the arts…In This is Tomorrow
the visitor is exposed to space effects, plays with signs, a wide range of materials and
structures, which, taken together, make art and architecture a many-channelled activity, as
factual and far from ideal standards as the street outside.’

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Rules versus Behaviour: in search of an inhabitable world

Jean-Louis Violeau

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

In a message to the tenth CIAM in Dubrovnik, written at Roquebrune on 27 July 1956, Le

Corbusier said:
‘During these thirty years we have seen people coming to the fore who were born in
the atmosphere [author’s emphasis] of the present era: … born around 1916 amid
war and revolutions, just as a new war was stirring and in the middle of major eco-
nomic, social and political crises. At the heart of the present era, they are thus the only
ones who can intimately and profoundly sense the current problems, the goals to be
pursued, the means of achieving them, the pressing urgency dictated by the eco-
nomic climate. They are right in the middle of things. Their predecessors are out of it,
they are no longer directly affected by the climate.’ (1)

So the ‘founders’ had been replaced, according to Le Corbusier himself, by the ‘builders’,
‘for tomorrow’, the ‘generation of 1956’, that of Bakema, Candilis, Van Eyck, the Smithsons,
who were to ‘draw, express and even predict and anticipate the times to come’ [Le Corbusier’s
emphasis].(2) Although Le Corbusier did not go very deeply into the reasons for this handover,
he did put his finger on a whole series of changes. And if the new generation appeared to be
just as sensitive to these changes, it was probably because these young architects had
already come to terms with the first findings of the social sciences, immersed in the cul-
tural broth from which, initially in France, structuralism would one day emerge.

Rules versus behaviour: in search of an inhabitable world

It is commonly accepted that Team 10’s identity was partly based on the ideas and findings
of the social sciences. Other speakers will be addressing this issue later on today. Identity,
belonging and neighbourliness are all notions inspired by the social sciences which, in a
formal sense, were to boil down to the emblem of the cluster. Behind this emblem, some-
thing would remain of the somewhat desperate attempts by the members of Team 10, each
in their own way, to create a synthesis out of the questions raised by their observations of
the everyday life of their contemporaries. I say ‘somewhat desperate attempts’ because
they each sought different ways of coupling these two distinct and at times even contradic-
tory aspects: the findings and ‘admonitions’ of the social sciences on the one hand, marked
by the somewhat rigid, highly formalised teachings of structural linguistics, and on the
other hand that whole current of thought that sought to reinvest everyday urban life with
poetry. After all, if ever a ‘movement’ were ridden with contradictions, this was it, trapped
between theoretical speculation and the contradictions that each action generated, be-
tween its desire to be rational and scientific and the temptation to ‘poeticise’ or at least
aestheticise the humdrum banality of life in European countries only just recovering from
the Second World War. It is no coincidence, then, that urgency, plainness and the largest
possible number were key concepts in the work of Team 10. Indeed, Team 10 was to be a
transitional movement, born in the urgency of the post-war period and completing the bulk
of its history and its activity in the regained euphoria of the glorious thirties and the con-
sumer boom – a brief rally that even went so far as to indulge in fierce self-criticism until the

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crisis of 1973 swept away the remnants of this fledgling guilty conscience.
The intellectual landscape in which Team 10 emerged in the mid-1950s was thus one of
devastation rather than renewal – one whose functionalism fell into crisis the moment it had
spread across the globe and its encounters with the political elites were proving surpris-
ingly disappointing. In the early 1980s Henri Lefebvre, the primary critic of everyday life (3)
and a distant ally of both surrealism and existentialism, recalled having met some archi-
tects at the time who were the ‘spearhead of protest’ [Constant]. With hindsight, he consid-
ered this a watershed period for the French intelligentsia:
‘The Bauhaus – whose achievements in the USA had been known for some time and
which had long been held to be subversive – had turned out to be a form of theoretical
and practical architecture and urbanism that was particularly suited to American capi-
talism. This was a major shock. … As for culture, surrealism and the surrealist cri-
tique were fading into the background, although they were still influential. The existen-
tialist fashion had already drifted into triteness. There was a void. Today we know this
for certain, but in 1957 it was no more than a vague premonition. The scene was all
set for something new.’(4)

Lefebvre went on to speak of the ‘stark contrast’ between ‘rapid growth, miraculous pros-
perity’ and the simultaneous ‘radical protest, criticism and even hyper-criticism of the state,
of everyday life, of art and learning, in short of everything that was held to be established.’
But, as Lefebvre acknowledges, in 1957 ‘these were only advance symptoms, recognised
only by those with ultra-sensitive nerves and ears.’ Team 10 certainly had such ears, and
for a wide range of reasons, including the Greek Georges Candilis’s political refugee status
due to his early involvement with the communists, the personal friendship and comradeship
between Van Eyck, Constant and the members of the Dutch branch of the Situationist
International and the Smithsons’ links with the London-based Independent group, but all
revolving around an initial existentialist approach to architecture that emphasised the need
to keep a watchful eye on banal, ordinary objects, the objects of everyday life.(5)
All the intellectual currents of the time emerged from this decidedly heterogeneous, even
contradictory, melting pot. The first, and not the least significant, of these contradictions
stemmed from conflicting attitudes towards history – attitudes which Lefebvre (once again!)
was to decipher very clearly a few years later. In L’Idéologie structuraliste he chopped
Foucault’s Les mots et les choses (published in English as The Order of Things) into
pieces, saying it was evidence of a shift from a ‘philosophy of freedom’ (Sartre’s) to a
‘philosophy of constraint’.(6) By the same token – and somewhat mistakenly – Lefebvre,
who always remained true to Hegelian Marxism, reduced structuralism to the ideology of
technocrats who denied mankind’s capacity for commitment and revolt – for making itself
the Subject of History. In doing so, he contributed to the great rift which, from the early
1950s up to 1968, divided the ‘Sartrians’ from the ‘Structuralists’ and the ‘philosophy of
history’ from the ‘philosophy of the concept’ and filled the pages of Les Temps Modernes.(7)
And in the middle of the 1950s we can still see in Team 10 this complex and contradictory

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approach to the study and handling of universals and archaisms – predominantly inspired
by the early works of anthropology – as well as to an understanding of the urban fabric in
terms of its constituent interrelationships rather than the history of its components, while
always keeping an ear open for the sounds of the times and never abandoning the idea of
modernism as a project-in-progress – the idea of a historical dialectic, of a history that is
constructible and constantly emerging. This, for example, is probably the most accurate
definition of Aldo van Eyck’s relativist position(8) (historically as well culturally): his distrust
of cultural and ‘civilisational’ hierarchy; his close scrutiny of the city and its relationships
rather than any unifying principle, its relationships rather than the actual components; his
deductions from the observation of both medieval fabrics and Dogon villages; his attempt to
reconcile manual and industrial production; his fascination for the immutable, seeing past,
present and future as points on a ‘continuum’, and his simultaneous rejection of ‘any sen-
timental attachment to the past as well as any technocratic cult of the future’, since both
‘are based on a static and linear definition of time.’(9)
Any truly innovative urban development proposal must always start by thinking about habi-
tation. This is the ‘official’ position of the Dubrovnik Congress, but it already served as the
basic postulate for the grid prepared for the Congress in Aix-en-Provence (1953) to promote
a ‘new language of architecture generated by patterns of inhabitation’. In fact, the work of
Team 10, their programme reviews, the battles they fought (and won) against the remnants
of the CIAM all reflect the transition that took place in the 1950s. Take, for instance, the
ambiguity of the Aix grid, which seeks to reconcile a scientific approach (the breakdown of
functions and the beginning of serious reflection on the city) with social commitment the
drawings of the Golden Lane project) and observation of spontaneous and everyday prac-
tices and interactions (Nigel Henderson’s photographs of children living in the East End).
This was thus a period of overall transition, which saw the triumph of the figure of the –
existentialist – philosopher who was able to comment instantly on any issue, while at the
same time new forms of organisation of intellectual endeavour were quietly developing, and
the expert and the sociologist were emerging in the background. As Pierre Bourdieu has
noted, it is impossible to understand the intellectual landscape of the 1950s (at least in
France) without constantly referring to the figure of Sartre who (like Le Corbusier for archi-
tects) was the pivot around which positions shifted and solidified in a process of opposition,
contrast, reformulation or endorsement (10)… And in a singular position in the middle of
this force field, which then very slowly reversed, emerged the figure of Lévi-Strauss, whose
acknowledgement ushered in a decisive change of the relationship between philosophy
and the social sciences.
In fact, the work of the various members of Team 10 and their individual focus on everyday
life may be summed up as an endless to-and-fro movement between the wish to lay down
fixed rules – which recalls the teachings of nascent structuralism – and the wish to appre-
hend human behaviour. This contradictory dream of poeticising thought and conceptualising
poetry, this oscillation between rules and behaviour becomes easier to understand if one

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recalls the content of the other two branches, sensibility and subjectivity, a ‘radical subjec-
tivity’ in which, paradoxically, we might find both Debord and Sartre at the price of what
seems like a phenomenological reduction, an intuition of the essence of experience, a
sense of ‘back to basics’, in order to arrive at a totality of life. This was the existentialist
branch, that of the Smithsons (who read Sartre), of Henderson and Paolozzi (who visited
the Salon de l’Art brut in Paris in 1948) the branch of Dubuffet and his – and Le Corbusier’s
– interest in the poetry of found objects and ordinariness in general, as well as in the
perspective of children and lunatics breaking free from their straitjackets.(11) It was the as
found aesthetic, to be developed by the Smithsons, the art of watchfulness, of gathering,
choosing and then ‘putting to use’, the art of grasping in ordinary objects their capacity to
revitalise an act of invention, in order to develop a ‘found’ architecture that was not formalised
by academic straitjackets of any kind.(12) It was an attitude that was as much ethical as it
was aesthetic. In short, it was the branch of authenticity, of frank, honest and ‘raw’ self-
presentation, of a somewhat mythical transparency – without rhetoric as the Smithsons
said – that ran counter to strict respect for conventions.(13) But there was also the vitalist
branch of Cobra, of the Lettrist and later the Situationist International, of the journal Forum
after 1959, of the first great Cobra exposition staged by Van Eyck at the Stedelijk Museum
in 1949 or the manifesto For a spatial colourism (1952) which he edited with Constant(14),
calling for the joint development of painting and architecture, of colour and space, for ‘a
sculptural reality organised at a superior level, where colour and spatiality are
indissociable.’(15)
Once again, the route taken by Aldo van Eyck may well be the best illustration of that
double hesitation (even if, in the final analysis, he never had much to do with what has
become known as brutalism).(16) In his case, it may have been reflected in an eternal
quest for a childhood of architecture, much as the surrealists sought a ‘childhood of writ-
ing’, as the members of Cobra used children’s drawings to investigate creativity, liberated
desire and playfulness, as the members of the S.I. subsequently developed and theorised
their first inklings of a buried spontaneity, and as that of Van Eyck himself, who put a great
deal of time and effort into creating playgrounds for the children of Amsterdam(17) and who,
of all of them, was emotionally and intellectually closest to that stream of thought. How-
ever, childhood of architecture must be interpreted in two senses since, paradoxically, the
architect was also engaged in a quest for universals and archaisms, for an authenticity like
that of ‘primitive’ cultures, inspired – in Van Eyck’s case certainly more than others’ – by
the emblematic Dogon and the teachings of anthropology.(18) This was the inspiration for
his Otterlo Circles (1959) as well as for his research motto, the search for a ‘labyrinthine
clarity’. My home is my city, my city is my home: the Albertian dream of a ‘city conceived
as a home, made of homes conceived as cities, pleasing for its intelligibility and its chaos,
both homogeneous and kaleidoscopic.’(19) The dream of a positively indeterminate culture
in which each individual would be free to define himself in his own way, the dream of a
‘counterform’ with a human face, the dream of a universally understood architecture that
would nevertheless continue to be a vehicle for the expression of difference.(20)

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New attitudes and shifting of fundamental notions

These double, contradictory origins (a blend of scientism and spontaneity) and this con-
stantly counterbalanced double hesitation also explain the shift in the course of Team 10’s
work of a whole series of notions previously held to be fundamental.
The first of these is the ubiquitous notion of community, also referred to as ‘human asso-
ciation’, ‘human collectivity’ or ‘communal life’. Whereas the family had until then been a
landmark notion to countless architects, and particularly those of the Modern movement
(rationalists, productivists, etc.), Team 10 induced a semantic shift towards the notion of
the community, understood as the locus of exchange and reciprocity. Put more simply, this
is a shift from a biological (and moral) dimension to a socio-anthropological one. From now
on, the community was viewed through the prism of structural anthropology. Among the
Dogon, for instance, it was collective and communal rules that linked an individual to a
network of dwellings in the village, rather than personal or family considerations, and as a
result the individual found himself occupying a much more differentiated role in the commu-
nity. Furthermore, the explanatory schemas inherited from structural linguistics (system of
interrelations, pairs of contrasts, dichotomies, etc.) were spontaneously more applicable
to a community nucleus than to a family nucleus. Finally, on another level, this idea of
community was now and then projected onto a larger network, that of the European me-
tropolis in the making in the aftermath of the war, for the community was perceived as a vital
element of a ‘total’ complex, whose complexity varied according to the urban scale (cf.
Doorn Manifesto, January 1954).
Another notion is that of identity – a fundamental one, given that one of Team 10’s key
phrases can be summed up as ‘being somebody somewhere’ (together with the idea of the
threshold as the primary locus of contact between a human and humanity). The grid for the
CIAM in Aix invited the members to reflect on ‘urban re-identification’. From this moment
on, identity was perceived as a weapon in the fight against the abstract idealism and the
ideological functionalist generalisations of the CIAM. This notion lay at the heart of the work
of Candilis, Bodiansky and Woods at the ATBAT-Afrique conference in Casablanca, with
the Carrières Centrales plan (1953), the principles of which had been laid down by Michel
Ecochard in 1950. (21) The same notion was seized on by Van Eyck in his search for each
person’s strictly individual dimension, revealing the complexity that lay beneath the ap-
pearance of simplicity (as when he visited the Dogon in 1951-52). Candilis, Woods and Van
Eyck all then went on, in their different ways, to make what can be called an initiatory
‘detour’. This ‘detour’ may well also explain Team 10’s more general concern with issues
related to what was then termed ‘development’.
However, the notion of identity remains ambiguous, for if one accepts the assumptions of a
‘structuralist’ (or structuralising…) reading of identity, one is left with a series of questions.
Are we talking about individual or collective identity? Does it imply equality or uniqueness?
If the answer is uniqueness, we are getting away from the ‘original’ or ‘rigoristic’ structural-
ism that is primarily interested in the invariants of a structure, rather than the singularities

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Rules versus Behaviour: in search of an inhabitable world

or isolates.(22) Nevertheless, identity allows an approach in terms of place rather than

space. The concept of space, in which scale is admittedly blurred, still refers to its two
dimensions: that of the place and that of the occasion; or, to put it even more clearly, the
situation in its true sense, that is to say that of the situationists, comprising both the place
and the distinct and singular interaction, in short the moment rather than the time, yielding
a simplified trilogy of place – moment – architecture as a complement to Giedion’s more
abstract space – time – architecture.
Clearly, starting from this double, contradictory concept, Team 10 also shifted, in a sense,
the foundations of the Modern movement. In general, the ‘group’ broke away from an ab-
stract view in order to keep moving towards the materiality of space. What is striking,
moreover, is the fact that at the same time, in the research programme (1954-1959) leading
up to his The Image of the City (1960), Kevin Lynch performed a preceptibly similar shift
with regard to space, especially by introducing the term ‘cluster’ which, of course, was the
operative notion in the work of the Smithsons. The trope of the cluster reflects the influence
of relational thinking and the wish to consider the relationships between the components
rather than the components themselves. Although Lynch worked at MIT in the immediate
vicinity of the linguist Noam Chomsky (23), he did not have any particular links with mem-
bers of Team 10, and Donald Appleyard had not yet arrived when his programme began.
Nevertheless, both of them displayed the same interest in a sequential reading of the city
- a city henceforth cut up into ‘perceptible sequences’ that would counter functionalist
uniformity. ‘Perceptible sequences’, not to say ‘atmospheric sequences’, which would lead
us towards Debord, Jorn and La Ville nue, even though Lynch worked at MIT and his
objective was not to get lost or drift around the city but, on the contrary to find his way
around in the light …(24) All of this took place in the course of a parallel investigation of the
partial identities of the city (neighbourhoods), of crossroads, landmarks and boundaries.
Each neighbourhood, then, functioned within a ‘relative autonomy’, in interaction (and this
brings us back to the relational thinking and the structuralist schema) with the city as a
whole - continuity and discontinuity defined in a dialectic relationship and via dichotomies
and contrasting pairs.
To sum up, it was the same problems inherited from the aporias of functionalism and its
failing sensibility that each individual tried to resolve in their own way. One way was to seek
analytical and research models in the social sciences and to draw lessons from the early
findings of structural linguistics (semiology had not yet officially been born) and the other
was to return to radical subjectivity in search of an urban poetry already explored by the
early twentieth-century avant-garde. In between these two approaches was Team 10, seek-
ing a complex and contradictory synthesis. Team 10 was probably the very first movement
in architecture to really cultivate the idea of multi-disciplinarity (ranging in France from the
preparatory work for the Mirail project to the highly systematic attempts of the ‘germe de
ville’ type), all at a time when multi-disciplinarity (often expressed in highly obscure and
equivocal terms) was all the rage in every branch of the social sciences, a time when multi-

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disciplinarity, at the height of the structuralist programme, more or less became the slogan
for an entire era in the social sciences. More specifically, whereas the Modern movement
tended to juxtapose the various branches of knowledge, Team 10 sought to link them up,
thereby reflecting the intellectual mood of the day.
Moreover, this confrontation with the reality of the concepts borrowed from the social sci-
ences and the new ways of approaching the city and the various branches of knowledge,
was to become almost an official rule, for example when planning new towns in France
some ten years later. And when from 1962 onwards, Candilis tried – successfully – to
rejuvenate the teaching programme at the sleepy Ecole des Beaux-Arts (25), this is pre-
cisely what he concentrated on, gearing the entire programme of work at the new atelier
being geared towards reducing the gap between education and reality – truly the Achilles’
heel of the moribund college. Interestingly, Candilis and Alexis Josic encouraged their
students to go to Lefebvre’s lectures at Nanterre. Taking a stand against the anti-intellectu-
alism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and in order to establish a ‘workshop library’, Candilis
made his students use their workshop allowances to buy books rather than drawing mate-
rials, as had been the custom…
This novel approach inspired by relational thinking (relationship between urban tissue and
domestic cells, the analogy between town and structure) and introduced by Candilis and
others, produced specific results. For instance, Michel Macary, Thierry Gruber and Philippe
Molle named their group ‘Germe de ville’ when they graduated together in 1966. And it was
the same three – Molle (then president of the Grande Masse, charitable body of students
and former students of the l’Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux Arts) with Gruber (elected
to the Bureau of the Grande Masse) and Macary (the latter two were trained at the atelier of
Beaudoin) – who went and asked Candilis to set up an atelier, thus dealing one of the first
fatal blows against the ‘beaux-arts system’.(26) After 1968, moreover, Macary was to be
one of the Etablissement Public architects responsible for drawing the plans for the new
town of Marne-la-Vallée. Molle was to become mayor of Champs-sur-Marne, a town whose
construction he had personally directed, and later chairman of the Marne-la-Vallée urban
planning board. As members of the GARP-team, together with Andrault and Parrat and also
Zublena, the three produced the Evry I ‘pilot project’ (1970-1975)… This also explains why
the Atelier de Montrouge also used the term ‘germe de ville’ for the new town of Vaudreuil at
the turn of the 1970s, at a time when the ‘urban structure’, the generative approach and the
network had more or less become commonplaces in France, equivalent to a dogma.

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Talking Squares - Grids and Grilles as architectural analytical and communicative tools

Volker Welter

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 Art the Everyday and the Media

‘Behind all this … an echo of Patrick Geddes?’ the late Peter Smithson ended his afterword
in the catalogue to a recent British exhibition (2001-02) on the artist and photographer Nigel
Henderson, an old Smithson friend from the early 1950s, the time of the Independent Group.1
Smithson’s afterword is very specific as to what he wished to connect to Patrick Geddes,
the Scottish biologist, sociologist, and urbanist. First, there are the artist Nigel Henderson
and his wife Judith Stephen, an anthropologist. After Nigel and Judith had married in 1943,
they moved to Bethnal Green in London’s East End in 1945, in order to allow her to partici-
pate in a sociological study of the district. Nigel Henderson likewise roamed through the
East End to record photographically the urban life in what was then one of London’s poor-
est areas. So we are dealing here with a combination of visual records of urban life, sociol-
ogy, and, ultimately, architecture and urban planning. Second, with the two images in the
upper margin of the two page afterword Smithson gives visual clues. On the left page is an
image from the Smithson’s own archive: a Henderson photograph of a street scene in
London’s East End mounted together with a textual explanation. The text refers to life in an
urban setting, to the relation between the houses and the street; a relation that is essential
to foster and sustain street life. The houses, the streets, and the life in and amongst them
‘prove necessary to sustain physical and spiritual life’2 the Smithsons typed in the margin.
The right page presents an image with a similar layout, this time by the French architect
Michael Écochard, who had worked in Morocco in the 1950s. The image shows traditional
courthouses—’a Moroccan Medina’ the text explains—, the urban fabric they constitute,
and a contemporary equivalent in the modern idiom of the new Carriers Centrales in
Casablanca.
Thus these two photographs illustrate in nuce what this paper is about. First, in opposition
to Smithson’s statement that with such observation as the Hendersons had conducted in
London’s East End ‘Sociology had begun to emerge from the rain-forest into the street’3 I
will argue that there existed within the British debate about the modern city since the
1890s an approach that claimed an analysis based on visual observation to be an equiva-
lent—if not better—to more statistical and factual ways of sociological inquiry. One root of
this visual approach to the sociology of urban life are Patrick Geddes’s observations and
planning work in Edinburgh in Scotland; not exactly a distant land of a rain-forest, even
though to some it may well appear like that even today.
Second, Peter Smithson also claims in his afterword that both the images and the analysis
embedded in them represent a ‘shift to the specific’4 and, accordingly, away from the more
general or universal even though Smithson did not expanded on this point. And who wants
to deny this claim? Clearly, the photographs record specific urban situations, for example,
in London and Casablanca. However, both images are part of a larger presentation arrange-
ment. In the Smithsons’ case this particular photograph was integrated into the grid they
exhibited at CIAM 9 in 1953. At the same meeting, Écochard represented the Moroccan
CIAM group and his image was taken from their CIAM grille. Both of these larger presenta-
tions juxtapose photographs of specific urban situations with architectural design propos-

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als that respond to the urban life that the photographs and their textual additions record and
analyze. Furthermore, in both cases the framework for this visual approach to specific
locations is the CIAM grid, a graphic means of classification that was conceived with the
two-fold intentions of making different urban realities and designs comparable as well as
helping architects and town planners to master whatever difficulties a particular city posed.
Le Corbusier, who together with the French ASCORAL group had been asked at CIAM 6 to
conceive a grid for the forthcoming CIAM 7 in 1949, is very clear about the purpose of it. He
explains, ‘When one is face to face with an actual town planning problem, the mass of
material is very complicated. One has to put this in order, and therefore one proceeds to
construct a mental architecture amid the chaos. This is difficult’5. What was difficult for Le
Corbusier then, is still not easy for us today, especially as we are now face to face with two
almost mutually exclusive claims. First, Smithson’s call for ‘a shift to the specific’ versus
Le Corbusier’s demand for a viewpoint of a larger order than the one immediately given on
the ground which he calls chaos. Second, a representation of a mental architecture versus,
so to speak, the concrete one on site. Accordingly, the second issue this paper will ad-
dress is the question if these grids actually mirror a specific urban locality in all its facets
or if they rather constitute a larger, general, even universal urban order?
Rosalind Krauss once pointed out in her discussion of grids as a modernist artistic device,
that the grid in paintings for example invites ‘naked and determined materialism’. She
continues to explain that such artists as Mondrian and Malevich, that make use of this
device, talk about it in distinctly different term, viz. those of Being, Mind, or Spirit. Thus,
she concludes, an analysis of grids in modernity faces the phenomenon that from the
artist’s point of view ‘the grid is a staircase to the Universal’, and that ‘they [the artists, vw]
are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete.’6 By analogy, Smithson’s and Le
Corbusier’s claims pose a comparable paradox. One way of putting forward an answer to
this apparent contradiction is to look closely at how architects have actually used the grid.
Adopting Le Corbusier’s language, if the grid is essentially a construction of a mental
architecture, then, it must be concluded, the grid creates a mental space that can be
occupied by filling it with, usually, photographs, plans, and designs. That at least for Le
Corbusier the grid was both a two-dimensional graphic and a three-dimensional, literally
spatial ordering device becomes obvious when one compares the CIAM grid folded into a
transportable package7 with one of the many images of metal filing cabinets Le Corbusier
illustrated as desirable type-objects in his L’art decorative d’aujourd’hui from 1925.
However, to fill the rows and columns of the grid requires that various records—visual and
otherwise—of a specific location are collected, sifted and categorized, and, finally, placed
in the space of the grid. Accordingly, almost by necessity any architect who works with the
grid turns into a collector, a figure of modernity about which Walter Benjamin once re-
marked that everything that the collector as allegorist touches, is shattered and preserved
at the same time.8 Drawing an analogy between the architect and the Benjaminian collec-
tor poses again the question what these grids are: Are they an extension of heroic

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modernism’s claim to establish universal principles for modern architecture and urban de-
sign? Or are they a critique of this claim, especially of its alleged reliance on a tabula rasa
as the foundation of a purified, modern environment? A critique that, however, creates its
own tabula rasa not by rejecting but by collecting and appropriating all things historical,
traditional, and of the everyday in order to overcome them by arguing that what the ancients
could achieve, we, the younger and modern architects can do at least as well if not better.
Leaving open this question for the time being, it can be stated that nowadays these grids
are often considered to indeed depict the shift of post-World War Two modern architects to
specific local circumstances. Accordingly, the grids illustrate an architectural gaze that
appears to be sensitive to specific sociological facts and responsive to local needs, rather
than being inspired by the abstract needs of the new man of the future that heroic modern-
ism had proclaimed during the 1920s.
However, this positive view is occasionally contested, for example, by the British sociolo-
gist Ruth Glass. She writes in retrospect about the late 1940s and the 1950s: ‘Sociologists
can become amateur town planners; town planners … are amateur sociologists. Many of
them have their own brew of sociology—derived from the ideas of nineteenth-century uto-
pias and social reforms; with seasoning by Geddes and Mumford … The home-made brew
of sociology … is in keeping with the town planner’s search for mechanistic explanations of
cause and effect; it provides the formulae for which he is looking—simple, repetitive solu-
tions to complex, diverse problems.’9 We shall see later that Ruth Glass was temporarily
closely connected with this home-made brew of urban sociology, but first of all, a much
more appreciative quote about the grid by Le Corbusier: ‘The Grid is but a tool, … an
instrument for thinking (a ‘thinking-tool’) … Your silent problems lie displayed immediately
before your eyes, and their environment is spread out before you … There are different
kinds of environment. There is the environment of a kitchen and the environment of a conti-
nent. But the environment affects the organization of a kitchen just as much as it does the
organization of Europe, or even the world …’10
Now, Ruth Glass refers directly to Geddes, though in a negative way, while Le Corbusier
makes two indirect, but positive reference to the Scotsman. First, he claims the relevance
of the CIAM grid to the planning of everything from kitchen to the world. This statement can
well be understood as a reference to a grid Geddes conceived as early as 1881 in an essay
on statistics in which he developed a table to classify biological forms of life under the three
main categories of ‘territory, occupations, and organisms’. More interesting is what he
writes in the accompanying essay: ‘It is one of the most marked advantages of the table
that it would be easy to monograph on this principle a city or a village, a single household
or even an individual, as well as a nation, to compare these facts of personal and domestic
economy among each other, and to generalize bodies of these.’11 Like Corbusier almost 60
years after him, Geddes claims that his grid can be applied to social units of various
sizes—from individual human beings to entire nations—in order to, first, compare and then,
second, to generalize from the local. Both men gaze at the local, but aim, ultimately, at an

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image of the world.

The second Geddesian reference in Le Corbusier’s text on the CIAM grid is the word
‘Thinking-Tool’. It is known that Geddes was fascinated throughout his entire career with
the visual ordering of things and life in grids and grilles. His most famous diagram is cer-
tainly the Notation of Life, which was published in 1927 but developed much earlier.12 Inter-
estingly, Geddes calls this diagram a ‘thinking machine’ or ‘thought diagram’ and claims in
a related essay that it will help to understand many complex phenomena, including urban
planning: ‘If the reader be interested in Town-study and planning, he may use this [the
Notation of Life, vw](even for planning).’13 The Notation of Life is basically a square divided
into four quadrants. It depicts a spiral progression from TOWN in the upper left quadrant, via
SCHOOL and CLOISTER, to CITY IN DEED in the upper right corner; an upward movement
that perpetually repeats itself in the development of human settlement.14 This grid is for
Geddes an analytical tool to access both humankind’s material environment and non-
material world, the world of myths and belief; for Geddes it is not a staircase but a spiral
leading upwards to the universal, to paraphrase Rosalind E. Krauss.
The Notation of Life on its own does not say that much with regard to a specific city, for
example Edinburgh. It requires to be read it in parallel with other activities of Geddes, most
notably his photographic survey of Edinburgh which was conducted since the 1890s.15
Geddes was not the first who recorded photographically the urban environment in the nine-
teenth century, but to my knowledge he was one of the first who took specifically such
photographs as the inspirational basis for architectural and urban design proposals for the
improvement of a city’s urban fabric. To give a brief example: when Geddes photographs
Edinburgh children playing in a street in a slum area of the city, than he depicts the level of
TOWN in the Notation of Life. However, when Geddes records with the camera children
involved in the activity of gardening in one of the open green spaces he had installed in
Edinburgh, he shows life lived on the fourth level of CITY IN DEED. In short, Geddes looks
at specific urban situations in order to improve them. At the same time, he generalizes his
observations and initiatives with the help of the Notation of Life into a systematic and
universal approach to understand cities and life in them. Although both levels of analysis
relate, even depend, closely on each other Geddes keeps them visually strictly separated.
He does not transfer his visual observations of Edinburgh into the grid of the Notation of Life,
even though the grid comes to life only when considered together with the images and vice
versa.
Initially, Geddes developed the grid as a haptic thinking device when he was temporarily
blind in the 1870s. He argues that one can assign a thought or any phenomenon to the
panes of any given window and then can work out, by feeling the spatial relations between
the panes, conceptual relations between thoughts or things put into the window. Things
placed into the grids of windows also captured the gaze of Henderson when he photo-
graphed in London’s East End. For example, in a shot of a shop in Bethnal Green it is
thanks to the grid of the window that the accidental things of daily life appear to be in

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place.16 Another image of the everyday life in London’s East End shows advertising posters
pasted onto a wall in an orderly grid.17 Urban life may appear on the first sight without
order—Le Corbusier’s chaos—but when looked at it this way there is no danger of suffering
from an eye strain that would require the remedy that is praised on one of the flyers to be
seen in the image.
Being thus back in Bethnal Green, a more conceptual and historical connection can be
made between Geddes, the Hendersons, and, ultimately, the Smithsons than simply juxta-
posing images of Henderson’s photographs of accidental urban grids and Geddes’s Nota-
tion of Life. This link centers around the horticulturalist and town planner Jaqueline Tyrwhitt
(1905-1983) who had turned to town planning during the 1930s when she fell under the spell
of Geddesian theory. There she remained throughout her career which took her from Lon-
don to Harvard University in the 1950s, later to Toronto to collaborate with Marshall McLuhan,
and finally, in the 1960s, to Greece where she worked with Doxiades on the well-known
Ekistics grid, but this grid will be ignored in this essay. Before and during World War Two
Tyrwhitt was in charge of a Geddesian planning group with the name Association for Plan-
ning and Regional Reconstruction (APRR). In the late 1930s, the APRR conducted a socio-
logical survey of Bethnal Green, a project which employed among many others the earlier
quoted sociologist Ruth Glass. Roughly at the same time, Tyrwhitt became a member of
the MARS group, the beginning of her career in architectural modernism that culminated in
her election as acting secretary to CIAM in 1951.
Various links can be drawn between all three, the Hendersons’ and the Smithsons’ interest
in London’s East End, Geddes’s visual sociological-architectural approach to the city, and
Tyrwhitt as a representative of the MARS group and CIAM. First, it is safe to assume that
Judith Henderson when she began working on her Bethnal Green project will have been
familiar with earlier surveys of the same district. Second, even the briefest glance at the
MARS grid from c. 1951, an alternative to Le Corbusier’s CIAM grid, shows a strong
Geddesian input.18 The left column, entitled ‘The Region’, and the column to the right,
named ‘The Core’, center the MARS grid around the valley section and the spiritual heart of
the city, two of the most important elements of Geddes’s theory of the city.19 Third, it was
Tyrwhitt and the APRR who propagated in the immediate aftermath of World War Two
Geddes’s visual-sociological analysis of the urban environment. In 1947, Tyrwhitt published
a slim volume entitled Geddes in India, illustrated with such images as for example people
sitting on steps between vernacular houses.20 These photographs are not by Geddes, but
true to the Geddesian spirit they focus on social and individual life in the in-between spaces
of the urban fabric.
What we can take from this digression is that the knowledge about Geddes’s visual and
diagrammatic approach to cities never disappeared from the British as well as the interna-
tional debate about the city. Or as Ruth Glass writes ‘For town planning, however, Geddes’s
‘sociology’ … remained the sociology.’21 The same holds true for architects, one may want
to add, including those of the generation from which Team 10 emerged. Nearly all the

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ingredients that made up Team 10’s early analytical gaze towards the urban environment—
the emphasis on the specific location, the in-between of old and old as well as of old and
new, the grid—had already been put in place by that earlier generation of architects and
urban planners, members of the CIAM and otherwise, to which Tyrwhitt belonged. Rather
than facing within CIAM a revolt of young against old and older, we seem to deal with, at
least initially, a passing of the baton.
Coming to an end of my paper, I wish to briefly return to the earlier posed question about the
oscillation of the grid between the local and the universal. Walter Benjamin charges collec-
tor as well as historicist historian with possessing an allegorical gaze.22 That in itself is not
a difficulty for Benjamin, but he takes issue with the consequences of this gaze which
shatters and preserves at the same time. This gaze destroys because whatever it looks at
becomes removed from its contextual reality and reified into an object of pure art, whose
value derives from the eternal essence of art it embodies. At the same time, the allegorical
gaze preserves because the reified object is easily integrated into a larger epic narrative of,
for example, history or, in our case, the question after what constitutes a city. This removal
from context offers one possible explanation for the usually wide gap between the analyti-
cal fields of such grids—these fields typically focus on historical and traditional urban
architecture—and the proposed modernist designs depicted in other fields.
Consider the aforementioned Smithson grid.23 The left side assembles Henderson photo-
graphs as the analytical half of the grid, on the right side architectural design proposals are
presented, amongst them the Smithson’s entry to London’s Golden Lane Housing compe-
tition from 1952. But what actually have the images on the left to do with the outcome on
the right? Is the visual analysis on the left really necessary to come up with the design
schemes on the right? According to the Smithsons yes. They claim that it were Henderson’s
photographs of urban street life that made them realize the value of this social space and
the life in it. Subsequently, the Smithson’s put forward the idea of ‘Urban Re-identification’
as an alternative to CIAM’s four functions of the modern city. The Smithsons’ city empha-
sizes movement through urban space with all the possibilities for social encounter this may
offer. But ultimately isn’t this another claim to have found a universal law that makes cities
work or tick, so to speak? The right half of the grid distils the Smithson’s fascination with
urban movement into a model of the city that is entirely based on patterns of human move-
ment through urban space and that transforms the urban street into the open access deck
of the high-rise slab. This is not a post-modern critique of mid-century modernism, but a
questioning of the Smithsons’ claim that in their use of Henderson’s photographs these
have still anything to do with a ‘shift to the specific’.
This doubt becomes particularly obvious if one compares the juxtaposition of the Henderson
photographs and the Golden Lane scheme as incorporated into the framework of their
CIAM grid with another image of the Smithsons’ entry for the Golden Lane competition. In
a well-known perspective rendering of the Golden Lane scheme the façade of the proposed
building constitutes a three-dimensional grid that is filled with photographic images of people

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strolling through the imaginary urban realm of the street in the sky.24 In the case of this
perspective, the cut-outs are drawn from popular mass culture—a hobby horse of the
Smithsons—including such pop icons as Marilyn Monroe (or whoever is actually depicted
in that particular rendering). Yet, the photographs of children and people integrated into the
CIAM grid are also images from a mass culture, but in this case drawn from that of the
working class masses.
Henderson’s photographs are almost true records of urban life in Bethnal Green, but plac-
ing them in the Smithsons’ CIAM grid turns them into allegories of urban life as such. Of
comparable allegorical character is the integration into the perspective of a photograph of
“Marilyn Monroe”, the most unlikely tenant who would have ever lived in the social housing
estate. Furthermore, the chances of the children in the Henderson photographs to ever
become such a well-known pop star were presumably rather slim, unless of course they
had been born in Liverpool or would join a boy band in the England of the early twenty-first
century. But that’s not the main issue anyway. Important is that these allegories are ex-
changeable, because each photograph has been removed from its original context in order
to illustrate the goal to define a universal human situation of urban life, that of fun in the
street. And it is this interest that makes it apparently so easy to overlook the important
differences between a Hollywood star about to hit town and working class children playing
in the street as the only outdoor space they most likely had access to. Extracting from
Henderson’s photographs and other images an essential quality of urban life—movement
through urban space—allows the Smithsons to make this allegedly eternal characteristic
of urban life to the basis of many of their urban designs, beside the Golden Lane Housing
estate—which by the way is not even located in Bethnal Green the site of Henderson’s
photographs—, for example the Berlin Hauptstadt competition(1957) and the exclusive
space of the Economist block in London (1959-64).
To conclude, I do not think that the best way forward to enhance one’s understanding of
these grids is to compare grid with grid in order to work out which of them is more accurate,
specific, or a better tool. Rather, the really interesting question is to ask what happens with
the specific situations recorded by Geddes, Henderson, Écochard, the Smithsons etc. if
and when they are placed in a grid? Geddes never framed images of Edinburgh or any other
town in his diagram. His Notation of Life and the photographic survey were related but not
identical tools for the urban planner. The Smithsons, other Team 10 members, and to a
certain extent Le Corbusier and older CIAM architects worked differently. They placed
specific images under the abstract categories of the grid. This appears to be systematic, is
of course instinctive, but reaffirms in any case modernism’s claim for universality. yet as
Ruth Glass once observed regarding architects and planners working along these (Geddesian)
lines ‘Their universe was so wide as to be no longer verifiable’,25 and accordingly not spe-
cific.

