The Modernist Concept Of Urban Design Cultural Studies Essay

The Modernist Concept Of Urban image Cultural Studies EssayThe reading of our towns and cities is intrinsically linked to m some(prenominal) architectural and cultural patterns and trends of the past. Indeed the Aesthetic and strategic practices of architecture and urban architectural plan contri neverthelesse, through a complex of formal and informal processes, to the creation of urban cultures as well as giving shape to distinctive metropolis image Stevenson 2003.The social and technological budges which characterised the end of the 19th and start of the twentieth centuries, created a momentum of change in the art, design and culture of western Europe, and precipitated a shift in the likings behind design and architecture, that laid the foundations for the phylogenesis of the modernist movement. In essence the modernist movement fundamentally altered the way that those who intentional the towns and cities we lived in, viewed their role, based upon utopian fancies, standardis ation, in the altogether industrial materials such as re-enforced concrete, plate and plate glass, abstraction and a vehement ambition to make a impudently world, non just a new art Hughes 2006.In Britain, the modernist movement did not really develop until the late 1920s and proterozoic 1930s, when the formation of institutions such as the Congres Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM), began to formalise and standardise the mentation of modernist architecture, not just as a means to design buildings, plainly to construct a whole new way of alert a style which would seek to incorporate the form follows form mantra into the design of our cities and towns Gibbered 2008. During this time, go along urban migration, and the bringing close together of using modern technology to exhort lumbering and positive influences via the design of our surroundings, was embraced by the majority of society, and soon captured by the imaginations of the architects. As the urban populati ons of the UK continue to grow, a new approach to urban prep was necessary that would be able to meet with the increased demand for lodgment and amenities.The modernist concept of urban design, saw the traditional urban model for using in the towns and cities of Britain relatively low-rise streets, squares and urban blocks eschewed in favour of a rational, usually orthogonal, distribution of slab and point blocks set in park vote down and open post. The idea of this design was that, rather than being enclosed by buildings, urban distance would now flow freely around them Carmona 2003, and that the Le Corbusier view of eliminating the relative disorder of urban areas would be achieved.An important schooling in the design of our towns and cities was the idea of how we lived. In 1934, the idea of communal living was first truly experimented on the middle classes with the design of the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead (below). This idea of a more minimalist, functional way of livi ng was evenhandedly revolutionary to these social classes at the time and lay the way for mistakable residential developments such as the luxurious Highpoint one in 1935. This idea of communal living began to filter down to all social classes in London (such as such Maxwell Frys Kensal House, the first modernist social caparison project in Britain, which opened in 1937), and influenced the development of inner metropolis housing, which continued for another four decades.Lawn Road Flats in 1934 Image taken from http//designmuseum.org/During the post-war years, the devestation that many had endured seemed to re-envigorate the national psyche with an optimism, and to many there was a champion that here seemed to be a growing idea that this was a chance, not only to re-build Britain structurally, but also to take the nation in a new direction Gibbered 2008. Of course, the urban areas of our cities and towns had taken most of the fallout, and this opportunity was seized by modernis t architects who believed that, by changing the design of how we lived in our cities and towns, they could provide ambitious solutions to crystalize extensive social problems. This opportunity, and apparent political will to develop and pass modernist was seen in many of the post-war constructions in Europe, and later through slum headway programmes and subsequent road-building schemes Carmona 2003. In Britain, an extensive re-building project began (by the mid-1950s, 2,500 schools had been built and ten whole new towns were either under construction or in the early on stages of development), and there was a growing need for a town prep policy that could accommodate the needs of these people. This requirement for rapid functionality opened the doorstep for Modernists to begin reshaping the appearance of British towns and cities Gibbered 2008.One of the key ideas that developed at this time, and has shaped many of Britains urban landscapes, was the idea that new towns would be designed and built from scratch. Modernist urban space generally appears in its purest forms when built on Greenfield sites Carmona 2003, and as such this design seemed to be perfect to implement when strategising the development of these new towns a sort of blank canvass for many modernist architects of the time. The idea was to be able to create an urban modern utopia, which would deliver British city dwellers from the dark failures of Victorian housing to a bright new world of clean, functional towns Gibbered 2008, with there dispersed site planning, brick housing, and homey peoples enlarge Hvattum and Hermansen 2004.These New Townsexamples.Depicted the modernist urban landscapes, presenting high-flownised sanitised visions of streets, public spaces, and buildings in which the users are little represented Larkham 1997.The pattern of modernist development in our towns and cities continued to dominate for the next couple of decades and, by the 1960s modernism had choke the ling ua franca of British architecture, whether it be schools, office complexes, homes, or even the new towns as above Gibbered 2008. Although perceived as successful demonstrations of urban utopia, the modernist high-flown in urban development will be forever synonymic with the disastrous implementation of public housing schemes. Modernist urban space had go away from buildings as consituent elements in urban blocks (i.e. concrete terraced masses) defining streets and squares, to buildings as separate free standing pavillions standing in amorphous space Carmona 2003. These planned estates could cope with high densities of population, and would provide the amminities that a community required within segregated blocks. What has since prevailed, and was marked during ..The modern estates instead fostered a sense experience of isolation and anonymity, and reduced any existing sense of community. The product was fatally flawed large blocks simplified the land-use pattern, and the nooks a nd crannies that house economically marginal but socially desirable uses and activities Carmona 2003.The rush to build high and fast system-built blocks prefabricated towers which could be assembled on site as a mean of housing in the cities of the UK, and the idea that Gibbered 2008.During the early part of the twentieth century the transformations in equipment casualty of population, urban expansion, and a rapid development of communication and infrastructure, resulted in a society and a way of life bent on change and innovation, but also in instability, continual movement, and crisis Hvattum and Hermansen 2004. What now seems ill considered is that the visions for ideal cities, in particular those growing out of the modern movement in architecture, were diluted and warped by the messy business of reconstructing actual cities, alter with real people whilst operating within democratic structures Jones 2004. Somehow without any conscious intention on anyones part the ideals of free flowing space and pure architecture evolved into our present urban situation of individual buildings isolated in partking lots and highways Tranick 1986. Indeed, over the last two decades, the public reproof of this style of development in our towns and cities has resulted in an almost universally concord idea that modernism, as a cogent philosophy of building a better society through architecture has failed Gibbered 2008.