Industrialized Urbanism

Prefabricated Planning

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If you want a prime example of prefab housing well, here it is. Back in 1943, the federal housing act (FHA), a result of the New Deal and the newly introduced G.I. Bill, played an important role in the postwar suburban boom. The FHA and VA granted millions of Americans the ability to buy suburban homes on credit. These agencies insured private bank mortgages to both home builders and buyers. These federal housing policies contributed not only to middle-class prosperity, but also to the formation of segregated suburbs. Rules and regulations set forth by the agencies only insured home loans to communities they deemed "credit-worthy". They were barred from investing in poor communities. The FHA published an annual survey of credit worthiness to enforce this regulation and as a result of this survey, neighborhoods with minority or mixed populations were given the highest risk ratings. A perfect example of this is Pruitt Igoe. Because of this newly implemented system, the rise of Levitt Town houses started up in full force.

Abraham Levitt and his two sons, William and Alfred, were the first to apply and use industrial production methods to home building. By constructing simple, four bedroom homes, they were able to build a house per day. After the war, they built a total of 140,000 homes-40,000 of which were on a potato farm in Hempstead, Long Island, making it the largest private housing development in the United States. These homes became the model of postwar suburban housing. They were simple homes, segregated from business and industrial districts, that were mass produced and sold on credit.

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In America today, many neighborhoods have shifted from having different, diverse housing structures, to cookie-cutter housing developments.  Cookie-cutter neighborhoods first appeared in America during the heavy industrial periods of the 1850’s (the industrial revolution) when there was a shortage of housing for the influx of new workers.  These cookie-cutter neighborhoods appeared once again in the early parts of the 1900’s when WWI and WWII took place since there was again, a shortage of housing due to the influx of factory workers. 

In these cookie-cutter neighborhoods, all of the houses are built on the same model, with very few changes, if any, between houses.  With prefabricated parts, these houses can be assembled on site, in very little time, and with little complication.  That type of building allows the architects to maximize the output of properties, in essence, industrializing architecture itself.  Following the rational/hardline path of functionality, cookie-cutter neighborhoods are not designed to be that aesthetically appealing (although the ones today due have some aesthetic aspects and look better than the earlier models), but rather to house vast quantities of people in a confined area.

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These are two of the pictures I took of Lafayette Park in Detroit. This development is very interesting because it's been called the only successful urban renewal project in America. That being said, it's still urban renewal. By definition, many residents were displaced and old homes destroyed in favor of modern, pre-fabricated housing for the upper middle class in a time of disastrous urban planning focused on automobile-heavy ideas of how the world would progress. It is isolated, it is exclusive (if not by race, by economic status) and it has not "renewed" Detroit in the slightest. Still, it is pretty beautiful, and the architecture must be admired for being a fantastic showcase of Mies' modernism.

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I have included a panorama and the plan of the Hansaviertel in West Berlin. This housing project was meant to be not only in tune with the idealized themes of CIAM, but also as a Western response to the slab housing common in the Soviet bloc. There are seven or eight towers rising up out of Berlin's Tiergarten park, a few mid-rise buildings, and a small model suburb that looks like it could be straight out of America. All the buildings were designed by prominent architects of the time for a huge modern housing exhibition, although Le Corbusier's planned building was actually built in Marseilles because it was deemed inappropriate for the sight for whatever reason. The people who live here are said to love it, and there are long waiting lists to get apartments in the area, which is an interesting juxtaposition to the "utopia" housing in America, which are now notoriously known as "the projects." To that extent, the Hansaviertel could be described as perhaps the only successful iteration of utopic, functionalist modern living that Corb and CIAM envisioned would be limitlessly successful. 

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During the post-war period, there was a great need for social housing. Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis is a great example of social housing during this time. It also exemplifies how pre-fabrication can be successful on paper, but not always successful in practice. At first, Pruitt Igoe part of the rebirth of St. Louis, but this social housing quickly became like all of the projects that had fallen apart. This video was very interesting because it really showed how sometimes what architects think is a great idea and will fix a problem may not be the right solution. It also pointed out several ideas as to why this didn't work such as, the residents, the government, and the architect. Many times people may look to the building or only to the people utilizing the building for its destruction, but in reality many things are working together against its successfulness.

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Cherry Hill Village

Cherry Hill Village is a community within Canton, MI, just off of Michigan Ave. Original buildings in the development date back to the late 1800's, but the rest of Cherry Hill was built within the last decade. The village is modeled after a 1930's American town, with a concentrated downtown area that has mixed use developments and complete streets. Within walking distance from downtown are neighborhoods with houses of varying sizes and styles. The village is created to be a self-sustaining town, though in reality most residents probably work in Canton and surrounding areas. 

Cherry Hill Village is a very interesting experiment as far as creating a town goes, but like any utopian design it has drawbacks. Like many subdivisions in Michigan, there are still many empty houses. Additionally, if it was to be completely functional it would have some kind of transportation system that connects it to surrounding communities. As it currently stands, Cherry Hill Village is basically another beige box subdivision with commercial development.