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Taking squares - Grids and Grilles as architectural analytical and communicative tools

1
Peter Smithson, ‘Afterword’, in Victoria Britain: A Trend Report’, in Ruth Glass,
Walsh, Nigel Henderson Parallel of Life Clichés of Urban Doom and other Essays
and Art (London: Thames & Hudson, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 27-50 (p.
2002), pp. 150-51. 39).
2 22
Smithson, ‘Afterword’, p. 150. Walter Benjamin, ‘Eduard Fuchs:
3
Smithson, ‘Afterword’, p. 150. Collector and Historian’ (1937), in The
4
Smithson, ‘Afterword’, p. 150. Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. by
5
Le Corbusier, ‘Description of the CIAM Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (Oxford:
Grid, Bergamo 1949’, in CIAM 8, The Heart Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 235-53.
23
of the City: Towards the Humanization of Walsh, Nigel Henderson, pp. 38-39.
24
Urban Life, ed. by J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, Alison and Peter Smithson, The Charged
and E. N. Rogers (London: Lund Void: Architecture (New York: Monacelli
Humphries, 1952), p. 172. Press, 2001), p. 87 (top illustration)
6 25
Rosalind E. Krauss, ‘Grids’, in Rosalind E. Glass, ‘ Urban Sociology’, p. 38.
Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-
Garde and other Modernist Myths
(Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 8-
22 (p. 10).
7
See Le Corbusier, ‘Description of the
CIAM Grid’, p. 175.
8
Walter Benjamin, ‘Central Park’, New
German Critique (1985), p. 41.
9
Ruth Glass, ‘Uneasy Partnership: The
Application of Sociological Knowledge to
Regional and Town Planning’, in Ruth
Glass, Clichés of Urban Doom and other
Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 18.
10
Le Corbusier, ‘Description of the CIAM
Grid’, p. 172.
11
Patrick Geddes, ‘The Classification of
Statistics and Its Results’, Proceedings of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh 11(1881),
p. 316.
12
For an analysis of the Notation of Life
see Volker M. Welter, Biopolis—Patrick
Geddes and the City of Life (Cambridge,
Ma.: MIT Press, 2002), chapter 2.
13
Patrick Geddes, A proposed Co-
ordination of the Social Sciences’,
Sociological Review 16 (1924), p. 55.
14
Welter, Biopolis, p. 32.
15
Catalogue of the Archives of the Patrick
Geddes Centre for Planning Studies, vol II,
The Photographs for the Survey of
Edinburgh by Sir Patrick Geddes, ed. by
Sofia Leonard (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes
Centre for Planning Studies, 1998)
16
Walsh, Nigel Henderson, p. 52.
17
Walsh, Nigel Henderson, p. 63.
18
CIAM 8, The Heart of the City, p. 107.
19
Welter, Biopolis, chapter 3 for the valley
section and chapters 6-8 for the concept
of a heart of the city.
20
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Geddes in India
(London: Humphries, 1947).
21
Ruth Glass, ‘Urban Sociology in Great

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Giancarlo de Carlo and the Italian context of Team 10

Clelia Tuscano

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 Sociology, Production and the City

Introduction

Giancarlo de Carlo is the only Italian meber of Team 10. He was born in 1919 and now lives
in Milan. He is an individualist, and a humanistic architect and a man of strong morality.

I say humanistic, because of his manyfold culture and because of his view of architecture
as something which is about people. He looks at architecture as part of the whole, com-
plex process which deals with transformation of society through time. Architecture cannot
change society as a whole, but can suggest the directions of change and support them,
make them grow, give them spaces and represent them in physical forms. He has said
somewhere that towns are written history, and the process of designing in his case is
somehow linked to ‘read’ the context, both social and physical, and to find out the vital
forces in it, and to deal with them for transformation. And ‘reading’ the context is not the
recording of an objective pattern, but a tendentious interpretation of how a local context
works and, through planning and architectural design, bring it closer to how it should work.
Giancarlo de Carlo is one of the most tough moral architects, one of those persons who
might make their client regret their choice: working for people is not always a private and
even a public aim. No celebration or monumentalism in his work, and a lot of energy spent
on designing the open spaces, which are not sold or used in ‘productive’ ways. And this is
not always the primary aim of the private, and even of the public client.

As commonly stated within Team 10, monumentalism is not the point of architecture,
which has to celebrate life in its particular, local and social context. No easy prescriptions,
only a method. And that is a very Team 10 way of working: not to find out rules, but just a
method to approach problems. Team 10 worked at a common research in looking for a
method, but without common solutions in their thought or in the architecture they pro-
duced.

As for the individualistic aspect of Giancarlo de Carlo, I think it has something to do with
the same method: no easy prescription, no universal rule in architecture nor in politics or
cultural groups. His anarchic view set him in the left wing culture, but he wasn’t linked to
the Italian communist party, which in the 1950s and 1960s held great power in the field of
culture.
The Italian Context
Before we come to the 1950s and early 1960s, in a rough scheme of the Italian situation,
you can detect first of all the rupture caused by the second world war. Before the war,
rationalism, the Italian branch of the International Style, had developed from Le Corbusier
principles, with outstanding architects as Terragni, Daneri and Michelucci, and the review
Casabella had a primary role in culture: Casabella to begin with was directed by Pagano,
(who had also organized the exibition about ‘architecture without architects’ in the 1930s),
who died in Mauthausen, and after him, from 1948 to 1964, by Ernesto Rogers, who has

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Giancarlo de Carlo and the Italian context of Team 10

been working in Milan with Belgiojoso, Banfi (who also died in Mauthausen) and Peressutti
(the group was called BBPR) and who became the Italian main character in the 1950s.

After the war the Italian architectural culture grew around two different poles: in Milan around
Ernesto Rogers, and in Rome around Bruno Zevi, in a quite separate way. Rogers was the
link with CIAM and the international architecture scene, as he was a member of CIAM.
Within Italy he was in touch with Magistretti, Gardella, Zanuso and Albini, who produced
the best architecture in the first years after the war developing rationalism into a more local
tradition, and with younger architects, as De Carlo. In Rome Bruno Zevi had a thoroughly
different approach: he had come in touch with America and Wright, and he proposed or-
ganic architecture in a manifesto-like fashion. He founded the ‘neorealismo’ movement,
and was in touch with Quaroni, Ridolfi, and other bright architects. Though the north and
the south developed rather in separated ways, these two poles came together in the archi-
tecture school of Venezia, which was really very different from all the others because Giuseppe
Samonà collected the best outsiders from the accademic world, Albini, Scarpa, Gardella,
De Carlo, Zevi, Astengo, Piccinato among athers (not Rogers because he taught in Milan,
as he was accepted by the academic culture there).

As a consequence, the school of Venice stood apart from the other very academic schools,
because it was linked to a wider cultural world, particularly the new neo-realistic cinema,
which became a widespread and popular phenomenon (Visconti, Rossellini, De Sica) and
literature. In these years there is a very strong transversal link between architecture, and
literature and sociology and cinema, at least in the cultural context in which De Carlo
moved. For example he was in touch with the writers Elio Vittorini, and his wife Ginetta,
Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, Frénaud, Anthelme, Marguerite Duras, the publisher Giulio
Einaudi, sculptors and painters linked to Vittorini, whom he met at Bocca di Magra before
the multicultural ‘società degli amici di Bocca di Magra’-group, LUNAE PORTUS, was
formally defined.

From the Bocca di Magra group I want to mention Elio Vittorini’s ‘Le città del mondo’ which
is a story of a father living in the inner land of Sicily, who has a lot of sons and daughters,
and he has to bring these sons out of this place and into the world, to make them live on
their own, because it is a problem to have them all at home and feed them all; so he moves
out of his land with a young boy, dreaming all the best for him, and he is enthusiastic about
everything new they encounter, especially about towns. In Vittorini’s book there are beau-
tiful descriptions of these new cities, of what the father imagines and what he enthusiasti-
cally sees of them.

And I want to mention Italo Calvino too. As a hommage to our kind guests I sorted out a
quote from the book ‘The Invisible Cities’, which you might know: the description of

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Smeraldina, which somehow looks a bit like Delft: it’s a town which has a network of water
channels, overlapping with a network of roads, which the inhabitants go through everyday in
different combinations, to reach the place they want. And the roads are on different levels,
up and down, and become bridges and terraces on their way. And in the underground there
are other roads, digged in the darkness, and used by pirats, smugglers and rats. So also
the most boring lives are never identical to themselves in Smeraldina, because everyday
there is a different way. ‘In a map of Smeraldina all these ways, solid and liquid, visible and
hidden, should be traced in different colours. More difficult is to mark on the map the ways
of the swallows who cut the air over the roofs, and dive along invisible parables with steady
wings, change direction to catch a mosquito, raise up again in a spiral along a pinnacle
and, from each point of their paths in the air, they overlook all the points of the town’.

This is one of many cities described in the book by Calvino, and I think it explains the
strong link between the world of literature and the world of architecture in this period. And
among all these people and ideas and groups Giancarlo de Carlo stood alone, in touch with
the Roger group, with the Bocca di Magra society, coming from CIAM, teaching in Venice
and building Team 10.

The Milanese Scene

To go a bit deeper into the subject, I will briefly mention some positions that made up the
context of Milan after the war. The proper Italian Team 10 context. The thesis I want to put
forward is that the research in the post-war period was a further elaboration of the Modern
Movement principles, as well an attempt to modify the Modern Movement language, yet
also implying a loss of the social engagement of pre-war rationalism. Local building mate-
rials and building techniques were included, and the shape of the buildings became differ-
ent, but not linked to any inner social kind of programme. So the research was about the
form and the new look of the buildings, but was not any more dealing with the way people
would use it.

This path brought great results as a few buildings by BBPR testify of, designs which move
from the first sketches still highly influenced by the International Style to more interesting
architectural languages, such as Torre Velasca built in 1958, or the building in Piazzale
Meda built in 1969, also in Milan. The project of Torre Velasca was brought by Rogers to the
Otterlo meeting, where, as it is well known, it was severely attacked by the elder CIAM
members, together with other projects of the Italian group (the Olivetti canteen by Ignazio
Gardella, where the air conditioning plant becomes the expressive theme in the interior
and, informally because he was a younger participant, the housing in Matera by Giancarlo
de Carlo). These buildings show what was basically the research of the Milan group: a
transformation of the language of Modern Architecture toward a more complex language
linked to historical language, an issue which had been brushed away from Le Corbusier’s
explosive innovation.

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Besides a good quality of design in industrial production it is worth mentioning at least a

few other positions.

The INA Casa neighbourhood in Cesate designed in 1951 by Rogers together with Ignazio
Gardella, which is part of an interesting national public housing programme in which the
National Institute suggested among other aims, to root modernism in national and local
tradition. The church of the neighbourhood, designed by Gardella and built in 1957, is
thoroughly in bricks, and rather far removed from the five principles of the Modern Move-
ment.

The house in Fondamenta delle Zattere in Venezia is an important project by Gardella,

dated 1959. Again a research of a new language, the modification of a simple language.
From the first elevation to the final drawing Gardella brought the image of the building closer
to the existing ones in materials and rhythm, though thoroughly modern.

The Castelvecchio Museum in Verona (1956-64) by Carlo Scarpa, who was also in the
group of the architectural school in Venice. His language is very rich. His research is very
precise: he works upon details, he adds materials and forms and shapes and the result is
very complex, at very different scales. In this work Scarpa designed every detail, and the
texture of local stones he drew for the wall is a good example.

The Università di Genova, Facoltà di Architettura (design of the area 1969-71, building site
1975-81) is another work by Gardella, more recent. The plan for the new university area to
be build within the very historic centre of Genova included existing buildings which had to
be restructured, completed and connected. The way the building is linked to the town at
different levels, in different ways, the public passage which finds the way trough the open
spaces is one of the best example of linkage to the context. The removal of the Faculty of
Architecture into the historic centre has had an important impact on the town, because a
lot of students came in, and this all-men’s land around the harbour became much more
linked to the rest of the town.

I think the best architecture of the early post war period is the Cathedral Treasure Museum
in Genova, designed by Franco Albini (1952-56). It’s an underground architecture, so it has
no elevations. The geometry is very simple but very strict. Very dark stone, which is slate,
the local stone, on the floor and on the walls. The drawing of the concrete structure of the
covering is continuous over the circular walls, and cover the main space in the middle. It is
a very good architecture - again dealing with shape and a new language.

But to be fair we must also acknowledge that the Italian architectural context was hardly
determined by these architects; we must remember that while Abini, Gardella, Rogers,

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Scarpa, Zanuso, De Carlo were speaking about architecture, most Italian housing and
buildings in the reconstruction period and in the great expansion of the 1960s were not
designed by architects, yet constituted the dull and crumbled image of the town we still
see today.

Team 10 and Giancarlo de Carlo

Now let’s go back to Otterlo CIAM Congress, to see what Giancarlo De Carlo has been
doing from the beginning throughout the Team 10 period.

The housing in Matera is one of the projects he brought to the CIAM Congress in Otterlo in
1959. Matera is a small town in the south of Italy, and the housing was built in an area close
to the country, which isn‘t a rich territory. No pilotis nor flat roofs: it would have been a bit
like a spaceship colonizing this territory, with the only difference that it had to be driven by
the local farmers. In facts this building is in between rationalism and local architecture.

Another project De Carlo brought to Otterlo is the housing in Comasina, Milano (1953-55).
Both projects were attacked for its architectural language, the second one especially for
some oval windows, which were very strongly criticized by Wogenscky and the older
functionalist architects.
These projects are somehow an introduction, they are important, because they meant to
go against the International Style principles, when CIAM was still popular. But more impor-
tantly I would like to point out three themes of Giancarlo De Carlo’s work, which are of
course interwoven, but can be demonstrated best by different projects of his. I also think
these are the same themes which Giancarlo De Carlo brought to Team 10 discussions.

1) The first theme is the link with history, which means link to the context.
The project of the re-opening of the Mercatale ramp (1970-1977) is not one of the early
works, but shows the way De Carlo interprets the relationship with history and with the
context. After the ducal palace in Urbino had been finished, Francesco di Giorgio built in
the fifteenth century the ramp which let Duke Federico da Montefeltro reach the palazzo on
horseback from outside the walls. The ramp is in fact very easy and very wide.
In the 18th century the upper part of the ramp was demolished, and a theatre was built on
top of the ramp, which was forgotten: it was closed from the bottom, it was cancelled on the
top. Only by chance De Carlo discovered the entrance from a manhole and managed to
convince the municipality to reopen the ramp.

The relationship with the context includes both the theatre and the ramp. De Carlo worked
in the space in between, connecting the ramp to the town on the side of the theatre. He
doesn’t approach the theme as a problem of conservation, of reopening the ramp to show

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that there had been a ramp there, and how it had been built, and used, but he sees it as a
matter of making it work again. There was some difficulty in making the connections,
because the municipality had to deal with some private areas, but the important message
is that you don’t have to do an archeologist work, but that things must be alive; you have to
use the ramp, you have to connect it to the vital network of the town. And that is what
actually happened in Urbino with the ramp, as from the day it was opened it has been
continously walked on.

The project of the Faculty of Magistero in Urbino (1968-76) is another work which shows
again the relationship with the context. Urbino’s historic center is very compact and very
old. The new faculty was to be built in the area of an old convent and of its wide garden and
orchard. In the open space De Carlo made a new architecture, with a thoroughly different
language, but closely linked to the existing building. What I want to underline is the prin-
ciple that every period should represent itself. In Italy there is a very difficult problem with
conservation because it is commonly thought by the Soprintendenze, the public authorities
who look after the monuments, that you should build in the old fashion, not to make a
contrast with the monument – and most of Italy seems to be a monument now. But in De
Carlo’s work you detect that it is important to build at the best of your capacities and of the
available technology, to give light and shade as well, to build a space that can be divided
with movable partitions or used all together, and you cannot do this if you stick to brickwork
and wooden structure. And, beside this, it never happened that ages didn’t represent their
time: it is important that doing architecture you give a sign of your time as well, you don’t
pretend you are in another time and borrow another language, as we no longer speak Latin
now.

A project which can show another aspect of the link to the context is the project for Piazza
della Pace in Parma (1981). The piazza in the centre collects the directions of the existing
streets. The cmpositional idea is that streets carry the energies which flow into the town,
so you have to collect them and release them at the same time, to let them follow their own
path and perhaps come to a recompositioning of them again.

2) The second theme I want to point out in Giancarlo De Carlo’s architecture is the link with
the future, which is flexibility, i.e. the way the architecture you build will have a life of its
own, being capable to accommodate changes of use or transformation. When you finish a
building site the building begins its life, and, if it is capable of accepting transformation,
which obviously will occur because a town is a living thing which changes, and people
change, and as time passes other people arrive and mix with the previous. So, if a building
can accept changes, it will live longer and will remain adequate over a longer period of time.
Only if a building is very beautiful and strong and makes people come together in a vivid
and fascinating way, then it will be able to force people to come together in the same way
for a long time, but this happened only few times in the history of architecture.

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In urban planning flexibility is even more important, because you have to be able to capture
and include changes, otherwise your plan becomes a liability to transformation: the plan
should be an instrument able to outline the future without being rigid, in order to respond to
changes without collapsing.

The plan of Urbino was designed from 1958 to 1964. A lot of importance was given to the
open spaces, and to the capability of including further transformation.

The housing Quartiere Matteotti was designed and built in Terni from 1969 to 1974. The
houses were built for the people working in the steel company ‘Italsider’ in Terni, and De
Carlo worked on the project with the future inhabitants from the beginning; unluckily only
part of the general plan was built, because the company had problems and the operation
was stopped. It was a very important intervention because of the method: it was a very
particular situation in which De Carlo invited the future inhabitants of the dwelling to partici-
pate in the process from the beginning. Again flexibility is a main theme.

I remember De Carlo telling about this project, that, apart from what people said they
wanted, you had to work out what people really might want when the building would have
been finished; so he also adopted the technique of building the inner partitions not interrupt-
ing the floor, so that you could change them in future. These buildings have changed in
time, and people seem to have taken possession of the inner and outer spaces, and of the
common facilities along a diagonal, elevated way.

3) The last theme I want to point out is language, which is the link to the present, because
it is the means through which you depict the present time to the future generations, and, on
the other side, it is the means trough which you communicate with people and get them in
touch with the spaces they live in, and represent them to theirselves.

If you look at the housing in Mazzorbo, which is a public housing intervention on an island
of the Venetian lagoon, this project could seem rather vernacular because all together the
image is rather Venetian, but if you look at the single elements this is not traditional Vene-
tian architecture with regard to forms or details: the windows, and the staircase, and the
round shapes. But the language is somehow domestic, so that people get in touch with the
space they live in.
Colour is a traditional element: in the lagoon area houses are very strongly coloured, just
like the boats.

Transformation of the convent of the Benedettini in Catania (1984-95) for University.

Apart from the restoration of the convent and the replacing of the functions, De Carlo had to
build a big technical volume for the central heating and plants, which is near the second

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cloister. It was a difficult task to incorporate it within the building’s language; all the chim-
neys on top are carefully designed, and for the one storey elevation he placed mirrors with
different inclinations, which reflect parts of the old covent, in a new designed image.

Conclusion

So is there a continuity from Matera to the recent buildings?

I have the feeling that in the background there is a continuity which perhaps begun with
Pagano’s ‘Architecture without architects’ exhibition in the 1930s, and then goes through
Ecochard and the Moroccan approach brought in CIAM in 1953, and touches on the old
town of Matera as De Carlo showed it in Otterlo, and as it was published in Forum, the
Dutch magazine, in 1961-62, and goes on to ‘Spazio e società’, the journal which De Carlo
directed since 1974, and then goes through self construction…
The continuity of a research which is inclusive and curious, and investigates differences
with the aim of including, not excluding them (which is a very contemporary theme). The
continuity of a research toward an architecture for all people, which was also common to
most Team 10 members, and which becomes more and more indispensable today as our
society becomes more and more multietnic and multicultural. A research based on a good
eye upon society, the striving to understand and a good deal of solidarity as well, which
was surely Aldo van Eyck’s interest, and of Haan and Candilis, who had worked in ATBAT,
and of Erskine and De Carlo, and all the other Team 10 members, inner circle or not, I don’t
mind, who have always put their best energies in building for people, picking what is alive,
the wishes and passions and the sufferings, and dealing with them and bringing them in an
architecture.

Because it’s human passions that really move the world.

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A Different Way of Analysing, Understanding and Conceiving the City in the Work of

Candilis-Josic-Woods

Tom Avermaete

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 Sociology, Production and the City

There are today a few who are across the brink of another sensibility – a sensibility
about cities, a sensibility about human patterns and collective built forms.
Looking back to the fifties it was then that brink was crossed, it was then that architec-
tural theory convulsed, then that the social sciences suddenly seemed im0portant. A
change of sensibility is what I now think Team X was all about. (Peter Smithson)1

La structure des villes réside dans les activités humaines; elle est définie par les
rapports entre ces activités.2

1 : Urban Modernization and Vanishing Architectural Dimensions

If until the Second World War the discussions about the city and housing in France were
largely held in architectural circles, in the post-war period these issues were recaptured by
a centralized, technical planning ministry. After 1944 France entered a second and decisive
stage of its révolution urbaine. Substantial shortages in the realm of social housing urged
the government to take large urban planning initiatives.3 Urban planning became completely
embedded in the project for the modernization of the country, represented by the subse-
quent Plans de Modernisation et d’Equipement. The centralized and technocratic character
of these modernization plans was practically literally translated in the urban planning ap-
proaches used. The large housing complexes that arose in the peripheries of all of the
French cities, the so-called Immeubles Sans Affection (ISA), demonstrate this.4 Com-
pletely detached from their local or regional context, independent of the existing urban
morphology, these complexes were the first exponents of an understanding of the urban as
a mere facility, a presumption that gained importance in the 1950s and 1960s Grand En-
sembles.5 In these projects urban form was no longer considered as a spatial phenomenon
embedded in a context, but rather as an accountable and independent unit. As Georges
Candilis pointed out:

L’immense destruction due à le guerre, l’urgence et la pauvreté ont fait dévier ces
tendances vers des solutions répondant à la nécessité de faire vite et bon marché:
UN STYLE ‘RECONSTRUCTION’ apparaît en Europe. . . . La notion de plan de masse
prenait une valeur secondaire: le grand souci était surtout l’objet même de l’habitation.6

Hence, the post-war history of many French cities, reads as the story of the increasing
independency of the architectural and the urban realm: first the disruption of architecture
out of the framework of the existing city (1950-1956), subsequently out of the banlieu under
the heading of Grand Ensemble (1960) and finally the complete liberation of architecture by
the Ville Nouvelle (1965). Marcel Cornu described this process strikingly:

Au mitan des années cinquante, apparurent d’étranges formes urbaines. Des im-
meubles d’habitation de plus en plus longs et de plus en plus hauts, assemblés en
blocs qui ne s’intégraient pas aux villes existantes. Ces blocs s’en différenciaient
ostensiblement et parfois comme systématiquement, s’en isolaient. Ils semblaient

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Candalis Josic Woods

faire ville à part.7

Faire ville à part or the complete dislocation of architecture out of the logic and structure of
the urban realm, was the result of the French post-war approach to urban planning. As
Candilis noted, the inner logic of new housing developments were often completely de-
tached from the surrounding urban matrix, resulting among others in ‘l’indépendance du
plan de masses par rapport à l’ordonnance des rues’.8

2. Ethnologie Sociale: Critiques, Perspectives and Alternatives

The dislocation of architecture from its urban matrix rapidly became subject to severe
criticism. From the beginning of the 1950s in France, a substantial debate centred on the
changing urban condition emerged from the realm of the social sciences.9 An important
contribution was the book Paris et l’agglomération Parisienne: L’espace social dans une
grande cite, written in 1952 by French social geographer Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe.10
The ethnologie sociale of Chombart de Lauwe and his team was in the first place a critique
of the environments that resulted from the post-war hard French planning methods.11 Chombart
de Lauwe questioned the dwelling conditions of the new urban developments in the periph-
ery of Paris:

Ce dernier se caractérise le plus souvent par la présence de cours intérieures autour

desquelles une série de hauts bâtiments se distribuent méthodiquement. Il amène
ses habitants à se situer en masse compacte au milieu ou à l’écart d’agglomération
existante. Des ensembles de population sont ainsi posés de façon très distincte
dans l’espace; leur distribution intérieure ne les groupe pas d’abord en fonction
d’une rue, mais autour ‘d’escaliers’ et de courées sur lesquels la vie des quartiers
environnants n’a pas la même emprise que sur les habitations voisines.12

In his 1952 publication Chombart de Lauwe was extremely critical of the dwelling condi-
tions in the new urban developments. Especially their failure to underscore public life was
heavily criticized. It is to the merit of Chombart de Lauwe that this critique was not formu-
lated ex-nihilo, but emerged from – and was confronted with – investigations of the charac-
teristics of the historical city of Paris.13 This approach is illustrated in the1952 study Paris
et l’Agglomération Parisienne. The research in this book focuses on the combination of
physical entities and practiced entities, using notions such as the neighbourhood (le quartier),
the urban block (l’îlot), the building (l’immeuble) and the street (la rue).14 In order to under-
stand these entities simultaneously as physical matter and as spatial practices, Chombart
de Lauwe proposed to regard them as elements of ‘les paysages de la vie quotidienne’.15 In
the fashion of the contemporary structural anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss, Chombart’s
ethnologie sociale compares everyday urban landscapes in different neighbourhoods, in
order to trace the recurrent and thus structural elements. According to Chombart de Lauwe
one of the structural elements of the neighbourhood, in both a physical and a social sense,

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is the entity of the street:

Ce lieu géométrique, c’est la rue, dont l’importance est d’ailleurs fonction de l’exiguïté
de l’habitat. La vie de quartier est intimement liée à cette rue où elle est appelée à se
traduire. (…) On pourrait dire que la vie de la rue donne la mesure de la vie du
quartier.16

Beyond the recognition of the street as a structural element for the neighbourhood, Chombart
also investigated the structural components of the street. It is from this perspective that he
underlined the importance of commercial and other services (l’équipment):

L’ors qu’on étudie la vie de la rue, on remarque vite que la structure des boutiques est
aussi important que les formes d’habitat.17

This statement was underscored with a detailed cartography of the structural qualities of
the services of the street. Through a comparative analysis of maps of different Parisian
neighbourhoods, Chombart de Lauwe demonstrated that within the urban tissue of an ordi-
nary Paris street a densely woven social and spatial structure of services can be detected.
This structure is a compulsory quality of the well-functioning of the street according to the
French social ethnologist:

‘Le jeu réciproque de la vitrine et de la rue.’ Avec ses étalages qui souvent envahissent
les trottoirs, avec ses illuminations qui, à la tombée de la nuit, égayent et ‘enrichissent’
les rues aux apparences les plus misérables, toute boutique représente par elle-
même une structure concrète dont l’influence est fondamentale sur la vie d’un quartier
urbaine.18

Against the background of the contemporary hard French approach of the post-war urban
developments and the related disconnection of the urban and the architectural realm,
Chombart’s study appeared as the story of a different reality. In French architectural circles
Chombart de Lauwe’s unravelling of the historical urban tissue of Paris did not remain
unnoticed. On the one hand it was perceived as a critique of the disruptive logics of post-
war urban planning. On the other hand it was understood as a useful study of characteris-
tics and principles that could guide architectural and urban design in the future.

3 Another Modern Architectural Tradition

The Architectural Critique on Post-War Urban Planning

The precise moment that, following the developments in the social sciences, a general
critique of post-war urban planning was brought to the fore within the realm of French
architecture and urbanism is difficult to trace. In the pages of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui
and Urbanisme a substantial and public critique of post-war urban developments did not

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Candalis Josic Woods

appear until the beginning of the 1960s.

Surprisingly, the bulk of this 1960s architectural critique did not turn against the hard
French state apparatus and its planning methods, but rather held CIAM responsible for the
dislocation of architecture from its urban matrix. As both Kenneth Frampton and Manuel de
Sola-Morales have argued, this negative attitude towards CIAM gained adherence in the
second half of the twentieth century19:

The breakdown of European cities, that has occurred over the last forty years has cast
a heavy shadow of guilt over the ideology of city planning derived from functional
architecture. Critics like Bernard Huet and Leon Krier have accused the Athens Char-
ter and its descendents of the grave crime of ‘treason’ against city planning. Before
them, Gordon Cullen and the ‘townscape’ of the sixties, and the morpho-typological
school of the seventies . . . have joined the ranks of the detractors, sometimes with
more opportunism than justification, thereby setting off a banal and superficial cam-
paign of denigration of such concepts as zoning, planning regulations, and general
schemes of development, to the point of rejecting any rational basis for the organiza-
tion of cities as mistaken or counterproductive.20

From this standpoint the position of Candilis-Josic-Woods is remarkable, since their nega-
tive evaluation of the post-war urban developments in France and elsewhere in Europe was
not connected to a condemnation of the urban models that were developed within CIAM. In
a text with the telling title ‘Urbanisme: Repenser le problème’ Georges Candilis developed
a distinct view on the underlying reasons of the urban developments in the immediate post-
war period:

La période de la reconstruction dans toute l’Europe, par l’ampleur de son programme,

fait apparaître la nécessité d’une doctrine: la Charte d’Athènes a ‘servi’ comme ‘planche
de salut’.
L’application de la Charte d’Athènes, par des gens qui voyaient uniquement la recette
et non l’esprit a provoqué la confusion et le désordre de nos plans d’urbanisme
actuels.
...
En traversant la France, l’Allemagne, l’Italie, on découvre à l’infini le même aspect
uniforme et désolant des collectifs en ‘morceaux de sucre’, des blocs d’immeubles,
témoins tristes, éléments isolés de la vie, juxtaposés sans aucune liaison entre eux,
sans aucune liaison avec ce qui existait, sans aucune liaison avec ce qui va venir.
L’académisme d’avant-guerre a donné place à un pauvre ‘modernisme’ sans âme et
sans consistance.21

According to Candilis-Josic-Woods, besides the ‘poor modernism’ that emerged in post-

war France, other more valuable approaches of the urban realm exist. In contrast to many
of the post-war critics, Candilis-Josic-Woods did not claim that this tradition had to be
sought outside the modern movement, but rather within its very confines. According to the

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partnership the origin of this other modern tradition is situated before the general introduc-
tion of the principles of the functional city in Germany during the 1920s:

Avec la naissance du XXème siècle apparaissent les premières études, publications

et, quelquefois, réalisations qui nous amènent vers un autre esprit d’urbanisme où
son rôle par excellence, social, est destiné à tout la société.
Les architectes démontrent que ‘l’Art de Bâtir les villes’: c’est aussi et surtout leur
affaire et pour résoudre les problèmes d’urbanisme, il est nécessaire de posséder
une technique très poussée afin de dissocier l’apparence et la réalité.22

Georges Candilis pointed to the modern architectural tradition of conceiving cities that has
its origins at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century in the seminal work of the
Viennese architect and historian Camillo Sitte, translated in French as l’Art de Bâtir les
villes.23 For Candilis, Sitte stands at the beginning of the modern tradition of urbanisme.
This other modern tradition is believed to take as its point of departure ‘les valeurs plastiques
et spatiales’ of the urban realm.24 The spatial characteristics that result from the material
articulation of the city are the central concern of this tradition, according to Candilis:

La recherche des relations harmoniques entres les volumes bâtis et les espaces
libres: la recherche de l’ESPACE.25

Besides the fact that this modern tradition approaches the city as a material articulation
that defines space, it is also characterized by a particular affection for the existing city. In
his 1954 article ‘L’esprit du plan de masse de l’habitat’ Georges Candilis underlined that
this other modern tradition regards the city as a repository of knowledge concerning mate-
rial articulations and spatial practices:

L’Urbanisme, c’est la science qui a comme but d’organiser la vie d’une ville; c’est une
science très vieille; dernièrement encore on a découvert des villes vieilles de plusieurs
milliers d’années dont on peut constater d’après leurs ruines et leurs traces que leur
vie était organisée, structurée. Qui dit organisation, dit plans, prévisions, équilibre,
structures. C’est justement la recherche d’une structure harmonieuse entre les
différentes activités urbaines que la science urbanisme a comme but et aussi
prémouvoir et surtout de prévoir.26

Candilis’ definition of urbanisme, brings to mind the posterior definition of a culturalist

model of urbanism by French scholar of urban history Françoise Choay.27 By means of an
analysis of the work of Camillo Sitte, Choay explained that one of the main characteristics
of the culturalist model of urbanism is that it relies on knowledge of the existing spatial
organization:

‘Ce n’est qu’en étudiant les oeuvres de nos prédécesseurs que nous pourrons
réformer l’ordonnance banale de nos grandes villes’, écrit Sitte.28

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Choay opposed the culturalist model to a so-called progressist approach to urbanism.

This last approach, embodied by CIAM, holds that modernity requires a rupture with the
historical city.29 According to Choay these two models of urbanism are diametrically op-
posed because they are orientated ‘selon deux directions fondamentales du temps, le
passé et le futur, pour prendre les figures de la nostalgie ou du progressisme’.30
Candilis did not subscribe to the binary discrimination between culturalist and
progressist models of urbanism that Choay later held to. On the contrary, Candilis was in
search of an approach to urbanism that could gather an understanding of urban forms from
the past while envisioning those of the future. His writings can be regarded as attempts to
uncover within the progressist current of the modern movement, culturalist approaches to
urbanism. According to Candilis, it is precisely the simultaneity of the two tendencies that
reveals the meaning of the other modern tradition.31
The architects that belonged to this other modern tradition studied existing cities
from synchronic and diachronic perspectives and based their urban visions of the future
upon them. Commenting on a project by P.L. Wiener and José-Luis Sert (fig.IV.6) Candilis
underlined:

En Amérique Latine, Sert et Wiener ont étudié a grande échelle l’habitat de popula-
tions pauvres. Dans l’ordre existant des ‘quadras’ espagnoles une forme est apparue:
le logement constitue un ensemble, les circulations sont bien séparées et la tradition
des patios respectée.32

In his article Candilis presented a wide spectrum of contemporary projects that regard the
investigation of existing forms of dwelling and building as a basis for new urban design. He
did not, however, call for a literal transposition of existing urban forms or principles. His
selection of projects illustrated how existing architectural and urban spaces are compara-
tively investigated, in order to uncover their underlying structural principles. In turn, these
structural principles become guiding codes for future urban planning and design. According
to Candilis this particular strain of urban thinking is not necessarily absent from the work of
the ‘fathers’ of the modern movement, but rather was neglected. Moreover it was inter-
rupted on several occasions:

La notion d’urbanisme née avec notre siècle a été interrompue deux fois par les deux
guerres mondiales et n’a pas pu atteindre sa matérialisation dans l’art de vivre et
dans l’art de bâtir.33

In his 1954 article ‘L’esprit du plan de masse de l’habitat’ Georges Candilis traced a re-
newed interest and re-vitalization of this other modern tradition in post-war projects by
Merkelbach and Elling (Frankendaal Housing Complex, 1947-1951, Amsterdam) and by
Tecton, Lasdun and Drake (Hallffield Estate, 1947 Paddington, London). A few years later,

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in his text ‘Habitat sous forme de trame’ Candilis added the work of Sert and Wiener in
South America and of Ecochard in North Africa to the tradition of urbanisme.
It is also this other modern tradition of urbanisme that Team X aimed to re-vitalize
according to Candilis:

Pour la première fois, à Dubrovnik, certains architectes prennent conscience du mo-

ment critique où les choses ne peuvent pas devenir pires et où la notion officielle
d’urbanisme a perdu tout son rôle primordial dans la vie de la société. Pour la première
fois, on essaie d’introduire des critères nouveaux:
- L’importance de la découverte de l’interrelation des fonctions d’urbanisme,
- La mise en évidence de l’homme et de son échelle, élément primordial de la continuité
des établissements humains,
- L’intervention de la mobilité de notre époque où tout change de façon de plus en plus
accélérée, faire des plans stratifiés, c’est aller contre la nature, c’est être aveugle.
La notion de l’identité et du caractère personnel de nos établissements humains qui
est une révolte contre l’uniformisation absurde et la platitude.
Et avant tout, tenir compte de la croissance constante qui fait éclater les limites,
modifie l’aspect des territoires et la façon de vivre.
Pour la première fois, on essaie de revitaliser cette autre tradition moderne.
. . . Ces architectes se sont groupés en équipe = TEAM, au 10ème congrès des
C.I.A.M. et ils sont devenus les TEAM X.34

In this text Candilis defined the objective of Team X as the re-vitalization of the tradition of
urbanisme from a particular set of criteria. His definition of the criteria for this re-
conceptualization reverberated the perspective that Chombart de Lauwe, Lefebvre and other
sociologists had opened on the French post-war urban realm a few years earlier. The pro-
claimed importance of the interrelation of different urban functions, the continuity of the
urban tissue and the importance of mobility within the urban realm illustrate the kinship.
Candilis’ definition situates the work of Team X and of the partnership at the cross-
roads of two traditions of urban research: an ethnologie sociale tradition of understanding
the city as the result of practices of dwelling and building, and ‘another’ modern architec-
tural tradition of regarding the city from its material articulation and spatial characteristics.
By situating Team X within these two traditions, he identified – in my opinion – one of the
most productive fields of tension for the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods. The urban projects
and thinking of the partnership are permeated by the search to combine considerations on
spatial practices with a nuanced understanding of the spatial qualities that result from the
material articulation of existing cities. Hence, the work of the partnership appears as the re-
vitalization of the modern tradition of urbanisme on the basis of an understanding of the
built environment as frame, substance and goal of spatial practices.

‘A la Recherche d’une Structure Urbaine’

This revitalization of the other modern tradition of urbanism is most clear in the 1962 article

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‘A la recherche d’une structure urbaine’ by Candilis, Josic and Woods. In this text the
partnership clarified its intention to search for, analyze and make operational that which
structures the material articulation and the spatial practices of the urban realm. If, as the
partnership held, the urban realm should be looked upon as the combination of spatial
practices and material articulation, which instruments, what logic or which structures can
guide these? The possible answer to this question was primarily sought within existing
cities.
Within the practice of Candilis-Josic-Woods the research into existing cities played
a paramount role:

Les plans de ses villes, leur tracé de réseaux routiers, leurs équipements collectifs:
adduction d’eau, évacuation, nettoyage, enlèvement des ordures ménagères, etc. . .
. la détermination des différentes fonctions basses: le quartier d’habitation ou de
résidence, le lieu de commerces, le quartier administratif et de cultes, les
établissements de la culture et des loisirs: c’est-à-dire tous les éléments qui nous
préoccupent actuellement, pour le tracé de l’organisation de l’extension de nos villes,
et la création de nouvelles villes, peuvent être constatés et découverts dans les plans
des villes existantes.35

Against the background of this appreciation of existing cities as a knowledge basis, ar-
ticles such as ‘A la recherche d’une structure urbaine’ (1962) or ‘Problèmes d’Urbanisme’
(1965) were in search of those elements that structure the urban realm. For these historical
investigations, Candilis, Josic and Woods made use of their own research on existing
cities and on the contemporary corpus of Italian research that focussed on patterns of
urbanization and models of urbanism. Candilis, for example, founded his 1965 article on
the Atlante di Storia dell’Urbanistica by the Italian scholar Mario Morini.36
The main aim of the historical studies in the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods was the
recognition and the study of the perennial character of certain elements within the historical
development of cities:

A travers et par les Romains, on peut constater une continuité de l’esprit et du tracé
urbain de nos villes et de nos capitales. En effet, si on analyse l’origine et l’évolution
historiques des structures de la presque totalité des villes actuelles, nous apercevons
que les schémas d’origine sont des tracés de l’époque romaine.37

The duration of tracés and other perennial elements and the fact that these have been able
to fulfil a function that reaches beyond their very reason of creation, received ample atten-
tion. This investigation of the perennial character of certain urban elements was not a goal
in itself, but was pursued as part of the search for a more dynamic conception of urban
planning:

Il ne suffit plus de faire une ‘composition’ grande ou petite, comme celle de Versaille

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hier et celle de Brasilia aujourd’hui, mais il faut démontrer . . . comment ils vont
changer et croître, et surtout, il faut traduire la notion ‘Espace-Temps’.38

Hence, Candilis-Josic-Woods’ interest in the perennial character of urban tracés and ele-
ments is thus not fuelled by the belief that the city must be a stabile entity, but rather by the
conviction that perennial urban elements encompass the capacity to structure change and
growth.
This attention for the structuring logics of the European city and its capacity to
accommodate growth and change was common to most of the Team X contributors. In this
respect Jakob Bakema’s 1962 article ‘An Emperor’s House at Split became a town for
3000 People’, published in the Dutch architectural periodical Forum, played a major role
within Team X.39 In this text Bakema documents Split, a town that had grown out of a palace
built by Diocleation circa 300 BC and was quartered by the traces of the Roman cardo and
decumanus. (fig.IV.7) He illustrates how within the quarters defined by these two axes, the
urban tissue has gradually changed and renewed throughout history. The article includes
photographs of busy contemporary streets that have emerged within the Corinthian colon-
nades of the original palace. (fig.IV.8) Bakema discerns the perimeter and the tracés of the
historical palace as the perennial and structuring elements of the urban fabric’s develop-
ment throughout time. The fascination for physical (gates, perimeter) and non-physical
(tracé) elements of longue duré that can structure urban development reappeared in Shadrach
Woods’ 1961 ‘Stem’ article. Under the heading of stem Woods dwelt upon the possibility of
a linear tracé operational as a conceptual instrument of urban planning. The stem-article is
an investigation into the characteristics and the role of the defining elements of such a
tracé.40
In his book The Man in the Street Shadrach Woods underlined that these investiga-
tions into perennial elements and change and growth are based on a specific understand-
ing of the city. For, as the result of the spatial practices of dwelling and building, the city
was for Candilis-Josic-Woods not a static entity, but the outcome of relentless building,
modification, decay and re-building:

Any building, no matter how well conceived and built, needs maintenance and re-
placement of parts to keep it in a state of useful repair. A city is such an enterprise, and
certainly maybe be thought of as a building. Change and decay, and replacement to
accommodate those changes and to repair that decay, are fundamental to the contin-
ued existence of the city.41

Woods emphasized that the presence of perennial elements is essential to the conception
of the city. More precisely, he considered the relation between long- and short-term ele-
ments fundamental to the very existence and continuity of the city. According to the part-
nership in the post-war period the relation between both came under severe tension. In
France and elsewhere in Europe the post-war period was characterized by the introduction

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of the new short-term time rhythms of automotive mobility, mass distribution and mass
consumption. The relation between the longue durée of the European city and these new
time rhythms was, according to the partnership, one of the main questions for post-war
urban planning. It became one of the main concerns within the partnership’s urban projects,
as I will discuss further on in this paper.

Attitudes of Modification and Intromission

The analytical and conceptual interest in the perennial character of urban traces that char-
acterized the work of most Team X contributors, also led to a specific understanding of
urban design. The understanding of the existing urban realm as structured by elements
with a longue duré, bestowed urban design with a specific status:

Change made by one generation to the general scene in terms of building and engi-
neering works is relatively small, and no matter how large the area of development
may be, it cannot stand alone, and its effectiveness must also be measured in its
inter-actions with what exists and with what it calls into being, both socially and plas-
tically. . . .
Buildings should be thought of from the beginning as fragments; containing within
themselves a capacity to act with other buildings; be themselves links in systems of
access and servicing.
What is proposed is the abolition of planning as we know it . . . the disappearance of
the ‘master plan’.42

Peter Smithson put into words a more general tendency among Team X contributors. He
pointed to an attitude of regarding urban projects and realizations as spatial acts that
interrelate with a wider and long-standing urban framework. Within the texts and projects
by Candilis-Josic-Woods, urban projects were not considered as independent entities, but
rather as fragments that acquire most of their significance by their very situation within a
larger existing urban matrix:

The difference between our situation and previous situations is that we are capable of
seeing a building as a fragment, not as an isolated act like a poem, which you can
read and put in your mind and keep separate.43

This understanding of the urban project as fragment that interacts with a larger existing
urban realm, is one of the main premises to be found in the work of several Team X contribu-
tors. Peter Smithson rightly underlined that it can also be considered as a clear shift of
attitude within CIAM. On the one hand this ‘fragment’ attitude represented a move away
from the encompassing character of master planning ‘towards the partial and incomplete’
as Denise Scott Brown argued in her 1967 article ‘Team 10, Perspecta 10, and the Present
State of Architectural Theory’.44 In the work of Team X urban design was not considered as
a final and independent project, but rather as a fragment that is situated within, and contrib-

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utes to, a larger entity.

On the other hand, the ‘fragment’ approach counters what Bruno Fortier designated
as one of the main legacies of the modern movement in urban planning: the concept of
rupture.45 Fortier argues that the bulk of urban planning methods of the modern movement
as represented by CIAM were characterized by an attempt to literally distance new parts of
the city from existing ones. Manfredo Tafuri shares this viewpoint when he underlines the
significance of the distance between the new and the existing in the urban plans of Le
Corbusier.46 In post-war France this disruptive attitude towards the existing urban realm
became general practice, as Candilis remarked:

La rupture d’une évolution organisée des agglomérations urbaines devient un acte

éhonté.47

Within the work of Team X in general and of Candilis-Josic-Woods in particular, this modern
idea of rupture with an existing urban context became subject to careful reconsideration.
The division between historical and modern parts of the city that was propagated by some
CIAM architects during the inter-war years and fully elaborated immediately after the Sec-
ond World War in the centrally planned hard french urban developments, was critically re-
examined.
Instead of a rupture with the existing urban environment, the contributors of Team X
developed within their debates and writings a different approach, centred on the notion of
continuity. Within Team X the idea of continuity was developed along two different lines,
most clearly illustrated in the polemical positions taken in the debate at the Otterlo meet-
ing of 1954. At this meeting, held to define the goals and approaches of a new CIAM, the
issue of relating to existing urban environments was one of the key-points of debate. On
one side of the spectrum there was the – particularly Italian – position that represented a
growing awareness that additions to the urban realm should communicate in a concrete,
architectonic way with the existing urban fabric. Nathan Ernesto Rogers, a prominent Ital-
ian architect who was in the 1940s and 1950s subsequently editor of Domus and Casabella
and the most important CIAM representative of his country, was one of the important voices
within this discussion. Rogers launched the notion of ‘preexisting environment’ (preesistenze
ambientali); pointing thereby to precedents that could be found within the existing urban
realm and that could through ‘linguistic transposition’ be made operational in a new urban
design.48 As Vittorio Gregotti, a privileged witness of the Italian debate, retrospectively
explained:

For Rogers, though, the concept of a pre-existing environment was not at all a stylistic
one; above all it corresponds to the idea of opening a dialogue with ways of looking at
history from the point of view of contemporary culture using as a starting point the
specific political and social conditions.49

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Historical interpretation had, according to Rogers, a constitutive role within urban design
where everything is staked on the relationship between memory and invention. Rogers did
not consider continuity a function of literal transposition, but rather a matter of understand-
ing and re-considering the forms of the historical urban context. According to the Italian
architect new urban design did not necessarily have to mimic historical urban forms, but by
all means had to strive for a strong affinity and continuity with them.
In addition to the Italian attitude there was another position that sought the continu-
ity with an existing urban context not so much in formal matters, but rather in what lied
behind them. Alison and Peter Smithson were important spokesmen of this approach that
sought continuity in the so-called ‘scale of associations’.50 The Smithsons proposed a
scale that demonstrated that different social attitudes and associations of men resulted in
various built environments. It would run – ‘isolated buildings, villages, towns and cities’,
borrowing rather superficially a characterization found in Patrick Geddes valley section.
(fig. IV.9) In the Smithsons viewpoint:

The problem of re-identifying man with his environment cannot be achieved by using
historical forms of house-groupings, street, squares, greens, etc., as the social reality
that they represent no longer exists.51

At the Otterlo meeting of 1959 Ernesto Rogers led the discussion with the Smithsons
concerning the London Roads Study. His main objection concerned the attitude toward the
history of the city, since, even though the built fabric that defined the roads was destroyed,
the guidelines of the latter were nevertheless preserved. Rogers argued that, if the intention
was to alter the city drastically, in other words to make it appropriate for the post-war reality
of the different flows and types of traffic, then it would be more logical to build a completely
new city. Rogers proposed a position that would remain more faithful to the architectural
articulation and structure of the historical city.
Candilis-Josic-Woods took up a position in between that of Ernesto Rogers and
Alison and Peter Smithson. Just as their fellow Team X contributors, the partnership situ-
ated the continuity of the city not in a slavish replication of the past, nor in a complete
adherence to modern infrastructures, but rather in the field of tension between what is and
what has been. Two categories of elements keep this field of tension alive according to the
partnership: the material forms of the past and the spatial practices of the inhabitants and
users of the city that are impregnated with history. Concerning the first category Woods
wrote:

It is clear, to any urbanist, that history and historical markers are important to the
continuity of the city. No group, people or nation can hope to live without some continu-
ity, and historical markers in the form of buildings are an important part of that senti-
ment.52

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Besides this first category, the partnership insisted especially on the historical meaning of
spatial practices:

La ville est avant tout un lieu contenant des espaces qui englobent les fonctions dans
une entité bâtie. C’est un lieu qui favorise les activités de l’homme et de sa société.
Animée par l’homme, c’est aussi un organisme vivant qui rend possible à chaque
instant de son existence, évolution, changements et adaptations.53

For Candilis-Josic-Woods the everyday practices – the daily trajectories of inhabitants

between house and work, shop and church through which the structure of the city is im-
printed on bodies and memories – represented an important aspect of the continuity they
sought. Continuity was, however, not considered as an exclusive characteristic of spatial
practices, nor of urban form. Urban forms and systems, as well as the practices, rhythms
and routines of urban dwellers were considered essential aspects for the continuity of the
city:

The new urban world is not a desert. It is full of old urban things, systems, structures
and attitudes. To make it new and fitting, we see the need . . . to repair and to renovate
these systems and structures.54

This quote from Woods underlines that the new is not understood as a rupture with the
existent, but rather as a way of relating to the existing structures that underlie the material
articulation and the spatial practices of the urban realm. By openly defining the new as
alteration of the existent, the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods represents a sheer change of
attitude within CIAM. If the avant-garde architects of the inter-war period made their aware-
ness of the existing urban context explicit through the propagation of an idea of extrane-
ousness or rupture, then the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods is characterized by an opposite
attitude. The partnership, just as the majority of the Team X contributors, abandoned the
idea of a rupture with the existing urban context and replaced it with attitudes of continuity
and modification. As Woods underlined in his 1960 ‘Stem’ article the partners held to

the basic axiom that every extension to the city is an extension of the city and cannot be
considered as a self-contained unit, isolated by its introspective nature from the rest
of society.55

In the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods the focus of design is not directed at a rupture with the
existing, but rather at the question of ‘how to renew and extend our cities’.56 This is not to
say that the partnership placed its work exclusively in relation to the traditional city, but
rather that the big city, the urban realm as a whole – encompassing both the historical and
the new – figured permanently as a background for their actions. Every urban design is
understood as a strategic positioning in the field of tension that exists between what has

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been and what is.

This positioning is understood as insertion and modification of the existing urban
realm. Commenting on the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods, Peter Smithson described the
partnership’s design attitude as the belief

that a new thing is to be thought through in the context of the existing patterns. Thought
through in the context of the patterns of association, the patterns of use, the patterns
of movement, the patterns of stillness, quiet, noise and so on, and the patterns of
form, in so far as we can uncover them.57

Candilis-Josic-Woods’ conception of urban design as intromission and modification of a

pre-existing field of urban forms and practices, epitomized an important shift in post-war
architectural thinking. In the urban designs of Candilis-Josic-Woods one of the guiding
principles reads:

The planning, the method of siting, and the aesthetic character of the new town are
integrated as completely as possible into the existing geographical and cultural envi-
ronment of the old town and the region.58

The ideas of intromission and modification are beyond doubt two of the most important
themes within the approach to the urban realm by Candilis-Josic-Woods.

4 On Streets and Stems

The feeling is prevalent in Western societies that something basic has gone wrong .
. . the street is no longer his, no longer functioning as a life-line which he rightly
expects it to be.59

One of the main structuring elements of the urban realm that the work of Candilis-Josic-
Woods focuses upon is the street. Just as for many other Team X contributors, the idea of
finding an alternative for the ordinary street was one of the central concerns of the partner-
ship.60 It is instructive to note that less then thirty years separates the anti-street thesis of
Le Corbusier from the pro-street preoccupations of Team X. Where Le Corbusier in 1929
castigated the traditional street for being ‘no more then a trench, a deep cleft, a narrow
passage’,61 Georges Candilis in 1962 held a plea to

rétablir la notion ‘rue’ disparue des réalisations nouvelles. La Chartes d’Athènes

élaborée par les C.I.A.M. a détruit la ‘rue corridor’ périmée, pour la remplacer par de
passages, des trajets. Mais la ‘fonction rue’ reste un élément primordial dans la cité.
Il faut retrouver la ‘rue-centre linéaire’ comme structure de base d’un plan urbain.62

The Modern Movement and the Road

Though Candilis’ plea for a return to the street as the structural principle of the urban realm

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might seem to be diametrically opposed to the models of the modern movement as embod-
ied by CIAM and Le Corbusier, at closer inspection the approach of the partnership also
represents a certain continuity. Within the modern movement roads were often relied on for
their capacity to structure the urban realm. In the post-war period this modern tradition of
assigning to the road a structuring role was revived from a complementary perspective.
Under the header of ‘street’, the spatial practices and the experience of the road were put
into the centre of attention. Between 1955 and 1965, particularly at the M.I.T. and in the
pages of The Architectural Review, a notable debate was held on how streets structure
spatial practices and the experience of the urban realm. Two special issues of The Archi-
tectural Review, one titled ‘Outrage’ (1955) and the other ‘Counterattack’ (1956), formulated
a strong plea against the contamination of the landscape by muddled, uselessly meaning-
less and antidistinctive elements.63 (fig. IV.11) The editors Kenneth Browne, Gordon Cullen,
Jim Richards and Ian Nairn held a plea against what they called the ‘subtopia’ phenom-
enon, combining the words suburb and utopia. They sought to re-install the distinct charac-
teristics of streets that structured the spatial practices, the perception and the experience
of the urban realm. They assumed that the elements introduced by the modern world –
such as new road systems, advertising and new building typologies – could contribute by
intensifying the character of the urban realm.
A second strain of post-war research on streets relied foremost on the name of Kevin
Lynch. Lynch published The Image of the City in 1960, Site Planning in 1962, and the
highly appreciated The View from the Road in 1964.64 Throughout his publications Lynch
underlines the quality of roads in structuring the experience of the environment. The road
and the practice of moving on it by car offered a way to structure the dispersed post-war
urban realm.

The Stem: Aligning Urbanity

The re-establishment of the street in the practice of Candilis-Josic-Woods should be situ-
ated within the perspective of both understandings of the structural role of the road. Both
the structural characteristics of the physical form and the spatial practices and experience
of the road played a major role in the partnership’s approach. More precisely, it is the
tenuous relation between both that was the focus of Candilis-Josic-Woods’ attention.65 This
focus on the interrelation between physical form and experience does not distinguish the
position of the partnership from the international architectural debate, but merely echoes
the perspectives of Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch. However, the very definition of the
interrelation between form and experience sets the approach of the partnership apart from
their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries. Cullen’s and Lynch’s methods were largely coloured by
a phenomenological perspective that regards the relation between form and experience as
a faculty of visual perception; of the human eye moving through space. Candilis-Josic-
Woods tackled the relation from the much wider cultural framework of everyday spatial
practices. Not the eye moving through space, but spatial practices that reflect cultural and

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social logics were the point of departure to contemplate the relationship between form and
experience.
A notable example of such a broad cultural and social approach to the street was to
be found in the realm of the social sciences. The ethnologie sociale and its detailed analy-
sis of the composing elements of the street that Chombart de Lauwe brought to the fore in
the beginning of the 1950s in Paris et L’agglomération Parisienne was an important model
for the Candilis-Josic-Woods partnership.66 Especially the investigations of allotment settle-
ments in the agglomeration of Paris were indicative. Under the heading of description
écologique, Chombart unfolded a comprehensive analysis of the historical development of
the allotment settlements, that took into account both physical and social parameters. He
indicated how the different historical extensions of the original development, though com-
posed of different dwelling typologies, are experienced as integral parts of one coherent
urban entity. (fig.IV.12) One of the reasons for this coherence is explained under the head-
ing of ‘Factors of Unity’ (Facteurs d’Unité). Chombart demonstrated how in the everyday
spatial practices of the inhabitants collective buildings such as schools, cinemas and
libraries generate the main street that functions as a spine for the allotment development.
He suggests in his diagrams that, though the different collective buildings are not physi-
cally interconnected, their very role within everyday practices creates a certain coherence
of experience and results in a backbone that structures the urban development.
This understanding of the street as a central figure that is the result of particular
relations between spatial practices and entities, reverberates in Candilis-Josic-Woods’
approach to the street:

Cette ‘rue-centre’ qui se construit par les éléments qui la composent: immeubles
d’habitation, magasins, marchés, salles de spectacles, édifices de culte, centres
sociaux, jardins et parcs . . . a pour rôle d’associer les logements aux sièges des
diverses activités de la Cité . . . boulevards, avenues, places, ronds points, squares et
jardins, forment l’ossature urbaine qui donne le caractère spécifique à la ville actuelle.67

This particular conception of the street not only guided the analysis of the urban realm, but
was made operational in the designs of Candilis-Josic-Woods. The most important out-
come was the article titled ‘Stem’, written by Shadrach Woods immediately after the 1959
meeting at Otterlo and published in 1960 in Architectural Design.68
In his article Woods underlined that the stem-concept is in the first place a criticism
of the hard French urban planning approaches and of their use of the plan masse as main
planning instrument. This method of outlining the envelopes of buildings and their disposi-
tion as a way of planning the urban realm was, according to Woods, contradictory to the
practices, rhythms and logics of post-war urban development:

In an urban complex the idea of plan masse as an independent, plastic arrangement

does not correspond to the basic axiom that every extension to the city is an extension

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of the city and cannot be considered as a self-contained unit, isolated by its introspec-
tive nature from the rest of society.
It seems clear then that the aesthetic, monumental or symbolic grouping of cells
(hence, of families), in the tradition of La Grande Architecture, leaves out too many
factors of human ecology. It is the wrong tool for the job.69

Echoing Chombart’s description écologique, Woods argued to take into account the ‘many
factors of human ecology’ in urban design. He insisted on the embedment of urban design
in real circumstances and pointed out that this involves taking into account new param-
eters. Underlying Woods rejection of the plan masse as an instrument that is incapable of
extending the city, lies – as earlier mentioned – a critique of CIAM’s neglect of an important
parameter of urban planning: modification. As Bruno Fortier pointed out, this idea of modi-
fication was short-circuited by modern movement architects:

More than by a rejection of the city, the modern movement has been characterised by
the abandoning of the culture of modification which, after the renaissance, was at the
base of processes of transformation.70

Fortier pointed out that CIAM’s neglect of modification was reflected in the static and a final
images by which the urban projects were presented at the different meetings. He argues
that, though the imagery of CIAM projects often stressed movement and mobility, the
underlying planning approach gave ample attention to growth and change.
It is within this perspective of re-introducing a parameter of modification into urban
design that Team X’s large and relentless attention for change and growth in urban planning
should be situated:

The practice of urbanism is chiefly an organizing process, as indeed is the practice of

architecture. Urbanism is essentially concerned with organisation through minimal
structuring. Urban design is concerned with order within organization. By order we
mean the judicious disposition of activities and communications in the form of built or
open spaces, in such a way that they function well. The organization we propose must
be conceived so as to permit and to encourage order. They must also be dynamic, i.e.
adaptable to change and capable of accepting change.71

The stem article by Woods was an attempt to introduce a dynamic conception of urban
design. Under the heading of ‘mobility’ Woods underlined that a dynamic approach to
planning is better adjusted to the rhythms and practices of post-war society:

For architects, mobility has several connotations: in terms of movement it signifies the
shift from 2,5 miles per hour to 60, 100, or 500 miles per hour. In terms of time it
means the appreciation of fourth dimension, i.e. change on a short time cycle. In
terms of economy, it means rapid mass-distribution, consonant with the potentialities
of mass-production and mass-consumption. In terms of housing, it means the easy,
unquestioning rootlessness of the urban population.
Architects and planners are principally concerned with mobility, in all its connota-

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tions.72

Woods suggested that urban form in the post-war period be analysed and understood
through the multifarious notion of mobility. In his opinion, urban form could not be pinned
downed in clearly circumscribed envelopes or forms, but rather should respond to a culture
of modification, requiring a different form of planning. Surprisingly, the inspiration for this
different approach to planning was not sought within a newly devised system, but rather
within the history and logic of the European city. In two sketches that accompany the stem
article Shadrach Woods seems to suggest that for the partnership the traditional European
city fabric – with its density, scale and especially its elements of longue durée – figured as
a background against which alternative planning strategies for the urban realm were devel-
oped. (fig.IV.13)
It was, however, a specific understanding of the historical urban realm that informed
Woods’ stem-concept. This can be clarified by looking at the work of another scholar of the
urban realm who was in close contact with the Team X circles and with Shadrach Woods:
social geographer Erwin Antonin Gutkind. After the Second World War, Gutkind came into
close contact with the English CIAM contributors, the so-called MARS group to which
Alison and Peter Smithson belonged. In the middle of the 1950s Gutkind wrote to the
MARS group:

I am glad that at long last the Athens Charter has been recognised as what it is in
reality, namely an utterly useless and nonsensical salad of meaningless phrases. It
has nothing whatever to do with LIFE, for it neglects the greatest reality, the human
beings whom it degrades to functions of the Functions on which it purports Town
Planning to consist. . . . I enclose my latest book, The Expanding Environment, which
I believe contains a discussion of some of the problems which could form the basis
for a new Charter.73

In his book The Expanding Environment of 1953 Erwin Antonin Gutkind unfolded a different
perspective on the urban realm by placing l’homme habitant central. Gutkind’s subject of
study was not man as the product of nature or economic forces, but man as the creator of
dwellings and landscapes, of his own dwelling environment and his own microcosm. Gutkind
investigated the urban and rural landscape as the result of man’s practices of dwelling and
building. He went in search of structural principles in the relation between the spatial prac-
tices of man and the landscape. One of the structuring elements that Gutkind traced within
the landscape is the figure of the street. Under the heading of ‘Street Villages’ Gutkind
illustrated that the tracés of streets are perennial elements that have structured and guided
the spatial practices of dwelling and building and thus urban development throughout time.
(fig.IV.14) Gutkind’s analysis of tracés as elements that structure the spatial practices of
the urban realm was a main source of inspiration for Shadrach Woods’ stem-concept.
The most suggestive explanation of the principles of the stem-concept is a collage

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that was elaborated shortly after the publication of the stem-article. (fig.IV.15) The collage
reveals the twofold characteristic of the stem. In the bottom left corner aerial photographs of
linear urban developments suggest how the stem attempts to recapture the capacity of
existing tracés to structure urban development. In this part of the collage the stem appears
as a device that structures the practices of dwelling and building and their resulting forms.
At the top of the collage a completely different view of the stem can be seen. Here
photographs of markets, squares and streets demonstrate how the stem is thought of as a
figure of social practices. The stem appears here as the locus of collectivity; as a site for
meeting, trade and play. The middle part of the collage demonstrates, through a mixed
technique of plan and photographic material, how the final goal of the stem concept is the
reconciliation of physical and social characteristics. Here it becomes clear that the stem is
initially a tracé and thus no more then a path. The stem acquires its actual form and span
from the alignment of entities that are simultaneously built architectural volumes and col-
lective functions. According to Candilis-Josic-Woods, the very presence of these janus-
faced elements defines the essential characteristic of the Stem.
It is especially in the middle part of the collage that the similarities of the stem
concept and the analysis of the traditional European street by social ethnologists in the
early 1950s become clear. Just as in Chombart de Lauwe’s historical analyses of the main
avenues of Paris (fig.IV.16), the figure of the stem is completely defined by the adjacent
architectural volumes that contain collective functions, as another collage of the stem-
concept illustrates. (fig.IV.17) The traditional European street, simultaneously epitomizing
principles of architectural form, spatial practices and of urban structuring, features as an
exemplary figure for the development of the stem concept. The stem concept is an attempt
to recapture the simultaneous characteristics of the traditional street in a new concept for
urban design. As the Candilis-Josic-Woods collage demonstrates, like the street, the stem
is primary thought of as the thread that holds the basic characteristics of the urban fabric
together. The overlay and weave of the different threads result, according to Candilis-Josic-
Woods, in a true urban tissue.

Caen-Hérouville (France, 1961)

The principle of the Stem is most convincingly elaborated in the competition submission for
the extension of the city of Caen (Normandy, France). (fig.IV.18, 19) In 1961 Caen had a
population of about 110.000 which was expected to increase at the rate of five or six thou-
sand inhabitants per year for the next ten to fifteen years. The competition brief called for a
residential environment for about forty thousand people in an area of three hundred hect-
ares.
In the Caen project the main assignment for Candilis-Josic-Woods was to design an
organization principle which could generate and support the eight to ten thousand dwell-
ings needed. Since the increase in population was expected to cover a ten to fifteen year
period, it was compulsory to create an organization that could be executed in phases, and

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which would be valid at all stages of growth. As a consequence of being phased, the plan
had to allow for modification as the programme would naturally change over the relatively
long span of development. As Woods pointed out there were

two basic conditions, growth and change, as imperatives of the plan. We needed to
discover a minimum structuring device which could be effective for fifteen hundred
dwellings but could grow to ten thousand, which could adapt itself to changing condi-
tions, whether these be economic, social or technological, which could be compre-
hensible to our clients (that they could use it and find their way about in it), and which
would allow for adaptation to its physical environment. 74

The fulfilment of these requirements was not achieved by the proposal of the customary
definition of building volumes in a certain lay-out, the so called plan masse, but rather by
the introduction of a new structuring device:

In this way it is felt that a basic structure may be determined: this structure or stem
includes all the servants of homes, all the prolongements du logis; commercial, cul-
tural, educational, and leisure activities, as well as roads, walkways and services.75

As Woods indicated, instead of the plan masse the project was conceived around a new
basic structure: the stem. In Caen, the stem was in the first place a figure that resulted
from a clear distinction:

Our first approach was an analysis of the complex. We started working with two
families of components, the dwellings and their ancillaries. Or, as Louis Kahn puts it,
the served and the servant. Dwellings are served and supported by ancillaries which
include educational, cultural, social and commercial activities, as well as roads, paths
and services, etc.76

Candilis, Josic and Woods based their conception of stem on a precise understanding of
the interrelation between these two categories of ‘components’. As a conceptual plan of the
competition project illustrates, the stem is primarily is a product of the various ‘ancillary’
collective functions, represented in dark. (fig. IV.20). These commercial, cultural, educa-
tional and leisure buildings literally define the spatial articulation of the stem. The negative
space that results from the disposition of these architectural volumes is, much as a tradi-
tional street, the urban space of the Stem. However, by placing mainly collective functions
along the stem, the partnership also related its form indirectly to the character of the
housing development.
The stem-concept was based on one of the important mutual relations in the urban
realm: the relation between the largeness, quantity and character of collective facilities and
the size of the housing development. The rapport between a certain amount of dwelling
units and a specific spectrum of collective functions (shops, sports and cultural facilities,

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administration) – which the social sciences had been analyzing since the early 1950s –
was turned into a logic for design. This relationship between collective functions and hous-
ing is made into a structuring device of urban development with the concept of stem. It is as
such that Woods statement should be understood:

The structure of cities lies not in their geometries but in the activities within them. The
clearest organization in the housing developments is the linear centre of activities –
the Stem.77

In the conceptual sketch of the Caen-Hérouville project (fig.IV.20) the stem is given a struc-
turing role vis-à-vis the housing developments. The sketch demonstrates how the ancillary
functions define an open vertebral structure that is punctuated by open spaces. Housing
blocks can be nested within the openings and in-between spaces of the vertebral spine.
The size, character and spacing of the collective functions gives structure to the implanta-
tion of the whimsical housing blocks and thus determines the character and density of the
urban lay-out to a certain extent. As Woods remarked:

The density of development is controlled by the intensity of activities along the stem.78

However, the stem is only one side of a twofold structuring logic. In an attempt to accept
the different sorts of ‘mobility’ that are part of the post-war urban realm, for his concept of
the stem Woods relies – besides on the schism between dwellings and ancillary functions
– on the partial division between automotive and pedestrian mobility. As he explained about
the Caen-Hérouville project:

We tried to reconcile the scales of speed of the automobile and the pedestrian and
found that these speeds are, in geometric language, not supplementary but comple-
mentary, not parallel but perpendicular. They can only meet at points, never in lines. If
the pedestrian is to take the shortest way from one place to another, to go straight as
it is his nature to do, then the automobiles must take a longer way; they must go
around. Since the normal speed of the auto is fifteen to twenty times that of the pedes-
trian, the automobile can go around, taking a longer way, while the man on foot goes
straight. The inference here is that we can and should apply to private motorized
transport (where it exists) the same principle which has always held for any public
transport: it goes from one predetermined point to another, along a fixed path, which is
not necessarily the shortest one but which relates to the speed of the device.79

As the two diagrams for the competition project for Caen-Hérouville illustrate, the urban
development is defined as the in-between space of a pedestrian network, that coincides
with the stem, and an automotive network. On the one hand

le centre linéaire est le domaine exclusif du piéton, il est desservi par la voiture et il
rétabli la rue: fonction primordiale et permanente de l’urbanisme.80

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Both dwelling entrances and parking spaces are located along this pedestrian network.
(fig.IV.24b) A second network for cars (fig.IV.24b) connects the North-West sector of the
site, reserved for light industry, to the entrance roads of the different apartments blocks
through a peripheral road system. All roads leading into the site terminate in parking lots.
There is no traffic through the site. The car is assigned a clear place on the edges of the
urban development:

On arrête la voiture à l’endroit où il le faut: les circulations verticales mécaniques sont

localises au points essentiels de l’ensemble.81

The pedestrian network at the centre of the site and the automotive network on the periph-
ery define the confines of the urban development. In between both the project evolves:

la synthèse: arrêt-voiture
parcours piétons
ascenseurs localisés
devient génératrice des éléments composants82

That Candilis-Josic-Woods’ Stem concept for Caen-Hérouville is based on knowledge about

traditional street tracés, is illustrated by the ample attention for the adjustment of the stem
tracé to the geographical characteristics of the site. In the same way that in historical cities
the tracés of streets often obtain a differentiation through the particularities of the land-
scape, the stem -concept takes advantage of the geographical characteristics of the site to
obtain a certain hierarchy. As a detailed plan of the initial stage of the Cean-Hérouville
project illustrates (fig. IV.23), the actual situation and layout of the stem are adjusted to the
geographical characteristics of the landscape. Both the initially built parts of the stem and
the planned tracés seem to take maximum advantage of the natural inclination of the site.
The different branches of the stem are designed in order to fully experience the hilly land-
scape. The main parts of the different stems are located at the highest point of the site. The
qualities of the landscape are relied upon to diversify the experience of the stem, as well as
to introduce a hierarchy into the urban lay-out. This hierarchy is enhanced by locating the
parking lots along the main part of the stem in the slope of the existing landscape, so that
the main stem overlooks the whole site. (fig.IV.24). As explained before, the housing blocks
present themselves as whimsically articulated branches that are grafted onto the stem, in
the margins left open by the collective functions. As a sketch of the Caen-Hérouville project
illustrates this results in a dense layering of collective and dwelling functions and allows for
a continuation of the public domain of the stem in the housing blocks. (fig.IV.20) Just as in
the Golden Lane Project (London 1952) designed by Team X contributors Alison and Peter
Smithson, the public realm of the stem is continued within the dwelling blocks as so-called
‘streets in the air’. These collective and continuous pedestrian galleries, situated on several

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levels of the housing blocks, not only serve the entrances to the dwelling units, but con-
tinue the public realm of the stem. Hence, the stem concept can be regarded as Candilis-
Josic-Woods’ attempt to re-introduce into the urban realm a continuum of experience be-
tween the public and the private realm, characterized by nuanced and diversified transitions
between both realms.
The Caen-Hérouville project clearly shows that the stem-concept represents an at-
tempt to re-capture the structuring role of the traditional street in a new urban design
project. An understanding of the urban realm as frame, substance and goal of spatial prac-
tices guided this attempt. The first category that the stem relates to is the spatial practice
of building. The stem as a vertebral structure of collective functions structures the concrete
practices of building, destruction and re-building throughout time. More precisely, it offers a
concrete framework within which these practices can unfold. A second category of prac-
tices that the stem attempts to structure is the everyday practice of dwelling. The stem
attempts to structure the quotidian practices of the urban dweller by offering a continuous
and diversified realm that mediates between the private and the public sphere.

Aménagement du Quartier Cuvette Saint-Martin, Fort Lamy (Chad, 1962)

In the project for the development of the Quartier Cuvette Saint-Martin for Fort Lamy (fig.
IV.40), the capital of the young North-African republic of Chad, the planning concept ‘from
Stem to cluster’ was fully elaborated.83 Fort-Lamy had been the capital of colonial Chad
since 1920. The city had played an important role as a military fortress that secured de-
fence and the distribution of arms and provision in the French colonial territories. After the
installation of the republic of Chad in 1960, it was decided that Fort-Lamy would remain the
capital. However, the urban form of Fort-Lamy, was – as it were – the material reflection of
the historical colonial power relations. The city was clearly divided in an African quarter,
comprised of courtyard dwellings within a dense urban tissue and a European quarter
planned during the French colonial period and consisting of detached housing and public
buildings along large avenues. Each of these quarters had its own urban morphology and
both were separated by a large terrain vague. It is precisely this terrain vague that became
the subject of a competition in 1961. The competition brief demanded the planning of four
districts of about 1200 dwellings that could bridge and reconnect – materially as well as
symbolically – the two halves of the city. In the competition proposal the main principle of
Stem was simultaneously refined and expanded. Candilis-Josic-Woods once more relied
for their answer to this difficult brief on the principle of the Stem that is refined and ex-
panded. In Fort-Lamy the Stem or ‘grand rue’, defined by its adjacent buildings that house
collective activities, represents only one structuring level. (fig.IV.40) To this first structuring
axis a second figure of multi-level whimsical buildings is added. Within the building enve-
lope of these buildings the public domain of the Stem is continued as ‘streets in the air’. In
its turn the public domain of the ‘streets in the air’ is prolonged in a fine weave of small
streets or alleys that structure low-rise patches of urban tissue. The result is a continuous

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public realm that gradually becomes more private in character and unfolds within – and
connects – the distinct urban environments. (fig.IV.41) Both the differentiation within the
public domain and the varying heights of the buildings were believed to introduce a certain
hierarchy within the urban realm:

The first stage of an aggregate is represented by the assembling of cells round the
street. Several streets leading to one public square form a district . . . the gathering of
several districts leads to the notion of an urban scale.84

From this quote by Woods it becomes clear that the ‘from Stem to cluster’ principle repre-
sents and attempt to re-introduce the generating logic of a historically developed city.
Candilis, Josic and Woods intended to re-install the relation between house, street,
neighbourhood and city – as well as their particular degrees of privacy and publicity – within
the urban design for Fort-Lamy. The partnership underlined that it did not intend to recreate
an urban tissue in one simple and immediately realized architectural project, but rather to
introduce structuring elements that can support its development. The inspiration for these
structuring elements was found in the existing subdivision of the city:

Dans cette proposition – Il ne s’agit pas d’importer une ‘Nouvelle Architecture’ dans
un pays de grand bâtisseurs des temps passés. Mais – d’établir un système de
lotissement – souple et divisible comportant toute l’infrastructure, permettant le contrôle
de la croissance accéléré de la capitale.85

In a conceptual drawing of the overall principle, the partnership suggested that the project
for the Cuvette Sint-Martin is a continuation of the principles and structure of the existing
African urban fabric. (fig.IV.42). This relation to the existing context is especially exempli-
fied in the research on the composition of the urban tissue and its relation to the public
realm. Through plans and sections the partnership illustrated how their proposal for a spe-
cific parcelling and its relation to the street derived from a detailed investigation of the urban
morphology of the African quarter. (fig.IV.43) Particularly the proposed low-rise parts of the
development are based on a careful understanding of the inextricable relation of house and
street present in the existing urban context:

Ici la notion de voisinage se résume a la notion de mitoyenneté. C’est la continuité de

l’assemblage des maisons qui crée l’espace commun public: la RUE.86

With the idea of mitoyenneté, Candilis, Josic and Woods pointed to the inextricable rela-
tionship that exists between the presence of a certain housing typology and the articula-
tion, dimensions and character of the street. With the concept of mitoyenneté the partners
touched upon one of the important characteristics of the urban fabric: that the public realm
of the street obtains its specificity only by virtue of the ‘placing in common’ of the façades
of private houses. The street is formed through the continuous alignment of houses and

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moreover the typology of the house exists by virtue of its particular situation towards the
street. This interrelation is according to Candilis-Josic-Woods one of the essential charac-
teristics of the urban realm that was lost in some of the models that were put forward by
CIAM and in some of the post-war suburban developments. Hence, mitoyenneté or the
interrelation of street and house that existed within the traditional African urban tissue of
Fort-Lamy, was brought to the fore as the conceptual centre of the project. It was applied
and further elaborated in the Candilis-Josic-Woods proposal for the new quarter. Compara-
tive sections (fig.IV.43) of the existing urban fabric and the proposed development illustrate
how the collective realm is conceived as a function of the private realm in both:

Chaque logement – étant a deux niveaux – constitue une partie de la rue.87

Just as in the traditional city the private and the collective are functions of one-another, in
social as well as in architectural terms:

One must not exaggerate the importance of the cell in the collective habitat what reveals
the true nature of a society is neither the shape of its cells nor their standing but the
relationship between the individual and a collectivity. . . . In our proposal the street tends to
be the vital element of a new urban structure. It brings life to the inhabited cells and changes
this agglomeration into a living complex.88

5. Web: Weaving the Urban

Urban Tissue
The interest in the Stem as structuring device can not be disconnected from a new concep-
tion of the urban realm that fully entered into the partnerships thinking and projects in the
late 1950s. If early projects such as Bagnols-sur-Cèze (1955) addressed the urban realm –
at least partially – from an idea of composition, then from the middle of the 1950s another
design approach of the urban emerged. Social sciences such as the ethnologie sociale
that Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe and his team brought to the fore in the beginning of the
1950s, were of major importance to the development of this new approach. In his study
Paris et l’agglomération Parisienne: L’espace social dans une grande cite, Chombart de
Lauwe had underlined the complex and diversified character of the urban fabric of traditional
European cities.89 Through the example of XIIème arrondisement of Paris the French geog-
rapher demonstrated that the traditional European city was the result of a complex weaving
of interrelated physical and social entities. By means of detailed road mappings, the differ-
ent housing developments, shops, garages and other collective services Chombart de Lauwe
depicted an urban quarter as a complex and varied urban tissue. (fig.IV.60-63) Besides
this, the French sociologist confronted his contemporary analysis with historical maps and
data in order to illustrate that the urban realm is not a static artefact, but a structural mesh
with the capacity to evolve and change. In his studies the urban fabric appears as an

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organization characterized by a strong commonality between its composing parts and by

its capacity to transform, adapt and modify. Chombart de Lauwe analyzed the urban tissue
as the simultaneous figure of continuity and renewal, of permanence and variation.
A similar understanding of the urban tissue guided the design work of Candilis-Josic-
Woods from the middle of the 1950s. The general attention they paid to the overall urban
composition that still characterized early urban designs such as that for Bagnols-sur-Cèze,
was exchanged for a specific attention to a generative urban tissue:

La composition architecturale cède la place à la recherche d’un tissu générateur du

développement, de la mobilité, de la métamorphose et de la croissance.90

Not the final creation of an architectural composition, but the installation of a generative
tissue was formulated here by Candilis as the task of urban design. The partnership also
considered its consideration of the urban tissue as a critique of the theoretical premises
that the CIAM Athens Charter had brought to the fore. Numerous verses of the Athens
Charter opened, directly or indirectly, a negative perspective on the urban tissue, such as
verse number 27 illustrates: ‘L’alignement des habitations au long des voies de communi-
cations doit être interdit.’91 Though the actual urban designs of modern movement archi-
tects often demonstrate different tendencies, theoretically the Athens Charter represented
a plea for the disentanglement of the urban tissue, for the loss of cohesion between its
elements and for the autonomy of building and road.92 From this perspective the strong
involvement of Candilis-Josic-Woods and other Team X members with the urban tissue
appears as an attempt to counter and re-think this unravelling of the traditional urban tissue
into separate elements.

Mesh and Infill: Sèvres (1962) and Geneva (1962)

A strategy for re-conceptualizing the urban tissue metaphor is illustrated in the projects for
Sèvres and Geneva of 1962. In both projects Candilis-Josic-Woods proposed to regard the
urban tissue as a matter of ‘mesh and infill’. If the concept of Stem was aimed at defining a
minimal basic spine around which the different urban functions could aggregate, then the
projects for Geneva and Sèvres were attempts to contemplate change and growth from a
different angle. The historical European urban fabric with its quality to accommodate changing
and varying programmes throughout time, functioned as an example here. The way that
existing building typologies of European cities have proven to accommodate various and
differing programmes throughout time, is taken here as the point of departure from which to
contemplate change and growth. In other words, the urban tissue was conceived here as a
combination of cells that form a receptive structure that can house changing and altering
programmes. Both the Geneva and Sèvres projects were investigations into the possibility
to design such a receptive urban structure, into its character and its degree of definition or
articulation:

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In our opinion it is preferable to avoid the over-articulation of the specific nature of a

given building, or the specific functions within a building.93

The particular character and the degree of articulation of urban space and how to provide it
with a certain margin of freedom and change, is investigated in both projects – both in
structural and material terms. Though in Sèvres the programme encompassed the con-
struction of workshops and studios for artists and in Geneva the brief demanded the hous-
ing of classrooms and collective areas for a French primary school, the strategy in both
projects was rather similar. It encompassed a combination of elements that were minimally
defined, yet allowed for large differentiation of in- and outdoor spaces, and of spatial transi-
tions. In both cases the partnership’s point of departure was a square structural grid pro-
jected onto the site. On this grid a vocabulary of in situ concrete elements was developed.
The result is a landscape of béton brut; a rough structural outline of spaces that can be
appropriated, left and re-appropriated.
The project for Sèvres encompassed the design of workshops and studios for about
twenty artists from different disciplines. (fig.IV.70-73) The point of departure was a grid
folded according to the form and exigencies of the site. On this grid a vocabulary of con-
crete columns, beams and infill panels generated a rudimentary building mass of three
floors. This building mass consists of workshops at the lower levels and of artists studios
with large outdoor rooms at the top level. The project brief foresaw that the artists that
occupied the spaces would often change and that different artists would work together inn
various formations at certain moments in time. Against the background of these demands
Candilis, Josic and Woods deliberately kept the spatial definitions of the concrete building
mass to a minimum. Only vertical circulation and sanitary cores punctuate the concrete
landscape. This minimally defined structure, consisting of rough concrete spaces of vari-
ous size and character, was thought to invite appropriation and re-appropriation. Moreover,
the partnership believed that this conception of the urban tissue as a minimal and pre-given
structural landscape could accommodate varying and different functions throughout time
and thus secure the projects sustainability.
In the project for the Geneva Primary School the minimal definition was not achieved
through a logic of posts, beams and infill, but rather through the juxtaposition of similar
volumes or receptacles. (fig.IV.74,76) In this project for a small school of six classes,
concrete boxes with no specific function were welded into a dense mass of open and
closed spaces. These are self-bearing units and thus have no supporting walls or columns
within their envelope. The only definitive elements are the vertical and horizontal limits of
the boxes. The overall outlook of the project recalls earlier experiments by Dutch architect
Herman Hertzberger that were published in the architectural periodical Forum with the title
‘Threshold and Encounter: The Shape of Transition’ in 1959.94 (fig.IV.75) By stacking match-
boxes Hertzberger showed how rows of houses could be given a greater wealth of spatial
transitions by shifting their relation to each other and by placing them at an angle. The
Geneva project strongly resembles the experiments by Hertzberger and Hardy. It offers a

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Candalis Josic Woods

large differentiation of transitional spaces. On the ground and upper level of the school the
spaces in between the boxes with classrooms defines the collective areas. On top of
several of the volumes there are ‘open-air’ extensions to the classrooms or to the play-
ground. At one occasion a cantilevered volume offers a sheltered place for playing and an
extension of the interior collective area. (fig. IV.77-78) The result is indeed a diversity of
transitional areas, resulting in a rich variety of spatial experiences. The Candilis-Josic-
Woods project also radically differs from the Dutch experiments in that it relates the transi-
tional areas to the structurally and semantically empty character of boxes. In the Geneva
project the transitional areas are part of a larger understanding of the urban tissue as ‘mesh
and infill’. Within this logic the transitional areas are valued for their quality to invite appro-
priation. They are constantly the subject of negotiation. The in-between character of transi-
tional spaces allows them to become part, to connect or to be separate from the adjacent
spaces. From this perspective the transitional spaces not only add a certain spatial quality
to the project, but also introduce an additional degree of freedom that allows for change,
growth and adaptation to different programmes. Candilis-Josic-Woods regarded the in-be-
tween space of the Geneva project as a margin that allowed for modification and change.

The Web
Following the configurative experiments and the ‘mesh and infill’ approach, Shadrach Woods
published an important article in 1962 in the avant-garde periodical Le Carré Bleu that
introduced the partnerships most encompassing structuring concept for the urban realm:
the Web. The point of departure for the Web concept was again the investigation of an
alternative for the traditional urban tissue. This time, however, this alternative was based on
an understanding of the urban realm as a matter of spatial practices. Hence the Web article
starts-off as:

Architecture and planning, which are each part of the other, are concerned with the
organisation of places and ways for the carrying out of man’s activities. The architec-
tural process begins with a way of thinking about organisation in a given place-time,
then establishes a system of relationships and, finally, achieves plastic expression.95

According to Woods, the activities or spatial practices that define the urban realm had
radically changed since the post-war period. Especially the way that spatial practices
unfold in space was subject to a major change:

As long as societies were evolving within the limits of perceivable human groupings
(villages and towns, classes, castes and sects) so long could architecture operate
within the limits of purely visual disciplines. With the breakdown of these limits and as
man evolves towards a universal society, the need is felt to discover a clear framework
for planning and architecture.96

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Post-war society amended the very character of the urban realm, according to Shadrach
Woods. Especially the definition of centrality within the urban realm altered drastically
during the post-war period. If historical city centres were perennial markers of centrality,
then in the post-war urban realm centrality became subject to rapid modification and change.
Hence the instruments of urban planning for defining centrality had to be revised:

When we predetermine points of maximum intensity – centers – it means that we are

freezing a present or projected state of activity and relationship. We perpetuate an
environment where some things are central and others are not, without however, any
competence for determining which things belong to which category. The future is thus
compromised. 97

The rhythms and practices of post-war society demanded a reframing of the attitudes of
urban planning according to Woods. He recognized that in the post-war urban realm, is-
sues such as centrality, which were clearly defined in the historical city, were subject to
forces that reach beyond the realm of architecture and urbanism. Instead of preconceiving
and clearly delineating zones of centrality and marginality, Woods proposed ‘to set up
systems (intellectual frames) that can relate activities’.98 These systems must additionally
have:

The purpose of any putting-together, to create a whole which is greater then the sum
of the parts, is only possible if we can guarantee a whole – a total synthetic order of all
the functions.99

Candilis-Josic-Woods’ concept of the Web was an investigation into the possibility of de-
signing a system that allows for relating different practices and programmes into a continu-
ous patch of urban tissue:

The proposals we have developed are characterized by the fact that the site is occu-
pied in such a way that the various activities of the public and private domains are
housed in what amounts to a continuous building.100

The linear organization of the Stem was left here in favour of a continuous basis on which
the urban can develop:

Point = concentric (static, fixed)

Line = linear centric (a measure of liberty)
Web = non-centric initially, poly-centric through use (a fuller measure)101

The Web was thought to be a more homogeneous system than the Stem, permitting limit-
less development of an area and organizing it by a network of circulation and support
systems that would unify diverse activities. The Web was intended to provide flexibility in
planning for a range of functions over time, thus assuring its own longevity; its very realiza-
tion is spread out and subject to revision over time.

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Frankfurt-Römerberg Competition, Frankfurt (Germany, 1963)

The full span of the Web concept became clear in the competition entry for the reconstruc-
tion of Frankfurt-Römerberg in Germany (1963). The project site was an entirely devastated
area situated between the Römer (city hall) and the Dom (cathedral) in the city centre of
Frankfurt beside the river Main. (fig.IV.83-84) In Frankfurt-Römerberg the brief consisted
mainly of the reconstruction of the centre of a historical city centre. However, the programme
entailed not only the re-installation of the public and dwelling functions that were part of the
site before its destruction, but also the introduction of new functions such as parking ga-
rages and large shopping facilities that corresponded to post-war urban realities and aspi-
rations.
For the Candilis-Josic-Woods partnership the Frankfurt-Römerberg project added an
extra aspect to their recherche de la structure urbaine. In this assignment the problem not
only encompassed the structuring of new urban development. It also encompassed an
investigation of ways to reconstruct a piece of historical urban tissue and this from the
perspective of the new urban realities and practices characteristic of the post-war period.
These new realities encompassed both the new time rhythms of mass retail that had
entered the urban realm and the infestation of the traditional historical fabric by new spaces
– evoked for instance by automotive mobility. Candilis-Josic-Woods’ proposal for the his-
torical city centre of Frankfurt was not a clear return to the traditional urban fabric, nor a
plea for a radically different type of urban form:

Du centre de Francfort, il ne faut pas faire un musée. Il faut découvrir un système qui
permette aux citadins de créer leur milieu physique avec un maximum de facilités et
de le faire évoluer au fur et à mesure des besoins.102

The competition entry can be generally described as the search for an approach that can
grasp the dense urban qualities of the traditional European city, but at the same time take
into account the new rhythms and functions characteristic of the post-war period:

Ici, entre ces monuments . . . il convient d’éviter une effusion de formes qui ne peuvent
jurer avec leur voisinage. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de dévaluer ce qui existe en l’imitant.
Mais il faut loger une telle diversité d’activités que, si chacune devait être considérée
séparément, le résultat serait le chaos. Il faut faire de ces divers éléments un tout, un
organisme unique.103

This janus-faced search was again architecturally condensed into the metaphor of the
Web. In Frankfurt the Web is conceptually composed of three elements: decks, tracés and
open spaces. A five-storey layering of decks is folded in between the Dom, the Römer and
other adjacent historical buildings. (fig.IV.85-88) The decks are large structural surfaces
that can accommodate buildings and are supported by a coordinate column grid with an

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interval of 9 m. As the scale model of the project demonstrates, by situating only three
levels of decks above ground-level, the Frankfurt Web is a rather modest building in terms
of its height. The decks conform largely to the building height of the adjacent urban
tissue.(fig.IV.87) Within its confines the project presents itself as a dense piece of urban
fabric that results from the juxtaposition of decks. At regular distances the decks are
punctuated by vertical circulation elements (escalators and elevators).The surface of the
decks is structured by pedestrian tracés or ways of rights. These are pronounced through
a deviating bay of 4 m in the structural grid of columns that support the decks (following a
grid of 36 x 36 m). As a sectional model illustrates, the tracés are conceived in this projects
as true streets. They are not only pathways, but define – just as the traditional street
pattern – a grid of technical supplies and services for the project. As in the traditional urban
fabric, private buildings can be positioned along the street and connected to these sup-
plies.
To the resulting maze a third element is added: large rectangular incisions that
create open spaces that run alternatively over a single or multiple levels. (fig.IV.89) These
incisions create differentiation within the grid. They introduce a certain measure within the
grid and are as such decisive for the positioning of certain functions at particular places on
the decks. Occasionally a whole maze of the grid is preserved so that large functions can
be located there. At other places the incisions turn the decks into a denticulate foundation
that can only accommodate small scale functions such as housing and workshops. (fig.IV.90-
93) Above all, the incisions connect the different levels spatially. They allow for spatial
relations and perspectives and turn the decks into a multi-layered landscape. As the wire
model of the project illustrates, the overlay of decks, traces and incisions results in an
urban landscape that can accommodate the developing urbanity, its changes and growth.
As Woods underlined:

This system enabled us to organize the multitude of activities called for, in the pro-
gram, into a clear comprehensible, adaptable order.104

The ground plans illustrate how the Frankfurt Web accommodates a large variety of func-
tions within its confines. The subterranean decks are uninterrupted floors that house park-
ing spaces, delivery roads and quays. In between – and at times even throughout – the
other decks a large variety of functions can develop, change and re-develop. The Frankfurt
Web accommodates housing, workshops, markets, offices, a cinema, multiple auditoria, a
library, a youth centre and several restaurants. The rigid structure of the Web seems to
possess the capacity to house a large typological variety of buildings. On the east side of
the project modest workshops with housing have a view over the river Main, while on the
west side large top-lit halls offer the Historischen Museum the necessary exhibition space.
(fig.IV.90-91)
The Frankfurt Web was not only meant to accommodate growth and change within
its confines, but also to allow for a certain adaptation to the context. Especially the con-

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Candalis Josic Woods

ception of the ground floor illustrates this. (fig.IV.95) A comparative drawing of the project
site before destruction and of the proposed development demonstrates that the scale, grain
and traces of the medieval urban fabric, present before destruction, are re-interpretated on
the ground-level. Woods considered this an attempt: ‘to reestablish the same human scale
in this place.’105 However, the re-interpretation of the medieval urban fabric within the con-
fines of the grid not only grants a specific scale to the urban spaces, it also allows for
connections from the Frankfurt Web to the neighbouring urban tissue. Sometimes this
consists of a moderate re-installation of historical pathways between Römer and Dom on
the ground-level of the site, at other places the relation to the context is elaborated as a
direct connection.
This is the case with the extension of the existing Saalhof-building at the south-west
corner of the project into a large complex for the ‘Historisches Museum’. (fig.IV.90-91) In a
third instance the Web is used to re-create a context. This is the case with the south
extension of the Web towards the river Main. At this south edge of the project, two of the
decks bridge the road that runs parallel with the river Main and extend the walkways of the
Web onto the quays along the river. As such the relation between the project site and the
river is re-installed.106

Free University Berlin, Berlin (Germany, 1963)

The structuring concept of the Web was further developed in the design for the Free Univer-
sity Berlin. In 1963 a competition was organized for the design of new buildings for the Freie
Universität Berlin located in the suburb of Dahlem. In this area, which largely consisted of
detached houses, a building was required for approximately 3.600 students.
For Candilis-Josic-Woods this assignment was a true experiment. On several occa-
sions the partnership had underlined that a university could be considered as a little city
and thus as a laboratory for what was at stake in the wider post-war urban realm. In the
writings of Candilis-Josic-Woods the separation of the different scientific disciplines within
the university is considered as a pars-pro-toto of the disconnection or ‘atomization’ of
different spheres of life that was going on within post-war society and urban space. The
sketches on the introductory panels for the Berlin Free University competition illustrate this
understanding. (fig.IV.96) They underline Candilis-Josic-Woods’ conviction that the post-
war university and urban realm need a careful re-installation and re-weaving of the different
disentangled spheres of life. However, according to the partners this re-entanglement or re-
weaving is not sufficient:

The removal of built barriers and the mixing of disciplines is not enough. The group is
meaningless when there is no place for the individual. The relationship of group and
individual must also be considered.107

In the view of Candilis-Josic-Woods the post-war urban realm not only needed a re-weaving
of different urban functions, but also a careful reconsideration of the relation between the

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private and the public realm. The partnership pointed with this stance to the changing
relation between privacy and publicity in the post-war period. French sociologists such as
Henri Lefebvre and Edgar Morin had described this new relation with the term
privatization.108Both authors denoted with this term a growing tendency of private retreat or
repliement that became visible in the post-war period. Hence, for Candilis-Josic-Woods the
design of a city or a university was not solely a matter of the design of collective space, but
rather of the installation of a basis that can accommodate varied and nuanced relationships
between the individual and the collective realm. A university or a city consists of

places for individual – places for group, tranquillity and activity, isolation and exchange.109

The compulsory basis for diversified and nuanced relationships between the private and the
collective realm could, according to Candilis-Josic-Woods, be summarized in the meta-
phor of the Web. However, the partnership remained rather cryptic about the actual mean-
ing of the Web metaphor. To fully understand it, it is instructive to look at the 1974 retro-
spective article by Alison Smithson ‘How to recognize and read MAT-BUILDING. Main-
stream architecture as it developed towards the mat-building’. In her text Smithson con-
nects the Web metaphor of the Berlin Free University to a particular conception of urban
design that she coins Web-building or Mat-building. Smithson wrote:

Mat-building can be said to epitomise the anonymous collective; where the functions
come to enrich the fabric, and the individual gains new freedoms of action through a
new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, close-knit patterns of association,
and possibilities for growth, diminution, and change.110

Hence, the Web is an urban planning instrument that allows for the structuring of an urban
environment. Alison Smithson made it clear that it is in the first place a matter of weaving a
‘fabric’ from threads or yarn in which different programmatic elements can evolve. In the
design for the Berlin Free University these threads resulted from the overlay of two figures.
(fig.IV.98-100) Each of these figures was based on a structuring element of the traditional
European urban fabric. The first figure encompasses the tracés or ways. This figure is
composed of four main parallel pedestian ways, interconnected by perpendicular second-
ary ways. (fig.IV.98) The principal ways correspond to the course of the main building
services. Several of these grids are juxtaposed and connected and all resulting levels are
connected by ramps and escalators. A second figure consists of an outline of open spaces
or espaces ouverts. This outline takes the form of a whimsical figure of interrelated open
spaces, courts and patios that runs throughout the entire project. (fig.IV.99) Candilis-Josic-
Woods define as such a continuous figure of in- and outdoor public spaces. According to
the partnership the basics of the project are defined once both figures of tracés and espaces
ouvertes have been installed. The overlay of these two figures delineates a basic structure.
(fig.IV.100). As an axonometric perspective illustrates, between the threads that are de-

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Candalis Josic Woods

fined by both figures, the different programmatic elements can be woven.(fig.IV.101) In

other words, the in-between spaces of both figures are the confines for the spatial practices
of dwelling and building. Georges Candilis wrote about the Free University:

Ce tissu provoque l’unité spatiale, les dimensions et les positions des divers champs
pédagogiques et clarifie les rapports entre toutes les activités universitaires.111

Candilis-Josic-Woods did not consider this approach as specific to the Berlin University
but rather as a more general approach:

This scheme is an attempt to discover structuring principles which might be appli-

cable to the organisation of the physical environment.112

Besides this first mesh of tracés and open spaces into which programmatic elements can
be woven, the metaphor of the Web refers also to another property of the traditional Euro-
pean urban realm: density. As Alison Smithson pointed out, the Free University Berlin
belongs to a tradition of post-war projects that attempted to recapture the spatial and
functional density of the traditional European city. Smithson tracked back a whole range of
post-war building projects that can be said to illustrate this attitude. She named among
others Aldo van Eyck’s Pastoor van Ars Church (1970-73), the Venice Hospital project
(1964) by Le Corbusier and the Smithsons own project for the Langside competition (1958).
(fig. IV.102) From this perspective a second paramount meaning of the Web metaphor
appears. The Web represents an attempt to think the city beyond a collection of building
blocks. It denotes an architectural practice that abandons the model of the city as a com-
pilation of individual buildings and replaces it with a conception of the urban as mats that do
not present themselves morphologically as free-standing monumental building masses:

They are not the sum of length, height and largeness but rather a two-dimensional
dense fabric, where men walks and lives in.113

The Web is thus a function of architectural density, which is not, however, understood as a
matter of building height or floor-pro-area ratio. With his Web metaphor Woods criticized
the vertical density of the urban model of the slab-block and the limited points of connection
between the different floors and programmes.114 For the partnership density, understood as
vertical stacking, was yet another example of the modern disentanglement of the urban
tissue. Hence, the competition panels for the Free University Berlin depict the model of the
skyscraper as the juxtaposition of several ‘planes of isolation’.(fig.IV.103) The work of Candilis-
Josic-Woods attempts to bring to the fore an alternative that regards density not as a
discriminative and numeric characteristic, but rather as a quality of the urban realm.
This alternative for vertical density is coined ‘a groundscraper’ and elaborated in the project
for the Free University.115 In the model of density that Candilis-Josic-Woods strove for with

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their Web metaphor density is considered here to be the inextricable weaving of diverse
built and functional entities at different scale levels, as it can be perceived in the urban
tissue of traditional European cities. It is understood as the capacity to interlace the differ-
ent architectural and urban elements into a close-knit urban fabric. Alison Smithson recog-
nized this attitude in the Pastoor van Ars Church (1970-73) by Aldo van Eyck. (fig.IV.102)
Within a traditional closed architectural volume several urban figures are juxtaposed: chap-
els, sloping street (‘via sacra’) and meeting place (‘crypt’)116 are united in the church’s
austere architectonic form. Smithson held that the interrelation and weaving of urban fig-
ures results in the building’s capacity to invite different forms of appropriation and thus
different practices. Precisely this ‘overlay of patterns of use: the disintegration of rigidity
through this meshing . . . make this a nugget of mat-architecture’117 wrote Smithson.
Likewise, the Free University Berlin is a meshing of urban and architectural figures.
The superimposition of the layer of tracès and the layer of espaces ouverts results in an
orthogonal tissue. Interior streets, squares and bridges are interlaced with gallery spaces,
outdoor patios, terraces and ramps. A primary weave or fabric of infrastructural elements is
the result. In between the threads of this primary fabric, a large variety of architectural and
programmatic entities can be woven. Auditoria, offices, laboratories and seminar rooms are
nested among the primary infrastructural threads. (fig.IV.105-106) The ensuing product is a
dense, two-dimensional patch of urban fabric, that stands midway between an architectural
building and an urban project.
In her 1974 article Alison Smithson pointed out that this dense overlay of urban and
architectural figures is an essential characteristic of the Web concept. According to the
English architect the concept epitomizes two apparently different tendencies: one being
the move of architecture in the direction of urbanism, the other the increasing importance of
the architectural interior. The resulting Mats are hybrids that embody characteristics of
both architecture and town planning. Candilis described the strategy that was applied for
the Free University Berlin as follows:

Le critère recherché est la qualité de l’ambiance créée bien plus que la valeur en soi
des éléments composants. L’essence même de l’idée est la recherche d’une Archi-
tecture Urbaine. 118

With the term architecture urbaine Candilis summarized the partnership’s search for an
approach that regards the urban realm as frame, substance and goal for architecture. He
argued that architecture is not a matter of single building projects, but rather that each
architectural project should be concerned with delivering a contribution to the collective
urban realm.
A last meaning that Candilis-Josic-Woods assigned to the Web metaphor is its
character to invite appropriation. This meaning can be clarified through a historical paral-
lel.119 The definition of architecture through the figure of the Mat is reminiscent of a cardinal
text in modern architectural theory: Gottfried Semper’s 1860 essay ‘Style in the Technical

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Candalis Josic Woods

and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics’.120 In this essay Semper stated that building
originates with the use of woven fabrics to define social space. For Semper the essential
characteristic of these woven fabrics, or Mats, is not the fact that they are placed in space
as such, but rather the fact that they ‘are the production of space itself, launching the very
idea of occupation’.121 The texture of the woven fabrics, their sensuous play, opens up a
space of exchange. The weave produces the very idea of a family that might occupy it.
Candilis-Josic-Woods’ metaphor of the Web seems to point to a similar relation
between architectural form and appropriation. In Semper’s definition of architecture the
texture, the weave, of the fabric has a primordial role in the creation of social space be-
cause it produces the very idea of a family that might occupy it. The two-dimensional dense
fabric of the Web was given a similar paramount role in the theory of Candilis-Josic-Woods.
The Web was thought to be an intricate juxtaposition of everyday urban (streets, squares,
bridges) and architectural elements, that is: ‘lifting the everyday to a poetic level’.122 The
resulting dense ‘groundscraper’ with its ‘close-knit patterns’123 is thought to produce – as in
Semper’s example of the woven fabric – a built fabric that invites relentless appropriation
and re-appropriation. This faculty to invite appropriation is a crucial theme within the theory
of Candilis-Josic-Woods. During the post-war period, when the built environment became in
Western Europe increasingly subject to the control of the welfare state and the consumer
society, the active participation of inhabitants in their environment was considered of prime
importance. As Alison Smithson underlined, dense Webs were not only considered as ‘the
right living pattern for our way of life, and the equipment that serves it, but also . . . the right
symbols to satisfy our present cultural aspirations’.124 The Web does not symbolize this
faculty of appropriation and identification through linguistic preconditions or through the
adoption of a certain kind of style, but rather through its very materiality. It is the tissue of
the Web, its material of clustered and interrelated spaces that symbolizes the possibility of
appropriation. The Web turns out to be a design strategy aimed, through the introduction of
density, at establishing a more cultured relationship between modern man and physical
space. Candilis, Josic and Woods’ conception of the Web as an urban tissue that invites
appropriation, illustrates once more the partnership’s understanding of built space as a
platform for, and the result of, spatial practices.125 The property to invite appropriation is,
with the concept of Web, turned into the main objective of architecture.
In the project for the Free University Berlin this understanding of architecture as
accommodator for spatial practices was given extra structural amplitude through the
partnership’s collaboration with Jean Prouvé. The renowned French engineer elaborated
the concept of appropriation further, by conceiving the Free University as a patch of urban
tissue that could be constantly re-appropriated. Prouvé therefore installed three prefabri-
cated systems, all finely attuned to one another. The first system is situated at the level of
the rough construction of the building. The complete Berlin university project was con-
ceived of as a system of prefabricated elements (limited reinforced concrete floor slabs,
steel beams ands composite steel columns) that allows for easy replacement and addi-

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tion. (fig.IV.109) This first system of prefabricated concrete elements defines the horizontal
planes (floors and ceilings) of the project. To this horizontal definition a second system of
self-supportive cortens steel elements, so-called ‘core-ten’ panels, which can be combined
to form the façade, is added. (fig.IV.110) Finally, the last system of steel sandwich panels
was added to complete the interior vertical definitions of the project. (fig.IV.108).
The introduction of this threefold system of prefabricated elements was strongly
related to an idea of appropriation of the university environments by students and profes-
sors alike. In the oppinion of the architects this project would, just as a traditional piece of
urban tissue, constantly be the subject of alteration, destruction and redefinition. The stu-
dents were seen as the involved public and modern science as the ideal rapidly changing
programme, which would propel such a dynamic concept of urban design. This belief in the
human involvement with spatial issues turned out to be simultaneously one of the most
challenging and most fragile premises of the project. The use of the building turned out
slightly different, as main collaborator Manfred Schiedhelm recalled:

During the first two years of the buildings use parts of the main structure, such as the
facades and the partitions were extensively altered. Since that time only internal sub-
divisions have been changed.126

Nevertheless, the Free University Berlin stands today as an interesting exercise in re-
conceiving a part of the urban tissue through the concept of the Web. In 1974 Candilis
summarized the partnership’s intentions with the Web in the design for in the Free Univer-
sity Berlin literally as the creation of a ‘tissu urbain’:

Ce tissu provoque l’unité spatiale, les dimensions et les positions des divers champs
pédagogiques et clarifie les rapports entre toutes les activités universitaires.
Cette conception crée une Université ouverte dont la structure urbaine doit s’articuler
avec son environnement :
- soit pour s’inscrire dans le tissu urbain pré-existant ou le prolonger
- soit pour amorcer le tissu urbain d’un nouvel environnement.
Ce tissu urbain détermine également le réseau des circulations de l’Université en
différenciant les circuits publics des circuits internes.
Il définit aussi une trame sanitaire pour rationaliser le système de distribution des
canalisations d’alimentation et d’évacuation de l’énergie et des télécommunications.127

As Alison Smithson pointed out in 1974, Candilis-Josic-Woods considered the Web’s ca-
pacity to accommodate dissimilar urban entities to be a quality in becoming part of the
existing environment:

Part of the patterns of human association, the patterns of use, the patterns of still-
ness, quiet, noise . . . and the patterns of form.128

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Hence, the Berlin Mat was considered to be a fraction of the existing urban tissue that
introduces large infrastructural platforms as a modern ‘carrying order’ and simultaneously
attempts to reflect the morphological and associational patterns of the existing urban realm.
The Web appears thus not as a language of recognisable form, but rather a way of situating
oneself in relation to the reality and context of the project. It is an attitude with which to
structure the given factors of a project in accordance to the existing patterns.
In the neighbourhood of Berlin Dahlem the integration into the existing context seems,
at first sight, to be rather absent. The aerial collage of the project in its context demon-
strates a strange body in a suburban environment. (fig.IV.97) Confronted with a suburban
environment the Web appears as the antinomy of the existing. However, the initial compe-
tition drawings suggest a different reading. They illustrate how the Web of the Berlin Free
University relates to the existing structure of roads within the suburban environment, thus
reflecting the partnership’s attempt to introduce the suburban practices into the confines of
the university. However, the most important aspect of the competition panel is the sketch
that illustrates how the partnership imagined the Web to extend towards and beyond the
suburban neighbourhood of Berlin Dahlem. Candilis-Josic-Woods believed that the subur-
ban development would disappear in the long run and make place for the urban fabric of the
Web. From this perspective the harsh projection of the university Web onto the neighbourhood
of Berlin Dahlem appears as a critique. The invasion of the two-dimensional dense urban
tissue of the Web is the radical alternative for

the traditional detached-building development, inherited from the shameless specu-

lation dating from the industrial revolution at the end of the nineteenth century which
caused the urban sprawl at the beginning of our own.129

275

1
Smithson, Peter, ‘The Slow Growth of
Another Sensibility: Architecture as
Townbuilding’, in: Gowan, James (ed.), A
Continuing Experiment. Learning and
Teaching at the Architectural Associa-
tion, Architectural Press, London,
January, 1973, p. 56.
2
Candilis, Georges, Josic, Alexis and
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Recherches
d’architecture’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 115, 1964, p. 14.
3
The development of social housing had
started in the nineteenth century as a
response to demographic developments.
In the first half of the twentieth century
the growth of social housing in France
was almost non-existing due to a low-rent
policy on the already existing housing
stock. For more than two decades the
social housing production remained at an
extremely poor level. After the Second
World War the combination of war-
destruction and decades of low-level
production forced the state to make up its
arrears in the realm of social housing.
Housing development became part of a
large state-led planning programme aimed
at realizing the long-fostered French
dream of a fundamental renewal of the
social and economical dimensions of
society (Premier Plan de Modernisation
et d’Equipement, Plan Monet, 1946).
4
See Vayssière, Bruno, Reconstruction -
Déconstruction, Paris, Picard éditeur,
1988.
5
For an introduction to this new under-
standing see: Mengin, Christine, ‘La
solution des grands ensembles’,
Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, no.
64, October-December 1999, p. 105-111
and ‘Le grand ensemble, histoire et
devenir’, a special issue of Urbanisme ,
no. 322, January-February 2002, pp. 35-
80.
6 12
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’esprit du Plan de
masse de l’habitat’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 57, December 1954, p.
1.
7
Cornu, Marcel, Libérer la ville, Brussels,
Casterman, 1977, p. 60.
8
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’esprit du Plan de
masse de l’habitat’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 57, December 1954, p.
1.
9
The interest of the social sciences in the
urban condition, its physical characteris-
276
Sociology, Production and the City
tics, history and culture coincided with
other cultural modes of urban investiga-
tion. Since the end of the 1950s, French
cinema had worked on new visions of
French cities (Paris, Marseille). One of the
main characteristics of the Nouvelle
Vague movies was that they left the
aseptic film studios to find the fresh air of
the city. In movies by François Truffaut
(les 400 Coups, 1958), Agnès Varda
(Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962) and Jean-Luc
Godard (A Bout de souffle, 1959) the city
and its spaces are explicitly appropriated.
The Nouvelle Vague movies represented
a new sensibility that was among others
based on a re-appreciation of the culture
of the street. See Higgins, Lynn A., New
Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction
and the Representation of History in
Post-war France, Lincoln, University of
Nebraska Press, 1996, pp. 4-9, 152-153,
204-205 and Frodon, Jean-Michel, L’Age
moderne du cinéma français: De la
Nouvelle Vague à nos jours, Paris,
Flammarion, 1995.
10
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry, Paris
et l’agglomération parisienne - Tome I :
l’espace social dans une grande cité,
Paris, PUF, 1952, p. 261.
11
In the tradition of social Catholicism of
the periodical Economie et humanisme,
Chombart de Lauwe and his team became
the mouthpiece of the popular urban
classes. He described their living
conditions and the social and spatial
mutations that they experienced. See:
Pedrazzini Yves, ‘La sociologie urbaine de
Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe: une
pensée en action dans le Sud’, Espaces
et Sociétés, no. 103, 2001, pp. 97-111 and
Hayot, Alain, ‘Des sciences sociales pour
faire la ville’, Les cahiers de la recherche
architecturale, no. 32/33, 1993, pp. 111-
122.
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry Paris
et l’agglomération parisienne- Tome II,
Méthodes de recherches pour l’étude
d’une grande cité (écologie, statistique,
expression graphique), Etudes
comparatives des unités résidentielles,
Paris, PUF, 1952, p. 63.
13
For their inspiration Chombart de Lauwe
and his team turned towards the English
civic survey movement and the urban
anthropology of the Chicago School. In
France in the 1950s these approaches to
Stem and Web: A different Way of Analysing, Understanding and Conceiving the City in the Work of
Candalis Josic Woods
the urban realm were relatively unknown.
See Frey, Jean-Pierre, ‘Paul Henry
Chombart de Lauwe: la sociologie urbaine
entre morphologies et structures’,
Espaces et Sociétés, no. 103, 2001, p.
35.
14
In this respect Chombart de Lauwe
recalled and rehearsed the work of
Gaston Bardet who, in 1938, introduced
the concept of morphologie urbaine in:
Bardet, Gaston, ‘Un Problème moderne:
l’urbanisme’, O.S.B., no. 1-5, 1938, pp.
131-138. Before the Second World War
Bardet had already proposed detailed and
original readings of the social morphology
of cities. He brought to the fore psycho-
logical and sociological profiles of
neighbourhoods, as well as meticulous
readings of the distribution of different
activities within the urban tissue. See:
Frey, Jean Pierre, ‘Gaston Bardet:
L’espace Sociale d’une pensée
urbanistique’, Les Etudes Sociales, no.
130, 1999, pp. 57-82.
15
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry Paris
et l’agglomération parisienne- Tome II,
Méthodes de recherches pour l’étude
d’une grande cité (écologie, statistique,
expression graphique), Etudes
comparatives des unités résidentielles,
Paris, PUF, 1952, p. 55.
16
Ibid., p. 67.
17
Ibid., p. 67.
18
Ibid., p. 68.
19
Frampton, Kenneth, ‘Introduction’, in:
Mumford, Eric, The CIAM Discourse on
Urbanism 1928-1960, Cambridge (Mass.),
MIT Press, 2000, pp. 1-9.
20
Solà-Morales de, Manuel, ‘Another
Modern Tradition. From the break of 1930
to the modern urban project’, Lotus, no.
64, 1989, pp. 6-31.
21
Candilis, Georges, ‘Urbanisme:
Repenser le problème’, unpublished text,
in: Candilis/IFA, (236IFA318/03), pp. 5-6.
22
Ibid., p. 2.
23
Sitte, Camillo, L’art de bâtir les villes,
notes et réflexions d’un architecte, Paris,
Renouard, 1918. This is the French
translation of Sitte, Camillo, Der Städtebau
nach seinen künstlerischen
Grundsätzen, Vienna, 1889.
24
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’esprit du Plan de
masse de l’habitat’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 57, December 1954, p.
1.
25
Ibid.
26
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’Urbanisme’,
unpublished manuscript, in: Candilis/IFA,
(236IFA318/03), s.d., pp. 1-5.
27
Choay further defined the culturalist
model of urbanism as a practice in which
‘La totalité (l’agglomération urbaine)
l’emporte sur les parties (les individus), et
le concept culturel de cité sur la notion
matérielle de la ville’. See: Choay,
Françoise, L’Urbanisme, utopies et
réalités, Paris, Seuil, 1965, pp. 41-46. A
shortened and revised English version
can be found in: Choay, Françoise, The
Modern City: Planning in the 19th century,
New York, Georg Braziller, 1969, pp. 102-
106.
28
Choay, Françoise, L’Urbanisme, utopies
et réalités, Paris, Seuil, 1965, p. 42.
29
‘Aussi l’espace du modèle culturaliste
s’oppose-t-il point par point à celui du
modèle progressiste.’ Choay, Françoise,
L’Urbanisme, utopies et réalités, Paris,
Seuil, 1965, p. 42.
30
Choay, Françoise, L’Urbanisme, utopies
et réalités, Paris, Seuil, 1965, p. 15.
31
Candilis designated this particular
approach of the urban realm as ‘une autre
tradition moderne’. See Candilis, Georges,
‘L’Urbanisme’, unpublished manuscript, in:
Candilis/IFA, (236IFA318/03), s.d., p. 5.
32
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’esprit du Plan de
masse de l’habitat’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 57, December 1954, p.
5.
33
Candilis, Georges, ‘Les Criteres’,
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 73,
1957, p. 12.
34
Candilis, Georges, ‘Urbanisme:
Repenser le problème’, unpublished text,
in: Candilis/IFA, (236IFA318/03), p. 2.
35
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’Urbanisme’,
unpublished text, in: Candilis/IFA, (236 IFA
318/08), 1969, p. 1.
36
In his article ‘Problèmes d’Urbanisme’
Candilis bases his historical research on
the publication of Morini, Mario, Atlante di
Storia dell’Urbanistica, Milano, Editore
Ulrico Hoepli, 1963.
37
Candilis, Georges, ‘L’Urbanisme’,
unpublished text, in: Candilis/IFA, (236 IFA
318/08), 1969, p. 2.
38
Candillis, Georges, ‘Problèmes
d’urbanisme, Journée d’étude du mecredi
26 février 1969', minutes of meeting, in:
Candilis/IFA, (236 IFA 304/01), February
277

1969, p. 3.
39
Bakema, Jacob, ‘An Emperor’s House at
Split became a town for 3000 People’,
Forum, no. 2, 1962, pp. 45-78.
40
In the fifth paragraph of this paper I will
return to the concept of the stem.
41
Woods, Shadrach, The Man in the
Street. A Polemic on Urbanism, Penguin
Books, Harmondworth, 1975, p. 89.
42
Smithson, Peter, manuscript in: Baker,
John (ed.), ‘A Smithson File’, Arena. The
Architectural Association Journal,
February 1966, p. 21. My italics.
43
Schimmerling, André, ‘Entretiens sur
L’Architecture à Royaumont’, Le Carré
Bleu, no. 4, 1962, p. 3.
44
Scott Brown, Denise, ‘Team 10,
Perspecta 10, and the Present State of
Architectural Theory’, Journal of the
American Institute of Planners, January
1967, pp. 42-50.
45
Fortier, Bruno, ‘The City Without
Agglomeration’, Casabella, no. 599, 1993,
p. 69.
46
See in this respect especially Manfredo
Tafuri’s analysis of the plan for Algiers by
Le Corbusier. Tafuri stresses the
separation of the Kasbah and the existing
modern city as one of the main character-
istics of the project. Tafuri, Manfredo,
‘Machine et Mémoire’, in: Lucan, Jacques,
Le Corbusier: Une Encyclopédie, Paris,
Centre Georges Pompidou, pp. 460-469.
47
Candilis, Georges, ‘Problèmes
d’urbanisme’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 118, 1965, p. 1.
48
Rogers developed these ideas in
several articles written during the 1950s.
See: Rogers, Ernesto Nathan, ‘Il CIAM al
museo’, Casabella-Continuità, no. 232,
1959; Rogers, Ernesto Nathan,
‘Continuità’, Casabella-Continuità, no.
199, 1953, p. 54; Rogers, Ernesto Nathan,
‘La responsabilità verso la tradizione’,
Casabella-Continuità, no. 202, 1954.
49
Gregotti, Vittorio, ‘Ernesto Rogers 1909-
1969’, Casabella, no. 557, 1989, p. 2–3,
63.
50
Landau, Royston, ‘The End of CIAM and
the Role of the British’, Rassegna, no. 52,
1992, pp. 40-47.
51
Newman, Oscar, CIAM ’59 in Otterlo,
New York, Universe Books, 1961, p. 68.
52
Woods, Shadrach, The Man in the
Street. A Polemic on Urbanism, Penguin
Books, Harmondworth, 1975, p. 85.
278
Sociology, Production and the City
53
Josic, Alexis, ‘Recherche de systèmes
urbains’, in: Technique et Architecture,
no. 306, pp. 1-5.
54
Woods, Shadrach, The Man in the
Street. A Polemic on Urbanism, Penguin
Books, Harmondworth, 1975, p. 107.
55
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Stem’, Architectural
Design, no. 5, 1960, p. 181.
56
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Words and Pictures-
The Planners Dilemma’, conference paper
for the Akademischer Architektenverein
an der Technischen Hochschule
Darmstadt, in: Woods/RISD, (Box 4),
December 1964, pp. 1-11.
57
Smithson, Peter, ‘ The Slow Growth of
Another Sensibility: Architecture as
Townbuilding’, in: Gowan, James (ed.), A
Continuing Experiment. Learning and
Teaching at the Architectural Associa-
tion, London, Architectural Press, January
1973, p. 58.
58
Candilis, Georges, ‘Bangnols sur Cèze’,
Architectural Design, May 1960, p. 182.
59
Woods, Shadrach, The Man in the
Street. A Polemic on Urbanism, Penguin
Books, Harmondworth, 1975, p. 78.
60
Kenneth Frampton placed this search
for an alternative ‘generic street’ by Alison
and Peter Smithson and by Candilis-Josic-
Woods within the matrix of similar efforts
by Maki and Othaka (Prototypical shopping
enclaves for Tokyo, 1962) and José Luis
Sert (Holyoke Center in Cambridge
(Mass.), 1963). See Frampton, Kenneth,
‘The Generic Street as a Continuous Built
Form’, in: Anderson, Stanford, (ed.), on
Streets, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press,
1978, pp. 308-317.
61
Le Corbusier, ‘La Rue’, l’Intransigeant,
May 1929. Op cit. Frampton, Kenneth, ‘The
Generic Street as a Continuous Built
Form’, in: Anderson, Stanford, (ed.), On
Streets, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press,
1978, p. 309.
62
Candilis, Georges, ‘A la recherche d’une
structure urbaine’, L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 101, 1962, p. 51.
63
Browne, Kenneth (et al.), ‘Outrage’, The
Architectural Review, June 1955. Browne,
Kenneth (et al.), ‘Counterattack’, The
Architectural Review, December 1956.
64
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City,
Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1960.
Appleyard, Donald, Lynch, Kevin and
Myer, John R., The View From the Road,
Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1960.
Stem and Web: A different Way of Analysing, Understanding and Conceiving the City in the Work of
Candalis Josic Woods
Anderson, Stanford, (ed.), On Streets,
Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1978.
65
This mutual relation between spatial
practice and architectural form was
discussed earlier as one of the key
perspectives to approach the environment
in the practice of Candilis-Josic-Woods.
66
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry, Paris
et l’agglomération parisienne, Tome II,
Méthodes de recherches pour l’étude
d’une grande cité (écologie, statistique,
expression graphique), Etudes
comparatives des unités résidentielles,
Paris, PUF, 1952.
67
Candilis, Georges, ‘A la recherche d’une
structure urbaine’, L’ Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 101, 1962, p. 51.
68
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Stem’, Achitectural
Design, May, 1960, p. 181. A year later an
almost identical version appeared in the
avant-garde periodical Le Carré Bleu.
69
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Stem’, Achitectural
Design, May, 1960, p. 181.
70
Fortier, Bruno, ‘The City Without
Agglomeration’, Casabella, no. 599, 1993,
p. 69.
71
Woods, Shadrach and Pfeufer, Joachim,
Urbanism is Everybody’s Business,
Stuttgart, K. Kramer, 1968, s.p.
72
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Stem’, Achitectural
Design, May, 1960, p. 181.
73
Letter from E.A.Gutkind to MARS group,
in: C.I.A.M., gta/ETH, (42-JT-13-347), s.d.
74
Woods, Shadrach, unpublished
description of Caen project, in: Woods/
RISD, (Box 3), s.d., s.p.
75
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Stem’, Achitectural
Design, May, 1960, p. 181.
76
Woods, Shadrach, ‘The Stem’, unpub-
lished text, in: Woods/RISD, (Box 4), s.d.,
s.p.
77
Special issue ‘Team 10/CIAM 10’,
L’Architecture d’Aujourdhui, no. 177,
January/February 1975, p. 45.
78
Woods, Shadrach and Pfeufer, Joachim,
Urbanism is Everybody’s Business,
Stuttgart, K. Kramer, 1968, s.p.
79
Woods, Shadrach, unpublished
description of Caen project, in: Woods/
RISD, (Box 3), s.d., s.p.
80
Joedicke, Jurgen, Candilis, Josic,
Woods. A Decade of Architecture and
Urban Design, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer,
1968, p. 178.
81
Ibid.
82
Ibid.
83
The city was founded as Fort-Lamy by
the French in 1900, named after the
French commander-in-chief François
Joseph Lamy. During a period of civil war
in the 1960s the town was occupied by
Libyan forces. Its name was changed to
Ndjamena in 1973.
84
Candilis, Georges, Woods Shadrach
and Josic, Alexis, ‘Fort Lamy’, Le Carré
Bleu, no. 1, 1965, s.p.
85
‘Bebauung des Stadtzentrums von Fort
Lamy (Tschad): Architekten G. Candilis, A.
Josic, S. Woods, P. Dony 1962’,
Baumeister, no. 2, 1965, pp. 154-156.
86
Candilis, Georges, Woods Shadrach
and Josic, Alexis, ‘Fort Lamy’, Le Carré
Bleu, no. 1, 1965, s.p.
87
‘Bebauung des Stadtzentrums von Fort
Lamy (Tschad): Architekten G.Candilis, A.
Josic, S. Woods, P. Dony 1962’,
Baumeister, no. 2, 1965, p. 156.
88
Candilis, Georges, Woods, Shadrach
and Josic, Alexis, ‘Fort Lamy’, Le Carré
Bleu, January 1965, s.p.
89
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry, Paris
et l’agglomération parisienne -Tome 1 :
l’espace social dans une grande cité,
Paris, PUF, 1952, p. 261.
90
Candilis, Georges, ‘Université “Lieu
urbain”’, unpublished text, 1964, in:
Candilis/IFA, (318/08), p. 1.
91
Le Corbusier, La Charte d’Athènes,
Paris, Editions de Minuit, (1943) 1958.
92
An interesting study of the urban
concepts of the modern movement
situated within a larger historical perspec-
tive can be found in Castex, Jean,
Depaule, Jean-Charles and Panerai,
Philippe, Formes urbaines, de l’îlot à la
barre, Paris, Dunod, 1978.
93
Ibid.
94
Hardy, Joop and Hertzberger, Herman,
‘Drempel en ontmoeting: de gestalte van
het tussen’, Forum, no. 8, 1959, pp. 249-
278.
95
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Web’, Le Carré
Bleu, no. 3, 1962, s.p.
96
Ibid.
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
100
Special issue ‘Team 10/CIAM 10’,
L’Architecture d’Aujourdhui, no. 177,
January/February 1975, p. 45.
101
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Web’, Le Carré
279

Bleu, 1962, s.p.
102
Candilis, Georges, Josic, Alexis and
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Recherches
d’Architecture’, L’Architecture
d’Aujoud’hui, no. 115, 1964, p. 16
103
Ibid.
104
Woods, Shadrach, ‘The man in the
street. Lectures given in Scandinavia’,
unpublished text, in: Woods/RISD, (box
6), February 1966, pp. 1-24.
105
Ibid.
106
All roof terraces are meant to be
accessible either to the public or, in the
case of dwellings, to the inhabitants. In
order to re-establish the link with the river
bank, nondescript post-war apartments
would be removed. These are replaced
by dwellings in the upper levels of the
new scheme.
107
Joedicke, Jurgen, Candilis, Josic,
Woods. A Decade of Architecture and
Urban Design, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer,
1968, p. 208.
108
Ross, Kristin, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies.
Decolonization and the Reordering of
French Culture, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT
Press, 1996.
109
Joedicke, Jurgen, Candilis, Josic,
Woods. A Decade of Architecture and
Urban Design, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer,
1968, p. 208.
110
Smithson, Alison, ‘How to recognize
and read MAT-BUILDING. Mainstream
architecture as it developed towards the
mat-building’, Architectural Design, no. 9,
1974, pp. 573-590.
111
Candilis, Georges, ‘Université “lieu
urbain”’, unpublished text, in: Candilis/IFA,
(236 IFA 318/08), January 1974, pp. 1-2.
112
Candilis, Georges, Josic, Alexis and
Woods, Shadrach, ‘Berlin Free University’,
Le Carré Bleu, no. 1, 1964, p. 2.
113
Smithson, Alison, ‘How to recognize
and read MAT-BUILDING. Mainstream
architecture as it developed towards the
mat-building’, Architectural Design, no. 9,
1974, p. 576.
114
It is instructive to note that only a
decade later Rem Koolhaas – in his turn –
would glorify the vertical density of the
skyscraper. Especially the Down Town
Athletic Club, with its different floors and
programs that are connected by an
elevator, is celebrated as a ‘fantastic
juxtaposition of activities’. Koolhaas, Rem,
280
Sociology, Production and the City
Delirious New York, Rotterdam, 010
Publishers, 1978, p. 157.
115
Joedicke, Jurgen, Candilis, Josic,
Woods. A Decade of Architecture and
Urban Design, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer,
1968, p. 208.
116
See Strauven, Francis, Aldo Van Eyck.
The Shape of Relativity, Amsterdam,
Architectura & Natura Press, 1998.
117
Alison Smithson, ‘How to recognize and
read MAT-BUILDING. Mainstream architec-
ture as it developed towards the mat-
building’, Architectural Design, no. 9,
1974, p. 575.
118
Candilis, Georges, ‘Université “Lieu
urbain”’, unpublished text, in: Candilis/IFA,
(IFA 318/08), 1974, p. 1.
119
The Smithsons themselves placed their
own work on several occasions in line
with several of their historical predeces-
sors. See for instance: Smithson, Peter,
‘Three Generations’, Oase, no. 51, 1999,
pp. 82-93.
120
Semper, Gottfried, ‘Style in the Technical
and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics’
in: Semper, Gottfried, The Four Elements
of Architecture and Other Writings,
(translated by H.F. Mallgrave and W.
Herrmann), New York, Cambridge
University Press, 1989, pp. 215-231.
121
Wigley, Mark, White Walls Designer
Dresses. The Fashioning of Modern
Architecture, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT
Press, 1997, p. 11.
122
Alison Smithson, ‘How to recognize and
read MAT-BUILDING. Mainstream architec-
ture as it developed towards the mat-
building’, Architectural Design, no. 9,
1974, p. 584.
123
Ibid, p. 573.
124
Smithson, Alison and Smithson, Peter,
Ordinariness and Light. Urban theories
1952-1960 and their application in a
building project 1963-1970, Cambridge
(Mass.), MIT Press, 1970, p. 161.
125
I explained this thesis at large in my
PhD. Dissertation: Tom Avermaete,
Acculturating the Modern: Candilis-
Josic-Woods and the Epistemological
Shift in Post-war Architecture and
Urbanism, Leuven, Catholic University
Leuven, 2004.
126
Feld, Gabriel (et al.), Free University
Berlin. Candilis, Josic, Woods,
Schiedhelm, London, AA Publications,
1999, p. 98.
Stem and Web: A different Way of Analysing, Understanding and Conceiving the City in the Work of
Candalis Josic Woods

127
Candilis, Georges, ‘Université “lieu
urbain”’, unpublished text, in: Candillis/
IFA, (236 IFA 318/08), January 1974, pp.
1-2.
128
Alison Smithson, ‘How to recognize and
read MAT-BUILDING. Mainstream architec-
ture as it developed towards the mat-
building’, Architectural Design, no. 9,
1974, p. 580.
129
Candilis, Georges, Planning and
Design for Leisure, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer,
1972, p. 13.

281
282
OVER HET ALLEDAAGSE

Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

Endry van Velzen

283
 Sociology, Production and the City

‘De tegenwoordige mensch wil werkelijkheid, ook wanneer zij lelijk is.’
Cornelis van Eesteren1

‘De Schoonheid. Evenmin als het leven sterft de schoonheid. De zeewind waait door onze
lelijke kustplaatsen. Het zachte licht koestert onze ontluisterde landschappen. Ochtend-
en avondhemel gloren achter de rommelige silhouetten onzer steden en dorpen. Wolken-
en sterrenluchten koepelen boven draden, palen, antennes en hekken. Het weidegroen, de
voor- en najaarstinten en de glans van het water, zij zijn dezelfde als in de dagen toen
Holland zijn grootste schoonheden schiep. (...) Wanneer zal het schone werk onzer handen
en hoofden weer als vroeger de schakel zijn tussen ons en al die pracht? Wanneer zal
Nederland - ontworsteld aan eigen lelijkheid - zichzelf in innerlijke vrijheid en schoonheid
hervinden? Zou ons aller liefde voor wat geweest is zo groot zijn, wanneer wij er niet de
zekerheid in zagen, dat het verlorenen in nieuwe gedaante kan worden herwonnen?’ Van
Tijen & Maaskant, Brinkman & Van den Broek2

Onlangs is er een prachtig fotoboek over Amsterdam verschenen, Aarsman’s Amsterdam.3

De stadsbeelden van de fotograaf Hans Aarsman onderscheiden zich nadrukkelijk van de
rethorische architectuurfotografie, die momenteel zo in zwang is. Zijn foto’s zijn geen
sfeervolle schemeropnames waarin de donkere nacht de projectie van duistere verlangens
mogelijk maakt, noch delicate detailopnames waarin met behulp van zwart-wit fotografie
een hermetisch universum wordt geconstrueerd. De foto’s van Aarsman doen in eerste
instantie aan als een reeks terloopse indrukken, vergelijkbaar met de beelden die men zelf
haast ongemerkt opdoet als men zich willekeurig door de stad beweegt: beelden die niet
direct in het oog springen, waarover je niet direct een mening hebt, maar die wel de feitelijkheid
van de hedendaagse stad uitmaken. Daarbij is het gehele ‘stadslandschap’, zowel centrum
als periferie, evenwaardig in beeld gebracht. Natuurlijk heeft Aarsman zijn foto’s nauwkeurig
gecomponeerd. Dankbaar maakt hij bijvoorbeeld gebruik van de grijze Hollandse luchten,
die het gehele beeld onderdompelen in een egaliserende belichting. Zijn foto’s zijn
panoramisch, zonder een pictorale anecdote of dominant waaraan het oog zich zou kunnen
hechten. Daarmee maakt hij de blik van de beschouwer vrij om zijn alledaagse indrukken
opnieuw onder ogen te zien: onverschillig, onrustbarend en met een eigen schoonheid.
Een van de foto’s, ‘Bullewijk’, toont een provisorische parkeerplaats op een verlaten
vlakte aan de rand van de stad. De parkeerplaats is half vol. Uit de plaats van de auto’s en
de her en der neergelegde bielzen is de ratio van de parkeerplaats afleesbaar: de maten, de
capaciteit en de richting van de voornaamste bestemmingen, ergens onder het beeldvlak
van de foto. Deze foto vertoont frappante overeenkomsten met een beeld van een voetbalveld
op een lege zandvlakte dat Cornelis van Eesteren in de twintiger jaren gebruikte tijdens zijn
lezingen over stedebouw. Van Eesteren’s commentaar bij het voetbalveld luidde: ‘Een der
elementen van het moderne stadsplan die volledig begrepen moeten zijn om juist te kunnen
worden gesitueerd.’4 In zekere zin vormt dit citaat de kern van het stedebouwkundig denken
van Van Eesteren. De stad bestaat uit min of meer functioneel bepaalde elementen, die

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naar hun aard een eigen vorm hebben. Bedrijfsterreinen hebben immers een andere ratio
dan bijvoorbeeld spoorwegen of begraafplaatsen. In het stadsplan zijn deze elementen, als
waren het ‘ready-mades’, bijeengebracht in een compositie, die niet is onderworpen aan
een vooropgezette beeldregie. De elementen spreken voor zich. Althans, dat was het idee.
Dit artikel gaat over ‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ en de wijze waarop die notie doorwerkt in
een aantal naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles, die nadrukkelijk tot de vaak zo verguisde
traditie van de moderne stedebouw behoren: Nagele, Pendrecht, Buikslotermeer, Bijlmermeer
en Ommoord. Al deze ensembles hebben met elkaar gemeen dat zij, onder de condities
van de wederopbouw en een gecentraliseerd volkshuisvestingsbeleid, min of meer uit één
hand en als één project zijn ontworpen, waarbij stedebouwkundig plan, architectonische
uitwerking en beplanting nauw met elkaar samenhangen. De wijze waarop dat gebeurde is
echter niet terug te voeren op die condities alleen, noch op de schaalvergroting die gedurende
deze periode in het bouwbedrijf optrad. Minstens zo interessant is de ontwikkeling van
denkbeelden en modellen voor deze ensembles, waarbij met name twee kwesties van
belang zijn: de status van de open ruimte en de ‘beeldloze’ architectuur.5 In dat opzicht zijn
de ensembles internationaal gezien uniek.

Status van de open ruimte

Rietveld vat in een toelichting op het plan voor Nagele (1948-53) de bedoeling van de ontwerpers
kort maar krachtig samen als hij stelt: ‘Getracht is het mechaniek van een dorp beeldend te
gebruiken en bewust te maken hoe een dorp in elkaar zit.’6 In het plan is de hand van Van
Eesteren duidelijk te herkennen. Uit het programma voor het kleine landarbeidersdorp is
een keur aan stedebouwkundige elementen afgeleid, die in een nauwkeurige compositie
bijeen gebracht zijn. De compositie reguleert de betrekkingen tussen de elementen en
verankert het dorp in de structuur van de polder. Een betekenisvol moment is de kruising
tussen de doorgaande weg en de lange poldersloot, waar vrijwel alle elementen samenkomen
en waar bovendien het verenigingsgebouw is gesitueerd. Terzijde van dit punt ligt een grote
open ruimte met daar om heen de woningen. Deze twee elementen, het centrum en het
woongebied, bleken tijdens de planvorming het minst ‘vanzelfsprekend’ te zijn, getuige de
verschillende varianten.7 Dat is niet zo verwonderlijk. Een woongebied en zeker zoiets als
een centrum zijn ‘weke’ functies vergeleken met bijvoorbeeld een autoweg. De ratio van
deze elementen is veel moeilijker op voorhand te herleiden tot een eenduidige vorm. Hooguit
is er iets te zeggen over de ingrediënten, die min of meer typologisch bepaald kunnen zijn:
een rij eengezinswoningen, een kerk, een school. Maar als de hoedanigheid van de
ingrediënten ook nog op losse schroeven wordt gezet, dan verdwijnt ieder houvast. Zover
zijn we voorlopig echter nog niet.
De kiem van het gebrek aan ‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ ligt in de emancipatie van de
massawoningbouw als zelfstandige architectonische opgave. Door de institutionalisering
van de condities waaronder grote hoeveelheden kleine en goedkope woningen tot stand
kwamen (stichting van woningbouwverenigingen, wetgeving, subsidieregelingen enzovoorts),

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werd een bom gelegd onder de scheiding tussen stedebouw en architectuur die in de
negentiende eeuw gangbaar was.8 De springstof was de status van de open ruimte, die
deel uitmaakt van de verzameling woningen. Strikt genomen behoort die open ruimte tot het
project, zoals een hof bij een gebouw, en zou dus privaat zijn. Ingewikkeld wordt het echter
als de private partij ten dele samenvalt met het openbare lichaam door de overlap van de
institutionele kaders. Wat ontstond was een architectonische stedebouw, een
stedebouwkundige architectuur, bijvoorbeeld Berlage’s Amsterdam-Zuid of de tuindorpen
aan de andere kant van het IJ.9 In beide gevallen vond een kolonialisatie van de open ruimte
plaats. Zowel het onbestemde binnenterrein als de anonieme straat uit de negentiende
eeuwse speculatie-bouw werden geactiveerd ten dienste van het wonen en een verondersteld
gemeenschappelijk leven, een soort centrum. De prijs daarvoor was het verlies van
‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ van juist die traditionele stedebouwkundige ruimten als straat,
binnenterrein, plein enzovoorts!
Bernardo Secchi legt de vinger op de tere plek, als hij voorstelt om de Moderne
Beweging te herinterpreteren als een nauwgezette exploratie van een nieuw ruimtegebruik
en te begrijpen: ‘hoe de ruimte “tussen de dingen” is ontworpen, gevuld met functies,
rolpatronen en betekenissen; hoe, sinds het negentiende eeuwse idee van stedelijke
continuïteit had afgedaan, er een idee ontstond van relaties: tussen herhaling en verschil en
hun betekenis, tussen interieur en exterieur, tussen gesloten en open, tussen publiek en
privaat, tussen individu en collectief en hun respectievelijke rollen. Dit alles bracht een
nieuw vocabulair, grammatica en syntaxis voor ruimten in woongebieden voort; hier werd
getracht een nieuw idee van het sociale te ontwikkelen.’10
De vorm en betekenis van het wonen en het centrum, niet voor niets zijn dit de
vragen die voortdurend terug komen en bijvoorbeeld ook de naoorlogse congressen van de
CIAM beheersen. In zekere zin zijn de voornaamste hypotheses voor een nieuw ruimtegebruik
in het interbellum ontwikkeld. Het wonen, dat wil zeggen het woningtype en de
verkavelingsvorm, wordt geïdentificeerd met het sociale, het leven van alledag dat een plaats
moeten hebben. Zo is bijvoorbeeld de compositie van Westhausen (Frankfurt, 1929)
gestructureerd door een mathematiek van privé-tuinen, toegangspaden, droogrekken,
vuilnisverzamelplaatsen, zandbakken enzovoorts. Ten aanzien van het centrum vindt een
verbinding plaats tussen collectieve voorzieningen op het vlak van educatie en
gemeenschapsvorming en die op het vlak van recreatie en ontspanning. Zo zijn bijvoorbeeld
de scholen in Westhausen, Praunheim en Römerstadt (Frankfurt, 1925-31) aan of in het
Nidda-dal gesitueerd, een grote open ruimte die gedacht was als een ‘volkspark’ met
natuurgebieden, strandbaden, sportterreinen, volkstuinen en tuinderijen. De verbinding tussen
collectieve en recreatieve voorzieningen is van eminent belang, omdat daarmee de centra
in de periferie een eigen gestalte krijgen ten opzichte van de historische kern. De wijken
rond het Nidda-dal hebben dan ook geen ‘pleinen’ als concentratiepunten van het openbare
leven en centrum van de compositie. Er vindt als het ware een schaalvergroting plaats
waarin het gehele woongebied de begrenzing vormt van een nieuw soort plein, het volkspark.

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Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

Ook in het Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam (1935) werd uitgegaan van een
dergelijk ruimtegebruik, waarin het wonen de rand is van grote groene centra.11
Het ruimtegebruik is nauw verbonden met de grondexploitatie. Dit is de achilleshiel
van de moderne stedebouw. De eis om tot een sluitende grondexploitatie te komen is van
grote invloed op de te realiseren woningdichtheid en daarmee op de aard van het wonen:
‘hoog’ of ‘laag’. Het verschil in ruimtegebruik bij laagbouw, grondgebonden woningen - meestal
eengezinswoningen, of hoogbouw, gestapelde bouw tot vier lagen, is evident en ingrijpend.
Bij laagbouw is het ruimtegebruik over het algemeen geprivatiseerd middels tuinen grenzend
aan de woningen. Bij gestapelde bouw ligt dat veel minder voor de hand en komt de vraag
naar de status van de open ruimte pregnant naar voren. Hoewel bij stadsuitbreiding
eengezinswoningen vrijwel altijd de voorkeur genoten, was vaak toch een flinke hoeveelheid
gestapelde bouw noodzakelijk om de begroting rond te krijgen. De term ‘gemengde
bebouwing’ deed zijn intrede.12

Veld

Een belangrijke stap in de gedachtenvorming over de wijze waarop de gemengde bebouwing

tot stand kon komen, werd gezet met de studie Woonmogelijkheden in het Nieuwe Rotterdam
(1941). De auteurs, W. van Tijen en J.H. van den Broek met hun compagnons, presenteerden
hun studie nadrukkelijk als een onderzoek naar ‘woonverkaveling’ en ‘woningvormen’: ‘Zij
(de studie) houdt zich als zodanig met twee onderwerpen bezig: a. situatie, b. woningtypes.
Een situatie heeft een zekere algemene geldigheid. Zij kan worden verwezenlijkt met elke
uitvoering van de geprojecteerde bebouwingswijzen. Zij is op zichzelf geheel onafhankelijk
van de te benutten woningtypes. Woningtypes op zichzelf zijn omgekeerd geheel
onafhankelijk van de situatie, waarin zij kunnen worden gerealiseerd. Het enige, wat men
van situatie en types gezamenlijk kan zeggen, is dat zij het meest harmonieuse geheel
zullen vormen, wanneer zij uit één gedachtengang zijn voortgekomen. Van de gedachtengang,
die uitgangspunt geweest is bij deze studie, kunnen enkele punten naar voren worden
gebracht. Het besef van diepgaande verschillen tussen de bewoners, verschillen in leeftijd,
behoeften, wensen, voorkeur en verlangens en in sociaal en cultureel peil is een dezer
punten geweest. Een woonwijk behoort hiér geschikt te zijn voor arbeiders, dáár voor de
kleine burger en intellectueel, hiér voor het gezin, dáár voor de alleenwonende; zij moet
plaats bieden zowel voor het kind als voor de bejaarde en voor de volwassene. (...) Op deze
wijze kan de natuurlijke innerlijke levendigheid van het gegeven tot uiting worden gebracht,
wat een rijkdom betekent, die tot dusver maar al te vaak door de eenvormigheid der
woonvoorzieningen werd verstikt. (...) Verscheidenheid in wezen veroorzake verscheidenheid
in vorm, verscheidenheid in bouwhoogte. (...) Voorgestaan wordt hier een oplossing, waarbij
de woningverschillen, die hun oorzaak in de gezinsvorm vinden, tot een zo levendig mogelijk
geheel dooreengevlochten zijn. (...) Eerst door het tot uitdrukking brengen van de
veelzijdigheid der behoeften ontstaat die levendigheid, die een menselijker basis is voor
een schoon stadsbeeld dan een bedachte monumentaliteit.’13

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In het bovenstaande citaat komen twee gedachten terug, die eerder besproken zijn:
de wens om woning en verkaveling in één hand te ontwikkelen en de mogelijkheid om juist
de verscheidenheid van het sociale te laten spreken in een gemengde bebouwing als nieuw
en ‘waarachtig’ stadsbeeld. In de studie werd de open bebouwingswijze uit het interbellum
echter genuanceerd benaderd. Men waardeerde, omwille van een stedelijke woonwijk, de
geslotenheid van het bouwblok en de sociale betekenis van de straat.14 Voor de
volkswoningbouw werd een verkavelingsfiguur voorgesteld, die het midden houdt tussen
strokenbouw en een gesloten bouwblok. In die verkavelingsfiguur zijn twee rijen
etagewoningen, een rij bejaardenwoningen en enkele garages zodanig samengebracht, dat
er een min of meer gesloten randbebouwing ontstaat. Dit nieuwe ‘bouwblok’ is om twee
redenen een gouden greep: het biedt een vorm om de verschillende elementen structureel
in een gemengde bebouwing op te nemen en kan bovendien dienen als beginterm voor de
compositie van een groter geheel.
De grote compositorische waarde van de nieuwe verkavelingsfiguur, ook wel
‘wooneenheid’ of ‘stempel’ genoemd, blijkt uit de plannen voor Pendrecht (1948-53). Opvallend
zijn de onnavolgbare verschillen in de schijnbaar willekeurig opeenvolgende
verkavelingsvarianten die door Stam-Beese en anderen zijn getekend.15 Dat veranderde
echter volledig, zodra de wooneenheid in de schetsen opdook. De ‘weke’ compositie van
de wijk kreeg opeens een ongekende stevigheid door de wijze waarop de wooneenheid als
vormmotief is herhaald. Op zich zijn zowel het vormmotief als de wijze van herhaling abitrair,
maar eenmaal aangenomen en consequent toegepast, brengen zij een ordening met een
eigen logica voort. In compositorisch opzicht ontstaat een continu veld, vergelijkbaar met
de doorgeweven motieven van een perzisch tapijt. Door de vorm van de herhaling verliest de
wooneenheid bovendien haar objectmatig karakter en komt de nadruk te liggen op de
verschillende open ruimten die door spiegeling en ritmering ontstaan. Deze open ruimten
zijn gelijkmatig over het veld verdeeld en verbonden met verschillende aspecten van het
alledaagse leven: een verkeersstraat, een speelstraat, een binnenterrein met
gemeenschappelijke tuin, een singel met winkels enzovoorts.
Stam-Beese verwoordde de verbinding van het sociale en de vorm, en de esthetische
consequenties daarvan, als volgt: ‘In eerste instantie werd niet naar een incidentele
aesthetische oplossing gestreefd, maar de structuur van een maatschappelijke constellatie
zelf als vormgevend element gebruikt. (...) Willens en wetens is er dus van afgezien om een
zinledige wisselvalligheid naar uiterlijke vorm tot stand te brengen, er op vertrouwende dat
een innerlijke sociale verscheidenheid der woongroepen voldoende sterk naar voren zal
komen en zich zal manifesteren in het gebruik van de woningen en de gemeenschappelijke
tuin, in de activiteiten der bewoners en hun onderlinge verhoudingen, zodat hierdoor de
ogenschijnlijke gelijkheid en monotonie te niet gedaan zal worden. Sterker en bewuster
dan bij een tot nu toe gehanteerde verkaveling is in het plan Pendrecht de nadruk gelegd op
de samenhang tussen bebouwde en onbebouwde ruimte, tussen woning en
gemeenschappelijk of openbaar groen, tussen woning en straatruimte.’16

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Architecten hadden altijd al oog voor de esthetische eigenschappen van

massawoningbouw. De repetitie van gelijke elementen werd gezien als een stijlvormende
kracht voor een nieuw stadsbeeld, dat de pluriformiteit in de verschijningsvorm van de
negentiende eeuwse stad zou kunnen overstijgen. Uit het aangehaalde citaat van Stam-
Beese spreekt eveneens een dergelijk esthetisch bewustzijn, maar eerder dan de ‘positieve’,
representatieve mogelijkheden te benadrukken, worden ‘negatieve’ kenmerken als gelijkheid
en monotomie genoemd. De herhaling dient er niet toe om een monumentaal stadsbeeld te
construeren, maar juist om dat stadsbeeld te neutraliseren in een soort ‘negatieve’ stijl. De
taal van het beeld was besmet, en bovendien te vaak gebruikt om de werkelijkheid te
verhullen.17 Als esthetisch procédé is dat vergelijkbaar met bijvoorbeeld het werk van Andy
Warhol, waarin de pictorale en anecdotische kwaliteit van het enkele beeld door strenge
herhaling vervaagt tot een nieuw, ‘voorstellingsloos’ beeld.18 Ook was er affiniteit met de
concrete kunst van bijvoorbeeld R.P. Lohse, waarin de pictorale elementen geen
representatieve betekenis hebben, maar een rol spelen in de structurele ordening van het
beeld.19 De concrete, ‘beeldloze’ architectuur van Pendrecht, maar ook die van Nagele,
Buikslotermeer, Bijlmermeer of Ommoord, is niets meer dan het zinnebeeld van zich zelf.
De ‘taal’ van deze architectuur wordt ervaren in het dagelijks gebruik, met name dat van de
open ruimte. De verscheidenheid ontstaat als het ware vanzelf door het verglijden van de
dag, de wolkenluchten en sterrenhemels, de wisseling van de seizoenen. Vanuit dit
perspectief is ook de positieve houding ten aanzien van de grootschalige, geïndustrialiseerde
bouw van Ommoord of de Bijlmer te begrijpen. De bouworde, inhaerent aan deze producten,
levert automatisch een neutrale esthetiek op.20
Centrum
Hoe zit het nu met het centrum? In Nagele is dit een grote open ruimte, omringd door een
woongebied. Deze centrale ruimte, die al in de eerste schetsen opdook, was aanvankelijk
gevuld met gebouwen voor voorzieningen, sporterreinen, boomgroepen enzovoorts. In de
laatste voorstellen is de ruimte leeg. Niet alleen was een deel van de voorzieningen inmiddels
elders gesitueerd, ook de overgebleven scholen en kerken zijn nu dicht tegen de ringweg
geplaatst. Enkele bomenrijen aan de rand begrenzen een uitgestrekt grasveld, vergelijkbaar
met de ‘greens’ in sommige Engelse steden. In die enorme leegte ligt de bajonet-vormige
verspringing van de poldersloot, waardoor in compositorisch opzicht de centrale ruimte van
het dorp benadrukt en ingeschreven werd in de polder. Met de immer aanwezige hemelkoepel
zijn dit de ingrediënten van het centrum: grasveld, poldersloot en wolkenlucht. Doodgewone
elementen, die door hun ‘setting’ een haast metafysische betekenis krijgen, een soort
trancendentie van het alledaagse - maar natuurlijk uiterst kwetsbaar.21
Hoewel Pendrecht in vele opzichten onvergelijkbaar is met Nagele, zijn er ten aanzien
van de relatie tussen het wonen en het centrum en de aard van dat centrum opmerkelijke
overeenkomsten. Ook in Pendrecht is het wonen als het ware om het centrum heen geplooid
en bestaat het centrum uit alledaagse elementen als sloten, wegen, groenstroken en een
wijdlopig plein die met enkele hoge woongebouwen in een nauwkeurige compositie zijn

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samengebracht. Opvallend in die compositie is dat de T van ontsluitingswegen verschoven

ligt ten opzichte van het kruis van sloten en dat het plein daar precies tussen ligt. Het plein
ligt ook precies tussen de twee groenstroken. De noordelijke groenstrook met voorzieningen
legt de verbinding met de stad; de zuidelijke, die aanvankelijk open was gedacht, laat het
idee van het ‘ongerepte’ landschap tot diep in de wijk binnendringen. Het plein is dus het
brandpunt van de compositie, een soort condensatiepunt waar de stad overgaat in het
landschap: voor het plein de steedse drukte van verkeer en voorzieningen, achter het plein
de landelijke rust van de singels. In die zin is het architectonisch motief van de compositie
van het centrum zonder meer klassiek te noemen. In een stadsas ligt een grote open
ruimte in relatie tot het landschap. De verbreding van het plein langs het water versterkt
slechts het karakter van een ‘balkon op het landschap’. Hoewel een dergelijk architectonisch
motief een lange traditie kent, is de vormgeving daarvan in Pendrecht geenszins
monumentaal. Eerder ligt het motief besloten in de structuur van de onderlinge betrekkingen
van de samenstellende elementen. Daardoor is de betekenis ervan misschien in eerste
instantie minder zichtbaar; zoals de naam van het plein, Plein 53, pas in tweede instantie
(als men zich realiseert dat alle andere straatnamen verwijzen naar dorpen in Zeeland)
herinnert aan de verschrikkingen van de Watersnoodramp.22
Zowel het wijdlopige plein in Pendrecht als het lege grasveld in Nagele zijn
programmaloos. Van Eesteren stelde dat het grasveld de mogelijkheid bood ‘om rond te
slenteren, met de handen in de zakken, en te doen wat men wil.’ Stam-Beese schreef dat
‘de ruime afmeting van het plein een gebruik voor alle mogelijke doeleinden waarborgt.’23
De vraag naar de betekenis van het centrum kwam uitvoerig aan de orde op het achtste
CIAM congres (1951), dat de veelzeggende titel kreeg: ‘The Heart of the City’. Ernesto
Rogers, een van de redacteuren van de congrespublicatie, bracht het idee van het centrum
als volgt onder woorden. ‘Het Hart kan niet het zakencentrum zijn, zoals in kapitalistische
organisaties, noch de fabriek, symbool van een proletarische samenleving. Het Hart van de
stad moet het centrum zijn van meer extensieve menselijke relaties: conversatie, discussie,
het winkelen, flirten, flaneren, en het onbetaalbare “dolce far niente” in zijn beste betekenis.’24
De globaliteit van de ongeprogrammeerde ‘vrije tijd’ staat in opmerkelijk contrast met de
programmatische bepaaldheid van de volksparken in Frankfurt of de groengebieden in het
AUP.25 Wat echter constant blijft in de gedachtenvorming over het centrum, is de associatie
met het landschap. ‘Het landschap van het centrum (“core”) is in essentie een openbaar
(“civic”) landschap. Het is een plaats waar de uitdrukking van de burgelijke openbaarheid
zijn hoogtepunt vindt. Dit openbare landschap is een voortbrengsel van de mens en als
zodanig tegengesteld aan het natuurlijke landschap. In sommige gevallen kunnen natuurlijke
elementen, zelfs bomen, misplaatst zijn.’ Dat ‘openbare landschap’ zou autovrij en een
‘helder en scherp omlijnd ruimtelijk ontwerp’ moeten zijn.26
Men ziet het achtste CIAM congres vaak als omslagpunt in de denkbeelden over de
rol van het sociale. In vele voordrachten maakte een deductieve betoogtrant plaats voor een
inductieve. Het lege centrum was bij uitstek een veld voor projectie. De toeschouwer zou

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tot participatie moeten worden gestimuleerd, om zo in de (spontane) actie zijn eigen identiteit
én die van de gemeenschap te verwerkelijken. Soortgelijke ideeën werden ook door
kunstenaarsgroepen als de Lettristische Internationale, de Internationale Beweging voor
een Imaginistisch Bauhaus en de Internationaal Situationisten ontwikkeld, en zijn elders
uitvoerig beschreven.27 Los van alle bevlogen rethoriek is de kwestie in architectonisch
opzicht eigenlijk pijnlijk eenvoudig. In de moderne, democratische welvaartsstaat bleek het
sociale zo moeilijk algemeen gesteld te kunnen worden, dat het slechts in zeer globale
termen te verbinden is met een (stede)bouwkundige structuur. De grondslag voor een
betekenisvolle ordening werd daarmee gereduceerd tot de extreme polariteit privaat - collectief.
En toch moest er gebouwd worden.

Veld én centrum

In de loop der vijftiger jaren groeide het onbehagen over de gemengde bebouwing en met
name over de obligate portiek-etagewoningen in blokken van drie of vier bouwlagen. Zowel
de verkavelingsvorm als het woningtype zelf werden radicaal ter discussie gesteld. Van
belang was het rapport van de Commissie Hoogbouw-Laagbouw, Laag of hoog bouwen en
wonen? De keuze van de woonvorm naar het aantal bouwlagen (1961).28 Mede onder
invloed van een strenge overdenking van de eerder genoemde polariteit privaat - collectief,
achtte men ‘halfslachtige’ oplossingen, zoals het meergezinshuis, ongepast. Goed
geoutilleerde hoogbouw met ruime woningen, onbelemmerd uitzicht en gemeenschappelijke
voorzieningen of patio-woningen met optimale privacy leken meer recht te doen aan de
eigentijdse omstandigheden en genoten dan ook warme belangstelling. Daarnaast waren
juist de condities van het meergezinshuis - een behoorlijke dichtheid en een concrete
spanning tussen individu en collectief - voor jonge architecten zoals bijvoorbeeld Piet Blom
aanleiding tot talloze experimenten naar ‘nieuwe woonvormen’. In de resultaten van deze
experimenten, zoals bijvoorbeeld de clusters van Piet Blom, zijn woning en verkaveling zo
onlosmakelijk samengebracht, dat iedere typologische bepaling als het ware overstegen
is. Deze experimenten hadden echter nauwelijks effect op de plannen voor Buikslotermeer,
de Bijlmer of Ommoord. Veeleer speelden zij een rol in de reactie daarop.29
Experiment was ook nadrukkelijk de bedoeling bij de studieopdracht voor de woonwijk
Buikslotermeer (1963), die in meerdere opzichten gezien kan worden als opmaat voor de
Bijlmer.30 Naast het inmiddels bekende pleidooi voor de samenhang tussen architectuur
en stedebouw, was de Buikslotermeer-studie vooral gericht op de integratie van de
verschillende aspecten van het wonen: de privacy van de woning, de ontsluitingsvorm en de
verscheidenheid van de ‘woonsoorten’. De afzonderlijke uitdrukking van de verschillende
woningtypen is als het ware geneutraliseerd door ze allemaal op te nemen in één
bebouwingsvorm. Voor de ontsluiting zijn doorlopende ‘galerijstraten’ per drie verdiepingen
bedacht, die eveneens in de bebouwingsvorm zijn opgenomen en die de verschillende
bouwdelen tot één groot complex samenbinden. Dat complex is een regelmatige
‘stedebouwkundige’ structuur van hofachtige ruimten.

291
 Sociology, Production and the City

De term ‘galerijstraat’ is doelbewust gekozen. Terwijl bij de woningen een optimale

privacy voorop stond, werd aan de collectieve ontsluitingsstructuur een openbare betekenis
toegekend, namelijk die van een straat. Als voorbeeld van een dergelijke ontsluitingsstructuur
werd het blok van Brinkman in Spangen (1919-21) aangehaald, maar eigenlijk zou een
verwijzing naar Engelse voorbeelden, zoals de op het negende CIAM congres gepresenteerde
Golden Lane studies van de Smithsons (1951-52) of het toen juist gereedgekomen Park
Hill complex in Sheffield (1957-65), meer voor de hand hebben gelegen. De structuur van
deze projecten is gebaseerd op een soort ‘genetische manipulatie’ van traditionele
typologieën en stedelijke modellen. Op dit procédé zijn ook een aantal karakteristieken van
het ontwerp voor de Bijlmer gebaseerd. Zo gaven de supervisoren aan dat ‘de “tertiaire
autoweg” is omgevormd tot parkeergarage; het troittoir langs de tertiaire autoweg is daarvan
losgekoppeld en zal een nieuwe gestalte dienen te krijgen in de inrichtingen voor het
huisvesten (afgekort voorlopig I.H.V.)’. Naast de ‘inrichtingen voor het huisvesten’
onderscheidde men ‘inrichtingen voor het collectief gebruik (afgekort voorlopig I.C.G.)’. Met
die afkortingen werd iedere typologische bepaling ten aanzien van het wonen en het cen-
trum op losse schroeven gezet.31
Evenals in de aangehaalde Engelse voorbeelden vloeien in het plan voor Buikslotermeer
woning en verkaveling in feite samen tot een enkel gebouw. Met het wegvallen van de
‘bemiddelende’ rol van de verkaveling tussen woning en open ruimte, krijgt de relatie van dat
gebouw tot zijn omgeving een uiterst globaal karakter, vergelijkbaar met de manier waarop
een klooster of een kasteel ongenaakbaar in het landschap is gesitueerd. Daarmee verandert
de status van de open ruimte. Die is niet langer direct verbonden met het wonen, maar kan
meer globale betekenissen opnemen. De open ruimte in Buikslotermeer is ingericht met
parkeerplaatsen, gazons en voorzieningen; elementen die voorheen min of meer tot het
centrum behoorden. ‘Centrum in beperkte zin verdwenen’, schreef Van Eyck op een van
zijn schetsen, en op een andere schets is te zien hoe het centrum als het ware uitgesmeerd
is over het gehele grondvlak van de wijk.32
Als antwoord op de gewijzigde inzichten voltrokken zich in de zestiger jaren dus
twee ingrijpende transformaties ten aanzien van het wonen en het centrum: de neutralisering
van het wonen en de versmelting van het wonen met het centrum. Het resultaat van deze
transformaties blijft echter binnen het hypothetisch frame, dat aan het begin van het artikel
is gesuggereerd: de identificatie van het wonen met het sociale en de associatie van het
centrum met collectieve en recreatieve voorzieningen. De veranderingen in de opvatting
daarvan - van gedifferentieerd naar ‘vrij’, van specifiek naar globaal - zijn weliswaar van grote
invloed op het uiteindelijke resultaat, maar in compositorisch opzicht zijn de voorgestelde
modellen opmerkelijk constant ten opzichte van de voorgaande periode. De composities
blijven gebaseerd op de contrasten in de ruimtelijke karakteristiek van de verschillende
woonvormen. Zowel in Ommoord als in de Bijlmer vormt een textuur van laagbouw de rand
van een duidelijk bepaald, groen en autovrij middengebied, waarin de hoogbouw is gesitueerd.
Dat middengebied is een openbaar landschap; echter niet de verstilde sublimatie van het

292
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

alledaagse zoals in Nagele, maar een somtijds ruige wildernis waarin de werkelijkheid zich
in al zijn gedaantes kan manifesteren.33

Dat middengebied is een openbaar landschap; echter niet de verstilde sublimatie van het
alledaagse zoals in Nagele, maar een ruige wildernis waarin de werkelijkheid zich in ook
zijn lelijke gedaante kan manifesteren. Of, zoals Constant Nieuwenhuys, schepper van het
utopische project Nieuw Babylon, in 1965 al opmerkte: ‘Ik zie straks in die Bijlmermeer,
met zijn gebrek aan gezelligheidsknooppunten, een intensief nozemdom ontstaan, waar ik
overigens geen enkel bezwaar tegen heb, als creatief verschijnsel dan.’34

293

1 9
Cornelis van Eesteren, ‘Städtebau’, i10
nr. 21-22 1929, p. 169.
2
W. van Tijen & H.A. Maaskant en J.A.
Brinkman & J.H. van den Broek,
Woonmogelijkheden in het Nieuwe
Rotterdam, Rotterdam 1941, p. 16.
3 10
Hans Aarsman, Aarsman’s Amsterdam,
Amsterdam 1993.
4
Ik verlaat mij hier op de fraaie studie over
Van Eesteren van Vincent van Rossem.
Van Rossem beschrijft uitvoerig een
lezing voor de leden van De Opbouw.
Vincent van Rossem, Het Algemeen
Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam,
geschiedenis en ontwerp, Rotterdam
1993 (proefschrift Universiteit van
Amsterdam 1991), pp. 168-175. De
genoemde foto is afgedrukt op p. 172, het
citaat is afkomstig van Van Eesteren p.
173.
5
De ervaringen van de verschillende
projecten werden direct op elkaar
betrokken door de bemoeienis van een
kleine groep ontwerpers. Van Eesteren,
Gerrit Rietveld en Aldo van Eyck waren
bijvoorbeeld als leden van ‘De 8’ betrokken
bij Nagele, later kwamen daar Jaap
Bakema en Lotte Stam-Beese bij. De
laatste twee verrichtten met anderen van
‘De Opbouw’ een reeks studies naar
Pendrecht en Alexanderpolder. Stam-
Beese werkte in de gemeente aan
Pendrecht en ontwierp later ook
Ommoord. Bakema, Van Eyck en Frans
van Gool (die jaren op het bureau Van den
Broek en Bakema had gewerkt) maakten
plannen voor Buikslotermeer. Van Gool
realiseerde zijn plan en was als een van
de supervisoren bij de Bijlmermeer
betrokken. Over deze periode en
projecten zijn vele (deel)studies
verschenen, o.m. Umberto Barbieri (red.),
Architectuur en Planning, Nederland 1940-
1980, Rotterdam 1983. Van belang voor
dit artikel was ook de lezing van Yorgos
Simeoforidis, ‘On landscape and public/
open spaces’, Delft 1993.
6
De 8, ‘Een plan voor het dorp Nagele’,
Forum 1952, nr. 6/7, p. 176.
7
De verschillende varianten zijn
opgenomen in Zef Hemel, Vincent van
Rossem, Nagele, een collectief ontwerp
1947-1957, Amsterdam 1984.
8
Henk Engel, Endry van Velzen, ‘De vorm
van de stad: Nederland na 1945’, elders in
dit nummer.
294
Sociology, Production and the City
Dit wellicht subtiele onderscheid valt in
de twintiger jaren in Amsterdam samen
met het verschil in bouwheer, dienst
Stedebouw versus dienst
Volkshuisvesting, en het verschil in hoog-
en laagbouw.
Bernardo Secchi, ‘For a townplanning of
open spaces’, Casabella 597/598 1993, p.
116.
11
De stadsuitbreidingen van Frankfurt
waren in Nederland wel bekend door
persoonlijke betrokkenheid, studiereizen,
het tweede CIAM-congres en diverse
publicaties. In het preadvies Organische
woonwijk in open bebouwing dat in 1932
door ‘De 8’ en ‘Opbouw’ aan het
Nederlands Instituut voor Volkshuisvesting
en Stedebouw is uitgebracht, wordt
bijvoorbeeld direct aan de ervaringen van
Frankfurt gerefereerd. Het vijfde CIAM
congres, met als titel ‘Logis et Loisoirs’
(Parijs 1937), had eveneens het wonen
en de ontspanning als onderwerp.
12
Deze term wordt in de toelichting op het
AUP geïntroduceerd om de
bebouwingsvorm van de nieuwe
woongebieden te omschrijven. ‘Het is
echter wel mogelijk, door het toepassen
van zg. “gemende bebouwing” de
voordeelen van laagbouw voor een groot
deel der woningen te behouden en de
nadeelen van de te groote uitgestrektheid
en te hooge terreinkosten te ontgaan.’
Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van
Amsterdam, nota van toelichting,
Amsterdam 1935, p. 84. De dominantie
van de grondexploitatie blijkt bijvoorbeeld
uit de uitvoering van het AUP. Aanvankelijk
ging men uit van 50-60%
eengezinswoningen in de westelijke
tuinsteden en Buitenveldert. Uiteindelijk is
dit aantal gezakt tot 13-28%.
13
W. van Tijen & H.A. Maaskant en J.A.
Brinkman & J.H. van den Broek, a.w., pp.
18, 19. Van Tijen en Van den Broek,
volkshuisvesters van het eerste uur,
waren ook betrokken bij het opstellen van
het eerder genoemde Preadvies en de
prijsvraag Goedkope Arbeiderswoningen
(Amsterdam, 1936), waarin eveneens de
vraag naar nieuwe bebouwingsvormen
voor de volkswoningbouw centraal stond.
14
Over stedelijkheid en bouwblok: ‘Verder
is er van uitgegaan, dat de stedelijke
woonwijken hun stadskarakter niet mogen
verbloemen. (...) De geprojecteerde
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles
verhouding tussen openheid en
geslotenheid zij daarmede in
overeenstemming. (...) De geslotenheid
van het bouwblok kan dichter worden
benaderd dan in veel moderne
stadsplannen, waarbij alleen van het
principe ener goede oriëntering is
uitgegaan.’ Over de straat: ‘Op straat leert
het kind de maatschappij kennen: het
gevaar (de grote hond, de plagende
jongen) en de wreedheid (de visvrouw)
maar ook de kameraadschap, het
avontuur en het sociale medelijden (de
bedelaar). Hoezeer het gezin ook altijd het
eerste en de straat het tweede element in
het kinderleven zal behoren te zijn, het
kind, dat de “straat” niet kent of niet
aankan, groeit op tot
onmaatschappelijkheid.’ W. van Tijen &
H.A. Maaskant en J.A. Brinkman & J.H.
van den Broek, a.w., p. 18 resp. 22.
15
De verschillende varianten zijn o.m.
opgenomen in Hélène Damen, Anne-Mie
Devolder, Lotte Stam-Beese 1903-1988,
Rotterdam 1993.
16
Lotte Stam-Beese, ‘Aantekening bij het
uitbreidingsplan Pendrecht’, Tijdschrift
voor Volkshuisvesting en Stedebouw
1953 nr. 10, p. 122.
17
De ervaring van de oorlog versterkte het
besef dat de moderne architectuur tot dan
toe nog geen antwoord had gegeven op
de behoefte aan beelden of symbolen van
een open, democratische samenleving.
Monumentale representatie werd
afgewezen, de dingen moesten zelf direct
tot beelding worden gebracht. Overigens
laat deze ‘negatieve’ stijl evenmin als de
Berlagiaanse stadsesthetiek pluriformiteit
in de verschijningsvorm toe. Ook de
realisatie van Pendrecht werd
geregisseerd door middel van een
permanente ‘commissie Pendrecht’,
bestaande uit vertegenwoordigers van de
betrokken diensten (waaronder
Welstandstoezicht), opdrachtgevers en
architecten.
18
De door Jan de Heer beschreven
situatieloze studies van Rietveld zijn voor
mij de meest krachtige voorbeelden van
een dergelijk ‘neutraal’ stadsbeeld. Jan de
Heer, ‘Het rad van Rietveld’, Ko Jacobs,
Lutger Smit (red.), De ideale stad,
ideaalplannen voor de stad Utrecht 1664-
1988, Utrecht 1988, pp. 115-134, en
OASE nr. 23 1989, pp. 10-21.
19
Aldo van Eyck plaatste bijvoorbeeld het
werk van Lohse naast de studies van De
Opbouw: ‘Op zoek naar de verdere
grondbeginselen van een nieuwe
vormtaal heeft Lohse de beeldende
betekenis van het aantal ontdekt.’ Forum
1952 nr. 6/7, p. 186. Lohse zag eerder, bij
het CIAM congres in Bergamo (1949), al
verwantschappen met het werk van
Opbouw. Voor een nadere beschouwing
van de notie ‘concreet’, zie de dissertatie
van Hans Frei, Konkrete Architektur, Über
Max Bill als Architekt, Baden 1991.
20
Vrgl. F.J. van Gool, ir. E.J. Jelles en D.
Slebos, ‘Grondslagen voor een
coördinerende supervisie bij de realisering
van de Zuidoostelijke stadsuitbreiding van
Amsterdam’ (1965), opgenomen in de
dissertatie van Maarten Mentzel,
Bijlmermeer als grensverleggend ideaal,
Delft 1989. In dit boek staat ook de
volgende opmerking van Rietveld
aangaande geïndustrialiseerde
hoogbouw: ‘Wie maakt nou die
combinaties van tienduizend woningen.
Geen gemeente doet het. En denk maar
niet dat het eentonig zou worden, al die
eendere huizen. Juist door de regelmaat
zou het heel mooi zijn.’ p. 118.
21
De lege ruimte werd al snel gevuld.
Tijdens de uitvoering zijn de gebouwen
midden op het grasveld gesitueerd en in
de loop der tijd is er een wildgroei van
beplanting ontstaan. Daarnaast is ook
geprobeerd om de mentale leegte te
vullen, o.m. door de plaatsing van een
soort hunnebed. Bovendien was men er
als de kippen bij om, door middel van een
vergelijking met de Dam en de markt van
Delft, aannemelijk te maken, dat de ruimte
‘te groot’ was (uiteraard, zou ik zeggen).
Soortgelijke grasvelden, hoewel heel
anders van schaal, tref je aan in de hoven
van de ‘colleges’ in Oxford en Cambridge.
Deze grasvelden, vaak iets opgetild en
altijd perfect onderhouden, hebben voor
mij dezelfde kwaliteit van tere, mentale
openheid.
22
Ook in Pendrecht bleek het centrum - dat
wil zeggen de ruimte - kwetsbaar. Door
de bebouwing van de zuidelijke
groenstrook, maar met name door de
inrichting van het plein en de situering van
een wijkgebouw midden op het ‘balkon’ is
de compositie van het centrum vrijwel om
zeep geholpen. De voorgenomen
295

reconstructie van het plein zal slechts de
genadeklap toedienen. Op basis van
winkeltechnische overwegingen is o.m.
voorgesteld om het plein te versmallen.
Daarmee is het laatste restje ‘nutteloze’
ruimte geëlimineerd...
23
C. van Eesteren, ‘The Core of the
Village, Nagele’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, E.N.
Rogers (red.), The Heart of the City:
towards the humanisation of urban life,
Londen 1952, Nendeln 1979, p. 109. L.
Stam-Beese, Pendrecht - Rotterdam, een
stedebouwkundige beschouwing, Bouw
1960, p. 87.
24
E.N. Rogers, ‘The Heart: Human
Problems of Cities’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert,
E.N. Rogers (red.), a.w., p. 73. Op het
congres werd het plan voor Nagele en de
tweede Opbouw studie naar Pendrecht
gepresenteerd. Opvallend is dat na dit
congres het centrum in Nagele pas echt
leeg raakt - althans in de plannen.
25
De programmatische bepaling maakt de
open ruimte minder kwetsbaar. Toch is de
‘sterkste’ open ruimte in het AUP niet
programmatisch bepaald, maar gewoon
ontoegankelijk: de sloterplas. Daarmee is
het gehele probleem van ruimtegebruik,
onderhoud en beheer onder controle
gebracht. Een pikant, maar niet
onbelangrijk detail is overigens dat de
centra van de in dit artikel behandelde
ensembles in het midden liggen - en niet
aan de rand, zoals in Frankfurt het geval
is. De open ruimten tussen de wijken zijn
dan meestal onbestemd en worden
momenteel vaak als problematisch
ervaren.
26
J.L. Sert, ‘Discussions on Italian Piazzas’
en S. Giedion, ‘The Heart of the City - a
summing up’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, E.N.
Rogers (red.), a.w., p. 77 resp. pp. 159-
163.
27
Erik Terlouw, ‘Le musée imaginaire’,
OASE 26/27 1990, pp. 6-25.
28
De Commissie Hoogbouw-Laagbouw
werd op aandrang van de minister van
Wederopbouw en Volkshuisvesting door
het Nederlands Instituut voor
Volkshuisvesting en Stedebouw in 1956
ingesteld en bestond uit 33 prominente
deskundigen. Mentzel bespreekt dit
rapport in relatie tot de
wordingsgeschiedenis van de
Bijlmermeer. Maarten Mentzel, a.w., pp.
93-101.
296
Sociology, Production and the City
29
Het werk van Blom werd door de
nieuwe redactie van Forum als
veelbelovende stap na de Opbouw
studies gepresenteerd. ‘Het
“voorverkavelen” door de “stedebouwer”
is hier overwonnen, ook het plattegrondje
van de architect. Zodra de onderlinge
woonelementen binnen de
wooneenheden sterker in elkaar
overgaan, (...) dan wordt de vervanging
van zowel de “architectuur” als de
“stedebouw” door een beide omvattende
discipline als creatieve voorwaarde
noodzakelijk.’ Aldo van Eyck, ‘Het verhaal
van een andere gedachte’, Forum 1959 nr.
7, p.243.
30
De studieopdracht, verstrekt aan
Bakema, Van Eyck en Van Gool, had als
expliciete doelstelling ‘de verstarring in de
evolutie van de woningbouw (te)
doorbreken.’ Bouw 1963 nr. 36, pp. 1162-
1164. Het plan van Van Gool is
gerealiseerd. Voor een beschrijving van
de gang van zaken rond de
studieopdracht en de relaties daarvan met
de ontwikkeling van de Bijlmermeer, zie
Wouter Bolte, Johan Meijer, Van Berlage
tot Bijlmer, Nijmegen 1981, pp. 202-217.
31
F.J. van Gool, ir. E.J. Jelles en D. Slebos,
‘Grondslagen voor een coördinerende
supervisie bij de realisering van de
Zuidoostelijke stadsuitbreiding van
Amsterdam’ (1965), Maarten Mentzel,
a.w., p. 255. De manipulatie van
traditionele typologieën en stedelijke
modellen is - zoals alle genetische
manipulatie - niet zonder risico’s. In de
architectuur is de reeks ‘collectiviteit’,
‘enclave’, ‘openbaarheid’, ‘stad’ een
verhoogde risicofactor. Dat hangt direct
samen met ruimtegebruik, onderhoud en
beheer. Het blok van Brinkman was
bijvoorbeeld aanvankelijk een collectieve
enclave in een openbare stad, maar zodra
de collectiviteit verdween, sloegen ook
daar de beheersproblemen genadeloos
toe.
32
Vgrl. Endry van Velzen, ‘De parallelle
stad, aspecten van het stedebouwkundig
werk van Aldo van Eyck’, OASE nr. 26/27
1990, pp. 46-63. De vermenging van het
wonen en het centrum is nauw
verbonden met het begrip ‘habitat’, dat
stond voor de totale activering van het
wonen. De woekering van ‘habitat’ op het
negende en tiende CIAM congres maakte
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

deze organisatie uiteindelijk

onbewoonbaar.
33
Overigens zijn er verschillen tussen het
ruimtegebruik in Ommoord en dat in de
Bijlmer, die ten dele de verschillen in
beheersproblematiek uitmaken. In
Ommoord is het maaiveld ingericht met
voorzieningen, parkeerplaatsen,
grasvelden en een parkachtige beplanting.
In de Bijlmer hebben deze elementen een
andere plaats gekregen (parkeren in
parkeergarages, verhoogde wegen met
daaronder voorzieningen), waardoor het
maaiveld volledig ‘vrij’ is.
34
Constant Nieuwenhuys in de Haagse
Post 12.6.65, geciteerd uit Maarten
Mentzel, a.w., p. 220. Overigens zijn er
verschillen tussen het ruimtegebruik in
Ommoord en dat in de Bijlmer, die ten dele
de verschillen in beheersproblematiek
uitmaken. In Ommoord is het maaiveld
ingericht met voorzieningen,
parkeerplaatsen, grasvelden en een
parkachtige beplanting. In de Bijlmer heeft
een aantal van deze elementen een
bewerking ondergaan (parkeren in
parkeergarages, verhoogde wegen met
daaronder voorzieningen), waardoor het
maaiveld volledig ‘vrij’ is.

297
About the Speakers
Tom Avermaete
is head of Archives, Flemisch Architecture Institute, Antwerp. His Ph.D is on
a Dissertation ‘Acculturation of the Modern: The Re-conceptualization of
Architecture and Urbanism by Candilis-Josic-Woods’ (defence September
2003). He is co-editor of Flanders Architectural Yearbook (edition 2002-
2003). He is an editor of OASE Architectural Journal.

Paola Di Biagi
Graduated from the University of Architecture of Venice (IUAV) with a degree
in Town Planning in 1980. Since October 2000 she is a full professor in Town
Planning at the University of Architecture of Trieste. The general research
field of her studies refers to the relations between the construction of mod-
ern town planning and the project of the contemporary city. She was an
editor of the periodical Urbanistica (1985-1990) and since 1998 she has
been a member of the national editorial staff of the periodical Urbanistica
Informazioni . Her publications include: The Charter of Athens. Manifesto or
Fragment of Modern Planning?, 1998; Sequences of Urban Landscapes.
Guido Guidi’s photographic Itinerary Among Ina-Casa Residential Districts,
1999; andThe Classics of Modern Town Planning, 2002;

Catherine Blain
is a research fellow at the School of Architecture of Versailles (Ecole
d’architecure de Versailles). Her research investigates the history of French
Architecture after 1945. She wrote her thesis on l’Atelier de Montrouge (1958-
1981).

Jos Bosman
is an architect and architectural historian. He studied architecture at the
Technical University Eindhoven and worked at the Nederlands Documentatie
Centrum voor de Bouwkunst (Amsterdam, 1981-1986). He did research on
Le Corbusier, Sigfried Giedion, Mart Stam, CIAM and Team 10 at the Institut
für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur of the ETH Zürich (1986 -1994).
He taught architectural theory and history at the Staedelschule (Frankfurt,
1993), Yale University (New Haven, 1994), Columbia University (New York,
1994/95 and 1996/97) and the University of Kassel (1999-2001). Currently
he is associate professor for architectural design at the Technical University
Eindhoven.

300
About the Speakers

Christine Boyer
is Professor of the School of Architecture at Princeton University in 1991.
She is an urban historian whose interests include the history of the Ameri-
can city, city planning, preservation planning, and computer science.
Before coming to the school, Boyer was professor and chair of the City and
Regional Planning Program at Pratt Institute. She has written extensively
about American urbanism. Her publications include Dreaming the Rational
City: The Myth of American City Planning 1890-1945 (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1983), Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style 1850-1900 (New York,
Rizzoli, 1985), and The City of Collective Memory (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1994). Her book Cyber Cities was published by Princeton Architectural
Press in 1996.

Nicholas Bullock
teaches at Cambridge and the Architectural Association. He has written
widely on modernism, housing and the city. He has just finished a study of
developments in Britain in the decade after the Second World War, ‘Build-
ing the Post-War World, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Brit-
ain’, and is currently working on the development of Paris 1950-2000.

Zeynep Çelik
is Professor at the School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of
Technology. She is the author of Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations:
Algiers under French Rule published by the University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1997. In February 2003 she published the article ‘Learning From
the Bidonville: CIAM Looks at Algiers’ in the Harvard Design Magazine. She
was the editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from
2000 till 2003.

Deborah Hauptmann
is Assistant Professor of Architecture Theory and Master Course Coordina-
tor with the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology. She
comes from an American academic background and holds a Master in
Design/Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently com-
pleting her Ph.D. She has practiced as an architect in America, Switzer-
land and Spain. She has edited several books on architecture and theory,
including Cities in Transition, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2000). In Nota-
tions of Herman Hertzberger, (Rotterdam: NAi publishers, 1998) she exam-
ines Hertzberger’s sketchbooks as a ‘chronoscopic’ analysis of the cre-
ative process.

301
Dirk van den Heuvel
is a research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Tech-
nology. He is co-author of Lessons: Tupker\Risselada, A Double Portrait of
Dutch Architectural Education 1953-2000 (Amsterdam: SUN, 2003) and
Alison and Peter Smithson. From the House of the Future to a house of
today (010 publishers). He has published articles in various magazines,
among them: de Architect, Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, AA Files, Daidalos
and Archis. He was an editor of OASE Architectural Journal.

Hilde Heynen
is Professor of architecural theory at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium. She has published in various articles in architecural periodicals
such as Assemblage, Archis, Harvard Design Magazine or the Journal of
Architecture. In 1999 her book Architecture and Modernity. A Critique was
published by MIT Press. With André Loeckx, Lieven De Cauter and Karina
Van Herck as co-editors, she published an anthology in Dutch of major
twentieth century texts on architecture (Rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2001).
With Huber-Jan Henket she edited Back from Utopia. The Chalanges of
the Modern Movement (Rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2002).

Ben Highmore
is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Cultural Studies, University of the
West of England, Bristol. He studied Fine Arts at the Sheffield Hallam Uni-
versity and did his PhD in Birckbeck College at the University of London. In
2002 he published Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction, (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 2002). At present he is involved in research
on urbanism as an imaginary and spectacular realm. Initially this will culmi-
nate in a book provisionally titled Urban Cultures, to be published in 2004.
He is also continuing his research in a monograph on the French theorist
Michel de Certeau, to be published in 2005.

Liane Lefaivre
is Chair of Architectural History and Theory at the University for Applied Arts
in Vienna. Her most recent publication is The Emergence of Modern Archi-
tecture (Routledge, Fall 2003), co-authored with Alex Tzonis. She has also
curated two exhibitions in the past year. One at the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam: Aldo van Eyck, The Playgrounds and the City (NAi, 2002);
and one at the Kunsthisotrisches Museum in Vienna: Santiago Calatrava;
Like a Bird (Skira, 2003). Her other books include Leon Battista Alberti’s
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (MIT Press, 1996).

302
About the Speakers

Anne Massey
is Visiting Professor at the Southampton Institute.
From 2001 till 2003 she was the Director of the School of Design at The
Arts Institute at Bournemouth. She is the author of The Independent Group:
Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1945-59, published by the Manches-
ter University Press, 1995.

Luca Molinari
is assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture Polytechnic of Milan.
He’s a Ph.D promovendus in the DKS-ADDA course at the Faculty of Ar-
chitecture, TU Delft, with a research project on Ernesto Nathan Rogers and
the post-war architectural culture. Since 1995 he has been the architec-
tural editor of Skira Publishers. In 2001 he was appointed curator for archi-
tecture and urbanism of the Triennale of Milan, where he edited and de-
signed many exhibitions, the most relevant being: Santiago Calatrava. Work
in Progress (Triennale, Milan, 1998), Stalker (Opos, Milan, 1997),
Sentimenti del 2000. Arte e fotografia dal 1960 ad oggi (Triennale, Milan,
1999),.
His publications include: Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Esperienza
dell’architettura (Milan-Genoa, 1996) and Arquitectura Italiana del posguerra/
Post-War Italian Architecture (with Paolo Scrivano, 2G, n.15, Barcelona
2000).

Stanislaus von Moos

is Professor of Modern Art at the University of Zurich. He is an art historian,
has published monographs on Le Corbusier (1968ff.), Italian Renaissance
Architecture (Turm und Bollwerk, 1976), the Architecture of Venturi, Scott
Brown & Associates (1st Volume 1987; 2nd Volume 1999) and the history of
industrial design in Switzerland (Industrieästhetiek, ARS HELVETICA, Vol.
XI, 1992). More recently his publications include Le Corbusier. Album La
Roche (ed. 1998). He was the founder and first editor of the Swiss architec-
tural magazine Archithese (1971-1980) and has taught at Harvard Univer-
sity, the University of Berne, Delft University of Technology, et. al.

303
Max Risselada
is Professor of Architecture, TU Delft. He has edited and realised numerous
exhibitions and catalogues, including Raumplan versus Plan Libre in 1987
(New York: Rizzoli, 1989), Functionalismus -Scharoun versus OPBOUW
in 1997 (Zurich: Niggli, 1999). He is co-author of Alison and Peter Smithson.
From the House of the Future to a house of today (010 publishers) and
curated the exhibition Alison and Peter Smithson 1948-2000 for the Design
Museum in London (December 2003).

Clelia Tuscano
studied architecture in Genoa, joined I.L.A.U.D. (International Laboratory of
Architecture and Urban Design) in 1983, and took her degree in Architec-
ture with Giancarlo De Carlo in 1984. She was an assistant to De Carlo’s
courses in the Genova Faculty of Architecture, plus one for a special group
of lessons about ‘City and territory’. Tuscano has worked as an architect
since 1984: after a short period in Milan in a group directed by De Carlo,
she worked in Genova associated with other architects; she founded her
own office in Bogliasco in 1994. She’s been working on Team 10 since the
beginning of the nineties, collecting information from De Carlo’s archives
and directly interviewing Candilis, Alison Smithson, Erskine, van Eyck, Peter
Smithson, De Carlo and Hertzberger and Doshi.

Bruno Vayssière
is director of the Braillard Foundation in Geneva and professor at the
Universités Aménagement in Chambéry. He has curated several exhibi-
tions, including ‘Figures et Images de la Terre’, ‘les Réalismes’, and ‘les
Années Cinquante’, all for the Centre Pompidou. He is the author of Recon-
struction - Deconstruction, le hard french ou l’architecture francaise des
trente glorieuses, published in 1988 He has published articles on a broad
range of subjects, such as tourism, the city, architecture and art history in
the following periodicals: Urbanisme, Paysages, AMC, A.A, T&A, Traverse,
Libération, Skyline and Lotus.

Endry van Velzen

is one of the directors of De Nijl Architecten. He works on architectural and
urban design projects mainly concerning the restructuring of post-war ar-
eas. He is professor of Urban Housing at the Hogeschool Rotterdam. He
has published several studies on Dutch post-war housing, among them
‘Over het alledaagse, vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse
stedenbouwkundige ensembles’ (OASE nr. 37/38, 1994), ‘About matter-of-

304
About the Speakers

factness, Van Gool’s 1138 in Amsterdam-North’ (OASE nr. 49/50, 1998)

and De naoorlogse stad, een hedendaagse ontwerpopgave (NAi-uitgevers,
2001).

Jean Louis Violeau

is a sociologist connected to the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS) in Paris. He is the Author of Quel enseignement pour l’architecture?,
published in 1999. He has written numerous articles, which have been
published in Moniteur Architecture - AMC and other journals.

Piet Vollaard
is an architect, the director of ArchiNed, (www.archined.nl), a founding mem-
ber of Smart Architecture Foundation, (www.smartarch.nl) and CIA (Center
for Informal Architecture). He is the author of: Herman Haan, architect
(Rotterdam, 1995), Cepezed architects (Rotterdam, 1993), Guide to Mod-
ern Architecture in the Netherlands (Rotterdam, 1987, 1992, 1998)and a
monograph on the architect Frank van Klingeren (2004, 010 publishers).

Cor Wagenaar
The subject of his Ph.D thesis was the post-war reconstruction of Rotterdam.
For five years he did research for the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences on the genesis of modernism according to the writings of
J.J.P. Oud, culminating in an exhibition in the Netherlands Architecture
Institute and the publication J.J.P. Oud, Poetic Functionalist, 1890-1963/
The complete works (NAi Publishers, 2001). Since the beginning of 2003
he is a member of the Department of History and Theory at the Faculty of
Architecture at the TU Delft.

Volker Welter
is Associate Professor at the Department of History of Art and Architecture
at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Biopolis –
Patrick Geddes and the City of Life, published by MIT Press in 2002. Also
he is the co-editor of ‘The Papers of Sir Patrick Geddes’, co-edited with
James McGrath and Samantha Searle (Glasgow: Strathclyde University
Archives, 1999) and of ‘The City after Patrick Geddes’, co-edited with James
Lawson (Bern: Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2000).

305
OVER HET ALLEDAAGSE

Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

Endry van Velzen

283
 Sociology, Production and the City

‘De tegenwoordige mensch wil werkelijkheid, ook wanneer zij lelijk is.’
Cornelis van Eesteren1

‘De Schoonheid. Evenmin als het leven sterft de schoonheid. De zeewind waait door onze
lelijke kustplaatsen. Het zachte licht koestert onze ontluisterde landschappen. Ochtend-
en avondhemel gloren achter de rommelige silhouetten onzer steden en dorpen. Wolken-
en sterrenluchten koepelen boven draden, palen, antennes en hekken. Het weidegroen, de
voor- en najaarstinten en de glans van het water, zij zijn dezelfde als in de dagen toen
Holland zijn grootste schoonheden schiep. (...) Wanneer zal het schone werk onzer handen
en hoofden weer als vroeger de schakel zijn tussen ons en al die pracht? Wanneer zal
Nederland - ontworsteld aan eigen lelijkheid - zichzelf in innerlijke vrijheid en schoonheid
hervinden? Zou ons aller liefde voor wat geweest is zo groot zijn, wanneer wij er niet de
zekerheid in zagen, dat het verlorenen in nieuwe gedaante kan worden herwonnen?’ Van
Tijen & Maaskant, Brinkman & Van den Broek2

Onlangs is er een prachtig fotoboek over Amsterdam verschenen, Aarsman’s Amsterdam.3

De stadsbeelden van de fotograaf Hans Aarsman onderscheiden zich nadrukkelijk van de
rethorische architectuurfotografie, die momenteel zo in zwang is. Zijn foto’s zijn geen
sfeervolle schemeropnames waarin de donkere nacht de projectie van duistere verlangens
mogelijk maakt, noch delicate detailopnames waarin met behulp van zwart-wit fotografie
een hermetisch universum wordt geconstrueerd. De foto’s van Aarsman doen in eerste
instantie aan als een reeks terloopse indrukken, vergelijkbaar met de beelden die men zelf
haast ongemerkt opdoet als men zich willekeurig door de stad beweegt: beelden die niet
direct in het oog springen, waarover je niet direct een mening hebt, maar die wel de feitelijkheid
van de hedendaagse stad uitmaken. Daarbij is het gehele ‘stadslandschap’, zowel centrum
als periferie, evenwaardig in beeld gebracht. Natuurlijk heeft Aarsman zijn foto’s nauwkeurig
gecomponeerd. Dankbaar maakt hij bijvoorbeeld gebruik van de grijze Hollandse luchten,
die het gehele beeld onderdompelen in een egaliserende belichting. Zijn foto’s zijn
panoramisch, zonder een pictorale anecdote of dominant waaraan het oog zich zou kunnen
hechten. Daarmee maakt hij de blik van de beschouwer vrij om zijn alledaagse indrukken
opnieuw onder ogen te zien: onverschillig, onrustbarend en met een eigen schoonheid.
Een van de foto’s, ‘Bullewijk’, toont een provisorische parkeerplaats op een verlaten
vlakte aan de rand van de stad. De parkeerplaats is half vol. Uit de plaats van de auto’s en
de her en der neergelegde bielzen is de ratio van de parkeerplaats afleesbaar: de maten, de
capaciteit en de richting van de voornaamste bestemmingen, ergens onder het beeldvlak
van de foto. Deze foto vertoont frappante overeenkomsten met een beeld van een voetbalveld
op een lege zandvlakte dat Cornelis van Eesteren in de twintiger jaren gebruikte tijdens zijn
lezingen over stedebouw. Van Eesteren’s commentaar bij het voetbalveld luidde: ‘Een der
elementen van het moderne stadsplan die volledig begrepen moeten zijn om juist te kunnen
worden gesitueerd.’4 In zekere zin vormt dit citaat de kern van het stedebouwkundig denken
van Van Eesteren. De stad bestaat uit min of meer functioneel bepaalde elementen, die

284
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

naar hun aard een eigen vorm hebben. Bedrijfsterreinen hebben immers een andere ratio
dan bijvoorbeeld spoorwegen of begraafplaatsen. In het stadsplan zijn deze elementen, als
waren het ‘ready-mades’, bijeengebracht in een compositie, die niet is onderworpen aan
een vooropgezette beeldregie. De elementen spreken voor zich. Althans, dat was het idee.
Dit artikel gaat over ‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ en de wijze waarop die notie doorwerkt in
een aantal naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles, die nadrukkelijk tot de vaak zo verguisde
traditie van de moderne stedebouw behoren: Nagele, Pendrecht, Buikslotermeer, Bijlmermeer
en Ommoord. Al deze ensembles hebben met elkaar gemeen dat zij, onder de condities
van de wederopbouw en een gecentraliseerd volkshuisvestingsbeleid, min of meer uit één
hand en als één project zijn ontworpen, waarbij stedebouwkundig plan, architectonische
uitwerking en beplanting nauw met elkaar samenhangen. De wijze waarop dat gebeurde is
echter niet terug te voeren op die condities alleen, noch op de schaalvergroting die gedurende
deze periode in het bouwbedrijf optrad. Minstens zo interessant is de ontwikkeling van
denkbeelden en modellen voor deze ensembles, waarbij met name twee kwesties van
belang zijn: de status van de open ruimte en de ‘beeldloze’ architectuur.5 In dat opzicht zijn
de ensembles internationaal gezien uniek.

Status van de open ruimte

Rietveld vat in een toelichting op het plan voor Nagele (1948-53) de bedoeling van de ontwerpers
kort maar krachtig samen als hij stelt: ‘Getracht is het mechaniek van een dorp beeldend te
gebruiken en bewust te maken hoe een dorp in elkaar zit.’6 In het plan is de hand van Van
Eesteren duidelijk te herkennen. Uit het programma voor het kleine landarbeidersdorp is
een keur aan stedebouwkundige elementen afgeleid, die in een nauwkeurige compositie
bijeen gebracht zijn. De compositie reguleert de betrekkingen tussen de elementen en
verankert het dorp in de structuur van de polder. Een betekenisvol moment is de kruising
tussen de doorgaande weg en de lange poldersloot, waar vrijwel alle elementen samenkomen
en waar bovendien het verenigingsgebouw is gesitueerd. Terzijde van dit punt ligt een grote
open ruimte met daar om heen de woningen. Deze twee elementen, het centrum en het
woongebied, bleken tijdens de planvorming het minst ‘vanzelfsprekend’ te zijn, getuige de
verschillende varianten.7 Dat is niet zo verwonderlijk. Een woongebied en zeker zoiets als
een centrum zijn ‘weke’ functies vergeleken met bijvoorbeeld een autoweg. De ratio van
deze elementen is veel moeilijker op voorhand te herleiden tot een eenduidige vorm. Hooguit
is er iets te zeggen over de ingrediënten, die min of meer typologisch bepaald kunnen zijn:
een rij eengezinswoningen, een kerk, een school. Maar als de hoedanigheid van de
ingrediënten ook nog op losse schroeven wordt gezet, dan verdwijnt ieder houvast. Zover
zijn we voorlopig echter nog niet.
De kiem van het gebrek aan ‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ ligt in de emancipatie van de
massawoningbouw als zelfstandige architectonische opgave. Door de institutionalisering
van de condities waaronder grote hoeveelheden kleine en goedkope woningen tot stand
kwamen (stichting van woningbouwverenigingen, wetgeving, subsidieregelingen enzovoorts),

285
 Sociology, Production and the City

werd een bom gelegd onder de scheiding tussen stedebouw en architectuur die in de
negentiende eeuw gangbaar was.8 De springstof was de status van de open ruimte, die
deel uitmaakt van de verzameling woningen. Strikt genomen behoort die open ruimte tot het
project, zoals een hof bij een gebouw, en zou dus privaat zijn. Ingewikkeld wordt het echter
als de private partij ten dele samenvalt met het openbare lichaam door de overlap van de
institutionele kaders. Wat ontstond was een architectonische stedebouw, een
stedebouwkundige architectuur, bijvoorbeeld Berlage’s Amsterdam-Zuid of de tuindorpen
aan de andere kant van het IJ.9 In beide gevallen vond een kolonialisatie van de open ruimte
plaats. Zowel het onbestemde binnenterrein als de anonieme straat uit de negentiende
eeuwse speculatie-bouw werden geactiveerd ten dienste van het wonen en een verondersteld
gemeenschappelijk leven, een soort centrum. De prijs daarvoor was het verlies van
‘vanzelfsprekendheid’ van juist die traditionele stedebouwkundige ruimten als straat,
binnenterrein, plein enzovoorts!
Bernardo Secchi legt de vinger op de tere plek, als hij voorstelt om de Moderne
Beweging te herinterpreteren als een nauwgezette exploratie van een nieuw ruimtegebruik
en te begrijpen: ‘hoe de ruimte “tussen de dingen” is ontworpen, gevuld met functies,
rolpatronen en betekenissen; hoe, sinds het negentiende eeuwse idee van stedelijke
continuïteit had afgedaan, er een idee ontstond van relaties: tussen herhaling en verschil en
hun betekenis, tussen interieur en exterieur, tussen gesloten en open, tussen publiek en
privaat, tussen individu en collectief en hun respectievelijke rollen. Dit alles bracht een
nieuw vocabulair, grammatica en syntaxis voor ruimten in woongebieden voort; hier werd
getracht een nieuw idee van het sociale te ontwikkelen.’10
De vorm en betekenis van het wonen en het centrum, niet voor niets zijn dit de
vragen die voortdurend terug komen en bijvoorbeeld ook de naoorlogse congressen van de
CIAM beheersen. In zekere zin zijn de voornaamste hypotheses voor een nieuw ruimtegebruik
in het interbellum ontwikkeld. Het wonen, dat wil zeggen het woningtype en de
verkavelingsvorm, wordt geïdentificeerd met het sociale, het leven van alledag dat een plaats
moeten hebben. Zo is bijvoorbeeld de compositie van Westhausen (Frankfurt, 1929)
gestructureerd door een mathematiek van privé-tuinen, toegangspaden, droogrekken,
vuilnisverzamelplaatsen, zandbakken enzovoorts. Ten aanzien van het centrum vindt een
verbinding plaats tussen collectieve voorzieningen op het vlak van educatie en
gemeenschapsvorming en die op het vlak van recreatie en ontspanning. Zo zijn bijvoorbeeld
de scholen in Westhausen, Praunheim en Römerstadt (Frankfurt, 1925-31) aan of in het
Nidda-dal gesitueerd, een grote open ruimte die gedacht was als een ‘volkspark’ met
natuurgebieden, strandbaden, sportterreinen, volkstuinen en tuinderijen. De verbinding tussen
collectieve en recreatieve voorzieningen is van eminent belang, omdat daarmee de centra
in de periferie een eigen gestalte krijgen ten opzichte van de historische kern. De wijken
rond het Nidda-dal hebben dan ook geen ‘pleinen’ als concentratiepunten van het openbare
leven en centrum van de compositie. Er vindt als het ware een schaalvergroting plaats
waarin het gehele woongebied de begrenzing vormt van een nieuw soort plein, het volkspark.

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Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

Ook in het Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam (1935) werd uitgegaan van een
dergelijk ruimtegebruik, waarin het wonen de rand is van grote groene centra.11
Het ruimtegebruik is nauw verbonden met de grondexploitatie. Dit is de achilleshiel
van de moderne stedebouw. De eis om tot een sluitende grondexploitatie te komen is van
grote invloed op de te realiseren woningdichtheid en daarmee op de aard van het wonen:
‘hoog’ of ‘laag’. Het verschil in ruimtegebruik bij laagbouw, grondgebonden woningen - meestal
eengezinswoningen, of hoogbouw, gestapelde bouw tot vier lagen, is evident en ingrijpend.
Bij laagbouw is het ruimtegebruik over het algemeen geprivatiseerd middels tuinen grenzend
aan de woningen. Bij gestapelde bouw ligt dat veel minder voor de hand en komt de vraag
naar de status van de open ruimte pregnant naar voren. Hoewel bij stadsuitbreiding
eengezinswoningen vrijwel altijd de voorkeur genoten, was vaak toch een flinke hoeveelheid
gestapelde bouw noodzakelijk om de begroting rond te krijgen. De term ‘gemengde
bebouwing’ deed zijn intrede.12

Veld

Een belangrijke stap in de gedachtenvorming over de wijze waarop de gemengde bebouwing

tot stand kon komen, werd gezet met de studie Woonmogelijkheden in het Nieuwe Rotterdam
(1941). De auteurs, W. van Tijen en J.H. van den Broek met hun compagnons, presenteerden
hun studie nadrukkelijk als een onderzoek naar ‘woonverkaveling’ en ‘woningvormen’: ‘Zij
(de studie) houdt zich als zodanig met twee onderwerpen bezig: a. situatie, b. woningtypes.
Een situatie heeft een zekere algemene geldigheid. Zij kan worden verwezenlijkt met elke
uitvoering van de geprojecteerde bebouwingswijzen. Zij is op zichzelf geheel onafhankelijk
van de te benutten woningtypes. Woningtypes op zichzelf zijn omgekeerd geheel
onafhankelijk van de situatie, waarin zij kunnen worden gerealiseerd. Het enige, wat men
van situatie en types gezamenlijk kan zeggen, is dat zij het meest harmonieuse geheel
zullen vormen, wanneer zij uit één gedachtengang zijn voortgekomen. Van de gedachtengang,
die uitgangspunt geweest is bij deze studie, kunnen enkele punten naar voren worden
gebracht. Het besef van diepgaande verschillen tussen de bewoners, verschillen in leeftijd,
behoeften, wensen, voorkeur en verlangens en in sociaal en cultureel peil is een dezer
punten geweest. Een woonwijk behoort hiér geschikt te zijn voor arbeiders, dáár voor de
kleine burger en intellectueel, hiér voor het gezin, dáár voor de alleenwonende; zij moet
plaats bieden zowel voor het kind als voor de bejaarde en voor de volwassene. (...) Op deze
wijze kan de natuurlijke innerlijke levendigheid van het gegeven tot uiting worden gebracht,
wat een rijkdom betekent, die tot dusver maar al te vaak door de eenvormigheid der
woonvoorzieningen werd verstikt. (...) Verscheidenheid in wezen veroorzake verscheidenheid
in vorm, verscheidenheid in bouwhoogte. (...) Voorgestaan wordt hier een oplossing, waarbij
de woningverschillen, die hun oorzaak in de gezinsvorm vinden, tot een zo levendig mogelijk
geheel dooreengevlochten zijn. (...) Eerst door het tot uitdrukking brengen van de
veelzijdigheid der behoeften ontstaat die levendigheid, die een menselijker basis is voor
een schoon stadsbeeld dan een bedachte monumentaliteit.’13

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 Sociology, Production and the City

In het bovenstaande citaat komen twee gedachten terug, die eerder besproken zijn:
de wens om woning en verkaveling in één hand te ontwikkelen en de mogelijkheid om juist
de verscheidenheid van het sociale te laten spreken in een gemengde bebouwing als nieuw
en ‘waarachtig’ stadsbeeld. In de studie werd de open bebouwingswijze uit het interbellum
echter genuanceerd benaderd. Men waardeerde, omwille van een stedelijke woonwijk, de
geslotenheid van het bouwblok en de sociale betekenis van de straat.14 Voor de
volkswoningbouw werd een verkavelingsfiguur voorgesteld, die het midden houdt tussen
strokenbouw en een gesloten bouwblok. In die verkavelingsfiguur zijn twee rijen
etagewoningen, een rij bejaardenwoningen en enkele garages zodanig samengebracht, dat
er een min of meer gesloten randbebouwing ontstaat. Dit nieuwe ‘bouwblok’ is om twee
redenen een gouden greep: het biedt een vorm om de verschillende elementen structureel
in een gemengde bebouwing op te nemen en kan bovendien dienen als beginterm voor de
compositie van een groter geheel.
De grote compositorische waarde van de nieuwe verkavelingsfiguur, ook wel
‘wooneenheid’ of ‘stempel’ genoemd, blijkt uit de plannen voor Pendrecht (1948-53). Opvallend
zijn de onnavolgbare verschillen in de schijnbaar willekeurig opeenvolgende
verkavelingsvarianten die door Stam-Beese en anderen zijn getekend.15 Dat veranderde
echter volledig, zodra de wooneenheid in de schetsen opdook. De ‘weke’ compositie van
de wijk kreeg opeens een ongekende stevigheid door de wijze waarop de wooneenheid als
vormmotief is herhaald. Op zich zijn zowel het vormmotief als de wijze van herhaling abitrair,
maar eenmaal aangenomen en consequent toegepast, brengen zij een ordening met een
eigen logica voort. In compositorisch opzicht ontstaat een continu veld, vergelijkbaar met
de doorgeweven motieven van een perzisch tapijt. Door de vorm van de herhaling verliest de
wooneenheid bovendien haar objectmatig karakter en komt de nadruk te liggen op de
verschillende open ruimten die door spiegeling en ritmering ontstaan. Deze open ruimten
zijn gelijkmatig over het veld verdeeld en verbonden met verschillende aspecten van het
alledaagse leven: een verkeersstraat, een speelstraat, een binnenterrein met
gemeenschappelijke tuin, een singel met winkels enzovoorts.
Stam-Beese verwoordde de verbinding van het sociale en de vorm, en de esthetische
consequenties daarvan, als volgt: ‘In eerste instantie werd niet naar een incidentele
aesthetische oplossing gestreefd, maar de structuur van een maatschappelijke constellatie
zelf als vormgevend element gebruikt. (...) Willens en wetens is er dus van afgezien om een
zinledige wisselvalligheid naar uiterlijke vorm tot stand te brengen, er op vertrouwende dat
een innerlijke sociale verscheidenheid der woongroepen voldoende sterk naar voren zal
komen en zich zal manifesteren in het gebruik van de woningen en de gemeenschappelijke
tuin, in de activiteiten der bewoners en hun onderlinge verhoudingen, zodat hierdoor de
ogenschijnlijke gelijkheid en monotonie te niet gedaan zal worden. Sterker en bewuster
dan bij een tot nu toe gehanteerde verkaveling is in het plan Pendrecht de nadruk gelegd op
de samenhang tussen bebouwde en onbebouwde ruimte, tussen woning en
gemeenschappelijk of openbaar groen, tussen woning en straatruimte.’16

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Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

Architecten hadden altijd al oog voor de esthetische eigenschappen van

massawoningbouw. De repetitie van gelijke elementen werd gezien als een stijlvormende
kracht voor een nieuw stadsbeeld, dat de pluriformiteit in de verschijningsvorm van de
negentiende eeuwse stad zou kunnen overstijgen. Uit het aangehaalde citaat van Stam-
Beese spreekt eveneens een dergelijk esthetisch bewustzijn, maar eerder dan de ‘positieve’,
representatieve mogelijkheden te benadrukken, worden ‘negatieve’ kenmerken als gelijkheid
en monotomie genoemd. De herhaling dient er niet toe om een monumentaal stadsbeeld te
construeren, maar juist om dat stadsbeeld te neutraliseren in een soort ‘negatieve’ stijl. De
taal van het beeld was besmet, en bovendien te vaak gebruikt om de werkelijkheid te
verhullen.17 Als esthetisch procédé is dat vergelijkbaar met bijvoorbeeld het werk van Andy
Warhol, waarin de pictorale en anecdotische kwaliteit van het enkele beeld door strenge
herhaling vervaagt tot een nieuw, ‘voorstellingsloos’ beeld.18 Ook was er affiniteit met de
concrete kunst van bijvoorbeeld R.P. Lohse, waarin de pictorale elementen geen
representatieve betekenis hebben, maar een rol spelen in de structurele ordening van het
beeld.19 De concrete, ‘beeldloze’ architectuur van Pendrecht, maar ook die van Nagele,
Buikslotermeer, Bijlmermeer of Ommoord, is niets meer dan het zinnebeeld van zich zelf.
De ‘taal’ van deze architectuur wordt ervaren in het dagelijks gebruik, met name dat van de
open ruimte. De verscheidenheid ontstaat als het ware vanzelf door het verglijden van de
dag, de wolkenluchten en sterrenhemels, de wisseling van de seizoenen. Vanuit dit
perspectief is ook de positieve houding ten aanzien van de grootschalige, geïndustrialiseerde
bouw van Ommoord of de Bijlmer te begrijpen. De bouworde, inhaerent aan deze producten,
levert automatisch een neutrale esthetiek op.20
Centrum
Hoe zit het nu met het centrum? In Nagele is dit een grote open ruimte, omringd door een
woongebied. Deze centrale ruimte, die al in de eerste schetsen opdook, was aanvankelijk
gevuld met gebouwen voor voorzieningen, sporterreinen, boomgroepen enzovoorts. In de
laatste voorstellen is de ruimte leeg. Niet alleen was een deel van de voorzieningen inmiddels
elders gesitueerd, ook de overgebleven scholen en kerken zijn nu dicht tegen de ringweg
geplaatst. Enkele bomenrijen aan de rand begrenzen een uitgestrekt grasveld, vergelijkbaar
met de ‘greens’ in sommige Engelse steden. In die enorme leegte ligt de bajonet-vormige
verspringing van de poldersloot, waardoor in compositorisch opzicht de centrale ruimte van
het dorp benadrukt en ingeschreven werd in de polder. Met de immer aanwezige hemelkoepel
zijn dit de ingrediënten van het centrum: grasveld, poldersloot en wolkenlucht. Doodgewone
elementen, die door hun ‘setting’ een haast metafysische betekenis krijgen, een soort
trancendentie van het alledaagse - maar natuurlijk uiterst kwetsbaar.21
Hoewel Pendrecht in vele opzichten onvergelijkbaar is met Nagele, zijn er ten aanzien
van de relatie tussen het wonen en het centrum en de aard van dat centrum opmerkelijke
overeenkomsten. Ook in Pendrecht is het wonen als het ware om het centrum heen geplooid
en bestaat het centrum uit alledaagse elementen als sloten, wegen, groenstroken en een
wijdlopig plein die met enkele hoge woongebouwen in een nauwkeurige compositie zijn

289
 Sociology, Production and the City

samengebracht. Opvallend in die compositie is dat de T van ontsluitingswegen verschoven

ligt ten opzichte van het kruis van sloten en dat het plein daar precies tussen ligt. Het plein
ligt ook precies tussen de twee groenstroken. De noordelijke groenstrook met voorzieningen
legt de verbinding met de stad; de zuidelijke, die aanvankelijk open was gedacht, laat het
idee van het ‘ongerepte’ landschap tot diep in de wijk binnendringen. Het plein is dus het
brandpunt van de compositie, een soort condensatiepunt waar de stad overgaat in het
landschap: voor het plein de steedse drukte van verkeer en voorzieningen, achter het plein
de landelijke rust van de singels. In die zin is het architectonisch motief van de compositie
van het centrum zonder meer klassiek te noemen. In een stadsas ligt een grote open
ruimte in relatie tot het landschap. De verbreding van het plein langs het water versterkt
slechts het karakter van een ‘balkon op het landschap’. Hoewel een dergelijk architectonisch
motief een lange traditie kent, is de vormgeving daarvan in Pendrecht geenszins
monumentaal. Eerder ligt het motief besloten in de structuur van de onderlinge betrekkingen
van de samenstellende elementen. Daardoor is de betekenis ervan misschien in eerste
instantie minder zichtbaar; zoals de naam van het plein, Plein 53, pas in tweede instantie
(als men zich realiseert dat alle andere straatnamen verwijzen naar dorpen in Zeeland)
herinnert aan de verschrikkingen van de Watersnoodramp.22
Zowel het wijdlopige plein in Pendrecht als het lege grasveld in Nagele zijn
programmaloos. Van Eesteren stelde dat het grasveld de mogelijkheid bood ‘om rond te
slenteren, met de handen in de zakken, en te doen wat men wil.’ Stam-Beese schreef dat
‘de ruime afmeting van het plein een gebruik voor alle mogelijke doeleinden waarborgt.’23
De vraag naar de betekenis van het centrum kwam uitvoerig aan de orde op het achtste
CIAM congres (1951), dat de veelzeggende titel kreeg: ‘The Heart of the City’. Ernesto
Rogers, een van de redacteuren van de congrespublicatie, bracht het idee van het centrum
als volgt onder woorden. ‘Het Hart kan niet het zakencentrum zijn, zoals in kapitalistische
organisaties, noch de fabriek, symbool van een proletarische samenleving. Het Hart van de
stad moet het centrum zijn van meer extensieve menselijke relaties: conversatie, discussie,
het winkelen, flirten, flaneren, en het onbetaalbare “dolce far niente” in zijn beste betekenis.’24
De globaliteit van de ongeprogrammeerde ‘vrije tijd’ staat in opmerkelijk contrast met de
programmatische bepaaldheid van de volksparken in Frankfurt of de groengebieden in het
AUP.25 Wat echter constant blijft in de gedachtenvorming over het centrum, is de associatie
met het landschap. ‘Het landschap van het centrum (“core”) is in essentie een openbaar
(“civic”) landschap. Het is een plaats waar de uitdrukking van de burgelijke openbaarheid
zijn hoogtepunt vindt. Dit openbare landschap is een voortbrengsel van de mens en als
zodanig tegengesteld aan het natuurlijke landschap. In sommige gevallen kunnen natuurlijke
elementen, zelfs bomen, misplaatst zijn.’ Dat ‘openbare landschap’ zou autovrij en een
‘helder en scherp omlijnd ruimtelijk ontwerp’ moeten zijn.26
Men ziet het achtste CIAM congres vaak als omslagpunt in de denkbeelden over de
rol van het sociale. In vele voordrachten maakte een deductieve betoogtrant plaats voor een
inductieve. Het lege centrum was bij uitstek een veld voor projectie. De toeschouwer zou

290
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

tot participatie moeten worden gestimuleerd, om zo in de (spontane) actie zijn eigen identiteit
én die van de gemeenschap te verwerkelijken. Soortgelijke ideeën werden ook door
kunstenaarsgroepen als de Lettristische Internationale, de Internationale Beweging voor
een Imaginistisch Bauhaus en de Internationaal Situationisten ontwikkeld, en zijn elders
uitvoerig beschreven.27 Los van alle bevlogen rethoriek is de kwestie in architectonisch
opzicht eigenlijk pijnlijk eenvoudig. In de moderne, democratische welvaartsstaat bleek het
sociale zo moeilijk algemeen gesteld te kunnen worden, dat het slechts in zeer globale
termen te verbinden is met een (stede)bouwkundige structuur. De grondslag voor een
betekenisvolle ordening werd daarmee gereduceerd tot de extreme polariteit privaat - collectief.
En toch moest er gebouwd worden.

Veld én centrum

In de loop der vijftiger jaren groeide het onbehagen over de gemengde bebouwing en met
name over de obligate portiek-etagewoningen in blokken van drie of vier bouwlagen. Zowel
de verkavelingsvorm als het woningtype zelf werden radicaal ter discussie gesteld. Van
belang was het rapport van de Commissie Hoogbouw-Laagbouw, Laag of hoog bouwen en
wonen? De keuze van de woonvorm naar het aantal bouwlagen (1961).28 Mede onder
invloed van een strenge overdenking van de eerder genoemde polariteit privaat - collectief,
achtte men ‘halfslachtige’ oplossingen, zoals het meergezinshuis, ongepast. Goed
geoutilleerde hoogbouw met ruime woningen, onbelemmerd uitzicht en gemeenschappelijke
voorzieningen of patio-woningen met optimale privacy leken meer recht te doen aan de
eigentijdse omstandigheden en genoten dan ook warme belangstelling. Daarnaast waren
juist de condities van het meergezinshuis - een behoorlijke dichtheid en een concrete
spanning tussen individu en collectief - voor jonge architecten zoals bijvoorbeeld Piet Blom
aanleiding tot talloze experimenten naar ‘nieuwe woonvormen’. In de resultaten van deze
experimenten, zoals bijvoorbeeld de clusters van Piet Blom, zijn woning en verkaveling zo
onlosmakelijk samengebracht, dat iedere typologische bepaling als het ware overstegen
is. Deze experimenten hadden echter nauwelijks effect op de plannen voor Buikslotermeer,
de Bijlmer of Ommoord. Veeleer speelden zij een rol in de reactie daarop.29
Experiment was ook nadrukkelijk de bedoeling bij de studieopdracht voor de woonwijk
Buikslotermeer (1963), die in meerdere opzichten gezien kan worden als opmaat voor de
Bijlmer.30 Naast het inmiddels bekende pleidooi voor de samenhang tussen architectuur
en stedebouw, was de Buikslotermeer-studie vooral gericht op de integratie van de
verschillende aspecten van het wonen: de privacy van de woning, de ontsluitingsvorm en de
verscheidenheid van de ‘woonsoorten’. De afzonderlijke uitdrukking van de verschillende
woningtypen is als het ware geneutraliseerd door ze allemaal op te nemen in één
bebouwingsvorm. Voor de ontsluiting zijn doorlopende ‘galerijstraten’ per drie verdiepingen
bedacht, die eveneens in de bebouwingsvorm zijn opgenomen en die de verschillende
bouwdelen tot één groot complex samenbinden. Dat complex is een regelmatige
‘stedebouwkundige’ structuur van hofachtige ruimten.

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 Sociology, Production and the City

De term ‘galerijstraat’ is doelbewust gekozen. Terwijl bij de woningen een optimale

privacy voorop stond, werd aan de collectieve ontsluitingsstructuur een openbare betekenis
toegekend, namelijk die van een straat. Als voorbeeld van een dergelijke ontsluitingsstructuur
werd het blok van Brinkman in Spangen (1919-21) aangehaald, maar eigenlijk zou een
verwijzing naar Engelse voorbeelden, zoals de op het negende CIAM congres gepresenteerde
Golden Lane studies van de Smithsons (1951-52) of het toen juist gereedgekomen Park
Hill complex in Sheffield (1957-65), meer voor de hand hebben gelegen. De structuur van
deze projecten is gebaseerd op een soort ‘genetische manipulatie’ van traditionele
typologieën en stedelijke modellen. Op dit procédé zijn ook een aantal karakteristieken van
het ontwerp voor de Bijlmer gebaseerd. Zo gaven de supervisoren aan dat ‘de “tertiaire
autoweg” is omgevormd tot parkeergarage; het troittoir langs de tertiaire autoweg is daarvan
losgekoppeld en zal een nieuwe gestalte dienen te krijgen in de inrichtingen voor het
huisvesten (afgekort voorlopig I.H.V.)’. Naast de ‘inrichtingen voor het huisvesten’
onderscheidde men ‘inrichtingen voor het collectief gebruik (afgekort voorlopig I.C.G.)’. Met
die afkortingen werd iedere typologische bepaling ten aanzien van het wonen en het cen-
trum op losse schroeven gezet.31
Evenals in de aangehaalde Engelse voorbeelden vloeien in het plan voor Buikslotermeer
woning en verkaveling in feite samen tot een enkel gebouw. Met het wegvallen van de
‘bemiddelende’ rol van de verkaveling tussen woning en open ruimte, krijgt de relatie van dat
gebouw tot zijn omgeving een uiterst globaal karakter, vergelijkbaar met de manier waarop
een klooster of een kasteel ongenaakbaar in het landschap is gesitueerd. Daarmee verandert
de status van de open ruimte. Die is niet langer direct verbonden met het wonen, maar kan
meer globale betekenissen opnemen. De open ruimte in Buikslotermeer is ingericht met
parkeerplaatsen, gazons en voorzieningen; elementen die voorheen min of meer tot het
centrum behoorden. ‘Centrum in beperkte zin verdwenen’, schreef Van Eyck op een van
zijn schetsen, en op een andere schets is te zien hoe het centrum als het ware uitgesmeerd
is over het gehele grondvlak van de wijk.32
Als antwoord op de gewijzigde inzichten voltrokken zich in de zestiger jaren dus
twee ingrijpende transformaties ten aanzien van het wonen en het centrum: de neutralisering
van het wonen en de versmelting van het wonen met het centrum. Het resultaat van deze
transformaties blijft echter binnen het hypothetisch frame, dat aan het begin van het artikel
is gesuggereerd: de identificatie van het wonen met het sociale en de associatie van het
centrum met collectieve en recreatieve voorzieningen. De veranderingen in de opvatting
daarvan - van gedifferentieerd naar ‘vrij’, van specifiek naar globaal - zijn weliswaar van grote
invloed op het uiteindelijke resultaat, maar in compositorisch opzicht zijn de voorgestelde
modellen opmerkelijk constant ten opzichte van de voorgaande periode. De composities
blijven gebaseerd op de contrasten in de ruimtelijke karakteristiek van de verschillende
woonvormen. Zowel in Ommoord als in de Bijlmer vormt een textuur van laagbouw de rand
van een duidelijk bepaald, groen en autovrij middengebied, waarin de hoogbouw is gesitueerd.
Dat middengebied is een openbaar landschap; echter niet de verstilde sublimatie van het

292
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

alledaagse zoals in Nagele, maar een somtijds ruige wildernis waarin de werkelijkheid zich
in al zijn gedaantes kan manifesteren.33

Dat middengebied is een openbaar landschap; echter niet de verstilde sublimatie van het
alledaagse zoals in Nagele, maar een ruige wildernis waarin de werkelijkheid zich in ook
zijn lelijke gedaante kan manifesteren. Of, zoals Constant Nieuwenhuys, schepper van het
utopische project Nieuw Babylon, in 1965 al opmerkte: ‘Ik zie straks in die Bijlmermeer,
met zijn gebrek aan gezelligheidsknooppunten, een intensief nozemdom ontstaan, waar ik
overigens geen enkel bezwaar tegen heb, als creatief verschijnsel dan.’34

293

1 9
Cornelis van Eesteren, ‘Städtebau’, i10
nr. 21-22 1929, p. 169.
2
W. van Tijen & H.A. Maaskant en J.A.
Brinkman & J.H. van den Broek,
Woonmogelijkheden in het Nieuwe
Rotterdam, Rotterdam 1941, p. 16.
3 10
Hans Aarsman, Aarsman’s Amsterdam,
Amsterdam 1993.
4
Ik verlaat mij hier op de fraaie studie over
Van Eesteren van Vincent van Rossem.
Van Rossem beschrijft uitvoerig een
lezing voor de leden van De Opbouw.
Vincent van Rossem, Het Algemeen
Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam,
geschiedenis en ontwerp, Rotterdam
1993 (proefschrift Universiteit van
Amsterdam 1991), pp. 168-175. De
genoemde foto is afgedrukt op p. 172, het
citaat is afkomstig van Van Eesteren p.
173.
5
De ervaringen van de verschillende
projecten werden direct op elkaar
betrokken door de bemoeienis van een
kleine groep ontwerpers. Van Eesteren,
Gerrit Rietveld en Aldo van Eyck waren
bijvoorbeeld als leden van ‘De 8’ betrokken
bij Nagele, later kwamen daar Jaap
Bakema en Lotte Stam-Beese bij. De
laatste twee verrichtten met anderen van
‘De Opbouw’ een reeks studies naar
Pendrecht en Alexanderpolder. Stam-
Beese werkte in de gemeente aan
Pendrecht en ontwierp later ook
Ommoord. Bakema, Van Eyck en Frans
van Gool (die jaren op het bureau Van den
Broek en Bakema had gewerkt) maakten
plannen voor Buikslotermeer. Van Gool
realiseerde zijn plan en was als een van
de supervisoren bij de Bijlmermeer
betrokken. Over deze periode en
projecten zijn vele (deel)studies
verschenen, o.m. Umberto Barbieri (red.),
Architectuur en Planning, Nederland 1940-
1980, Rotterdam 1983. Van belang voor
dit artikel was ook de lezing van Yorgos
Simeoforidis, ‘On landscape and public/
open spaces’, Delft 1993.
6
De 8, ‘Een plan voor het dorp Nagele’,
Forum 1952, nr. 6/7, p. 176.
7
De verschillende varianten zijn
opgenomen in Zef Hemel, Vincent van
Rossem, Nagele, een collectief ontwerp
1947-1957, Amsterdam 1984.
8
Henk Engel, Endry van Velzen, ‘De vorm
van de stad: Nederland na 1945’, elders in
dit nummer.
294
Sociology, Production and the City
Dit wellicht subtiele onderscheid valt in
de twintiger jaren in Amsterdam samen
met het verschil in bouwheer, dienst
Stedebouw versus dienst
Volkshuisvesting, en het verschil in hoog-
en laagbouw.
Bernardo Secchi, ‘For a townplanning of
open spaces’, Casabella 597/598 1993, p.
116.
11
De stadsuitbreidingen van Frankfurt
waren in Nederland wel bekend door
persoonlijke betrokkenheid, studiereizen,
het tweede CIAM-congres en diverse
publicaties. In het preadvies Organische
woonwijk in open bebouwing dat in 1932
door ‘De 8’ en ‘Opbouw’ aan het
Nederlands Instituut voor Volkshuisvesting
en Stedebouw is uitgebracht, wordt
bijvoorbeeld direct aan de ervaringen van
Frankfurt gerefereerd. Het vijfde CIAM
congres, met als titel ‘Logis et Loisoirs’
(Parijs 1937), had eveneens het wonen
en de ontspanning als onderwerp.
12
Deze term wordt in de toelichting op het
AUP geïntroduceerd om de
bebouwingsvorm van de nieuwe
woongebieden te omschrijven. ‘Het is
echter wel mogelijk, door het toepassen
van zg. “gemende bebouwing” de
voordeelen van laagbouw voor een groot
deel der woningen te behouden en de
nadeelen van de te groote uitgestrektheid
en te hooge terreinkosten te ontgaan.’
Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van
Amsterdam, nota van toelichting,
Amsterdam 1935, p. 84. De dominantie
van de grondexploitatie blijkt bijvoorbeeld
uit de uitvoering van het AUP. Aanvankelijk
ging men uit van 50-60%
eengezinswoningen in de westelijke
tuinsteden en Buitenveldert. Uiteindelijk is
dit aantal gezakt tot 13-28%.
13
W. van Tijen & H.A. Maaskant en J.A.
Brinkman & J.H. van den Broek, a.w., pp.
18, 19. Van Tijen en Van den Broek,
volkshuisvesters van het eerste uur,
waren ook betrokken bij het opstellen van
het eerder genoemde Preadvies en de
prijsvraag Goedkope Arbeiderswoningen
(Amsterdam, 1936), waarin eveneens de
vraag naar nieuwe bebouwingsvormen
voor de volkswoningbouw centraal stond.
14
Over stedelijkheid en bouwblok: ‘Verder
is er van uitgegaan, dat de stedelijke
woonwijken hun stadskarakter niet mogen
verbloemen. (...) De geprojecteerde
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles
verhouding tussen openheid en
geslotenheid zij daarmede in
overeenstemming. (...) De geslotenheid
van het bouwblok kan dichter worden
benaderd dan in veel moderne
stadsplannen, waarbij alleen van het
principe ener goede oriëntering is
uitgegaan.’ Over de straat: ‘Op straat leert
het kind de maatschappij kennen: het
gevaar (de grote hond, de plagende
jongen) en de wreedheid (de visvrouw)
maar ook de kameraadschap, het
avontuur en het sociale medelijden (de
bedelaar). Hoezeer het gezin ook altijd het
eerste en de straat het tweede element in
het kinderleven zal behoren te zijn, het
kind, dat de “straat” niet kent of niet
aankan, groeit op tot
onmaatschappelijkheid.’ W. van Tijen &
H.A. Maaskant en J.A. Brinkman & J.H.
van den Broek, a.w., p. 18 resp. 22.
15
De verschillende varianten zijn o.m.
opgenomen in Hélène Damen, Anne-Mie
Devolder, Lotte Stam-Beese 1903-1988,
Rotterdam 1993.
16
Lotte Stam-Beese, ‘Aantekening bij het
uitbreidingsplan Pendrecht’, Tijdschrift
voor Volkshuisvesting en Stedebouw
1953 nr. 10, p. 122.
17
De ervaring van de oorlog versterkte het
besef dat de moderne architectuur tot dan
toe nog geen antwoord had gegeven op
de behoefte aan beelden of symbolen van
een open, democratische samenleving.
Monumentale representatie werd
afgewezen, de dingen moesten zelf direct
tot beelding worden gebracht. Overigens
laat deze ‘negatieve’ stijl evenmin als de
Berlagiaanse stadsesthetiek pluriformiteit
in de verschijningsvorm toe. Ook de
realisatie van Pendrecht werd
geregisseerd door middel van een
permanente ‘commissie Pendrecht’,
bestaande uit vertegenwoordigers van de
betrokken diensten (waaronder
Welstandstoezicht), opdrachtgevers en
architecten.
18
De door Jan de Heer beschreven
situatieloze studies van Rietveld zijn voor
mij de meest krachtige voorbeelden van
een dergelijk ‘neutraal’ stadsbeeld. Jan de
Heer, ‘Het rad van Rietveld’, Ko Jacobs,
Lutger Smit (red.), De ideale stad,
ideaalplannen voor de stad Utrecht 1664-
1988, Utrecht 1988, pp. 115-134, en
OASE nr. 23 1989, pp. 10-21.
19
Aldo van Eyck plaatste bijvoorbeeld het
werk van Lohse naast de studies van De
Opbouw: ‘Op zoek naar de verdere
grondbeginselen van een nieuwe
vormtaal heeft Lohse de beeldende
betekenis van het aantal ontdekt.’ Forum
1952 nr. 6/7, p. 186. Lohse zag eerder, bij
het CIAM congres in Bergamo (1949), al
verwantschappen met het werk van
Opbouw. Voor een nadere beschouwing
van de notie ‘concreet’, zie de dissertatie
van Hans Frei, Konkrete Architektur, Über
Max Bill als Architekt, Baden 1991.
20
Vrgl. F.J. van Gool, ir. E.J. Jelles en D.
Slebos, ‘Grondslagen voor een
coördinerende supervisie bij de realisering
van de Zuidoostelijke stadsuitbreiding van
Amsterdam’ (1965), opgenomen in de
dissertatie van Maarten Mentzel,
Bijlmermeer als grensverleggend ideaal,
Delft 1989. In dit boek staat ook de
volgende opmerking van Rietveld
aangaande geïndustrialiseerde
hoogbouw: ‘Wie maakt nou die
combinaties van tienduizend woningen.
Geen gemeente doet het. En denk maar
niet dat het eentonig zou worden, al die
eendere huizen. Juist door de regelmaat
zou het heel mooi zijn.’ p. 118.
21
De lege ruimte werd al snel gevuld.
Tijdens de uitvoering zijn de gebouwen
midden op het grasveld gesitueerd en in
de loop der tijd is er een wildgroei van
beplanting ontstaan. Daarnaast is ook
geprobeerd om de mentale leegte te
vullen, o.m. door de plaatsing van een
soort hunnebed. Bovendien was men er
als de kippen bij om, door middel van een
vergelijking met de Dam en de markt van
Delft, aannemelijk te maken, dat de ruimte
‘te groot’ was (uiteraard, zou ik zeggen).
Soortgelijke grasvelden, hoewel heel
anders van schaal, tref je aan in de hoven
van de ‘colleges’ in Oxford en Cambridge.
Deze grasvelden, vaak iets opgetild en
altijd perfect onderhouden, hebben voor
mij dezelfde kwaliteit van tere, mentale
openheid.
22
Ook in Pendrecht bleek het centrum - dat
wil zeggen de ruimte - kwetsbaar. Door
de bebouwing van de zuidelijke
groenstrook, maar met name door de
inrichting van het plein en de situering van
een wijkgebouw midden op het ‘balkon’ is
de compositie van het centrum vrijwel om
zeep geholpen. De voorgenomen
295

reconstructie van het plein zal slechts de
genadeklap toedienen. Op basis van
winkeltechnische overwegingen is o.m.
voorgesteld om het plein te versmallen.
Daarmee is het laatste restje ‘nutteloze’
ruimte geëlimineerd...
23
C. van Eesteren, ‘The Core of the
Village, Nagele’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, E.N.
Rogers (red.), The Heart of the City:
towards the humanisation of urban life,
Londen 1952, Nendeln 1979, p. 109. L.
Stam-Beese, Pendrecht - Rotterdam, een
stedebouwkundige beschouwing, Bouw
1960, p. 87.
24
E.N. Rogers, ‘The Heart: Human
Problems of Cities’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert,
E.N. Rogers (red.), a.w., p. 73. Op het
congres werd het plan voor Nagele en de
tweede Opbouw studie naar Pendrecht
gepresenteerd. Opvallend is dat na dit
congres het centrum in Nagele pas echt
leeg raakt - althans in de plannen.
25
De programmatische bepaling maakt de
open ruimte minder kwetsbaar. Toch is de
‘sterkste’ open ruimte in het AUP niet
programmatisch bepaald, maar gewoon
ontoegankelijk: de sloterplas. Daarmee is
het gehele probleem van ruimtegebruik,
onderhoud en beheer onder controle
gebracht. Een pikant, maar niet
onbelangrijk detail is overigens dat de
centra van de in dit artikel behandelde
ensembles in het midden liggen - en niet
aan de rand, zoals in Frankfurt het geval
is. De open ruimten tussen de wijken zijn
dan meestal onbestemd en worden
momenteel vaak als problematisch
ervaren.
26
J.L. Sert, ‘Discussions on Italian Piazzas’
en S. Giedion, ‘The Heart of the City - a
summing up’, J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, E.N.
Rogers (red.), a.w., p. 77 resp. pp. 159-
163.
27
Erik Terlouw, ‘Le musée imaginaire’,
OASE 26/27 1990, pp. 6-25.
28
De Commissie Hoogbouw-Laagbouw
werd op aandrang van de minister van
Wederopbouw en Volkshuisvesting door
het Nederlands Instituut voor
Volkshuisvesting en Stedebouw in 1956
ingesteld en bestond uit 33 prominente
deskundigen. Mentzel bespreekt dit
rapport in relatie tot de
wordingsgeschiedenis van de
Bijlmermeer. Maarten Mentzel, a.w., pp.
93-101.
296
Sociology, Production and the City
29
Het werk van Blom werd door de
nieuwe redactie van Forum als
veelbelovende stap na de Opbouw
studies gepresenteerd. ‘Het
“voorverkavelen” door de “stedebouwer”
is hier overwonnen, ook het plattegrondje
van de architect. Zodra de onderlinge
woonelementen binnen de
wooneenheden sterker in elkaar
overgaan, (...) dan wordt de vervanging
van zowel de “architectuur” als de
“stedebouw” door een beide omvattende
discipline als creatieve voorwaarde
noodzakelijk.’ Aldo van Eyck, ‘Het verhaal
van een andere gedachte’, Forum 1959 nr.
7, p.243.
30
De studieopdracht, verstrekt aan
Bakema, Van Eyck en Van Gool, had als
expliciete doelstelling ‘de verstarring in de
evolutie van de woningbouw (te)
doorbreken.’ Bouw 1963 nr. 36, pp. 1162-
1164. Het plan van Van Gool is
gerealiseerd. Voor een beschrijving van
de gang van zaken rond de
studieopdracht en de relaties daarvan met
de ontwikkeling van de Bijlmermeer, zie
Wouter Bolte, Johan Meijer, Van Berlage
tot Bijlmer, Nijmegen 1981, pp. 202-217.
31
F.J. van Gool, ir. E.J. Jelles en D. Slebos,
‘Grondslagen voor een coördinerende
supervisie bij de realisering van de
Zuidoostelijke stadsuitbreiding van
Amsterdam’ (1965), Maarten Mentzel,
a.w., p. 255. De manipulatie van
traditionele typologieën en stedelijke
modellen is - zoals alle genetische
manipulatie - niet zonder risico’s. In de
architectuur is de reeks ‘collectiviteit’,
‘enclave’, ‘openbaarheid’, ‘stad’ een
verhoogde risicofactor. Dat hangt direct
samen met ruimtegebruik, onderhoud en
beheer. Het blok van Brinkman was
bijvoorbeeld aanvankelijk een collectieve
enclave in een openbare stad, maar zodra
de collectiviteit verdween, sloegen ook
daar de beheersproblemen genadeloos
toe.
32
Vgrl. Endry van Velzen, ‘De parallelle
stad, aspecten van het stedebouwkundig
werk van Aldo van Eyck’, OASE nr. 26/27
1990, pp. 46-63. De vermenging van het
wonen en het centrum is nauw
verbonden met het begrip ‘habitat’, dat
stond voor de totale activering van het
wonen. De woekering van ‘habitat’ op het
negende en tiende CIAM congres maakte
Over het allerdaagse. Vorm en betekenis van enkele naoorlogse stedebouwkundige ensembles

deze organisatie uiteindelijk

onbewoonbaar.
33
Overigens zijn er verschillen tussen het
ruimtegebruik in Ommoord en dat in de
Bijlmer, die ten dele de verschillen in
beheersproblematiek uitmaken. In
Ommoord is het maaiveld ingericht met
voorzieningen, parkeerplaatsen,
grasvelden en een parkachtige beplanting.
In de Bijlmer hebben deze elementen een
andere plaats gekregen (parkeren in
parkeergarages, verhoogde wegen met
daaronder voorzieningen), waardoor het
maaiveld volledig ‘vrij’ is.
34
Constant Nieuwenhuys in de Haagse
Post 12.6.65, geciteerd uit Maarten
Mentzel, a.w., p. 220. Overigens zijn er
verschillen tussen het ruimtegebruik in
Ommoord en dat in de Bijlmer, die ten dele
de verschillen in beheersproblematiek
uitmaken. In Ommoord is het maaiveld
ingericht met voorzieningen,
parkeerplaatsen, grasvelden en een
parkachtige beplanting. In de Bijlmer heeft
een aantal van deze elementen een
bewerking ondergaan (parkeren in
parkeergarages, verhoogde wegen met
daaronder voorzieningen), waardoor het
maaiveld volledig ‘vrij’ is.

297