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Blu Homes Inc is building modern, durable, eco-friendly prefabricated homes around the country and changing the way prefab is interpreted. Unlike traditional views of prefab as impersonal, cookie-cutter structures, Blu lets home owners choose where walls will go, how many and what kind of rooms the house will have, etc. Yet, they do have seven models for the skeleton of the house which are put together in their factory and then magically unfold onto the foundation on site over the course of a day! These houses have the benefits of prefab (only take a couple months to build instead of a year) but you would never know that they were prefab just by looking at them.

There are dozens more videos online of Blu homes being unfolded, and I'd highly encourage watching them - it's really incredible to see the transformation. It's also worth noting that though it's Boston based and seems to mainly build in California, Blu's third office is right here in Ann Arbor!

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My Mixed Feelings about Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry is a world-renowned contemporary architect, best known for works such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His style is primarily deconstructivist, a break from modernism in that in deconstructivism, form does not follow function. I think Gehry's works are pretty cool looking. But that's where my appreciation for his style ends. They are aesthetically pleasing, but they are not always functional pieces of art. In my mind, architecture is the perfect marriage of art and engineering, and Gehry's pieces are lacking a kind of engineering functionality. In fact, in 2007, MIT sued Gehry million because the $300 million Stata Center he designed for them was starting to leak, crack, and mold was even sprouting up in places.

This is not to say that I dislike Frank Gehry. To me he is akin to fashion designers whose runway debuts look like martian costumes. It's not at all practical, nor will the public ever buy it, but it serves a radical purpose in its field of design. It pushes boundaries.

The picture above is from an episode of the Simpsons in which Marge writes a letter to Gehry, asking him to build an opera house in Springfield. Gehry finds the request hilarious, crumples up the letter, and throws it on the ground. Suddenly he finds inspiration in the crumpled piece of paper and creates a design for the opera house based on its shape- an amusing interpretation of Frank Gehry as a "paper architect."

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I'm proud to say I've visited this landmark; the picture above is actually one I took. The Sydney Opera House is an Australian icon, and for some, the first thing they think about when Australia comes to mind. We skipped over talking about it in one of our discussions, so I thought I'd be great to mention in the blog. Its modern expressionist design is a result of a design competition that began in 1955. Jorn Utzon's design won the contest, but was essentially forced to resign from his lead position during construction. He kept wanting to tweak and perfect his project as it went along the various stages of being built. The end result is an Australian masterpiece. The interlocking shells are one of the more interesting roof designs on any building. I would love to go back to Sydney to see this building and attend a concert there. It really was that cool, and I was probably a little too young to understand the design of the building (other than thinking "That's cool!"). In fact, that's one thing about this class in general that I'll certainly take away after the semester ends. A lot of these buildings that we've studied are still able to be visited, and when I do see them in person, I'll have a much greater appreciation for their designs.

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Charles Jenks' idea of post modern architecture as a hybridization of modern and traditional/cultural values reminded me of Larcomar, an outdoor shopping mall in Lima, Peru. Larcomar is located on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean, and was designed to marry the city and the sea, the idea being that visitors can see the ocean from almost any location within the shopping center. The development's design was also intended to resemble a traditional Latin American street market, but the wares sold in Larcomar are a far cry from the colorful textiles and trinkets sold in markets in cities like Cuzco. 

The shopping center is first and foremost a tourist destination, containing everything from boutiques and fancy bars to a Chili's (I kid you not). I visited Larcomar at the end of my trip to Peru, and coming from the Peruvian Andes straight to a place like Larcomar was rather shocking. To me, the place seemed so inorganic, marketing to a demographic outlandishly different from the Peruvians with whom I had spent my last two weeks. But in all reality, Lima, the capital of Peru, is much more modernized (read: westernized) than the rest of the country. Even Cuzco, the country's second largest city, is considered the cultural capital and serves a very different purpose as a city. Larcomar represents what the city of Lima aspires to be; modern, attractive, while still reflecting traditional Peruvian culture.

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Many homes today are being built using prefabrication, and these homes are called "Modular Homes".  Modular homes are different from the traditional construction of homes on-site because modular homes are residences that are constructed entirely in factories and then transported to their sites on flatbed trucks.  The complete construction process for modular homes normally takes between 8-14 weeks depending on the size of the home.  Due to this quick construction period, these homes tend to a little more basic and less complex than homes built on-site.  However, an interesting fact about modular homes is that they tend to be sturdier than on-site constructed homes.  A study by FEMA found that modular homes withstood the wind and water from Hurricane Andrew better than most other homes in the area. 

From a personal level, I just find modular homes to have less character and originality than homes constructed on on-site.  Maybe I am a traditional guy at heart, but I just don like the look of them.  They just seem to "plastic-y" and cheap for my taste.

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This is a picture I took of the Montrèal Biosphere while I was on vacation over the summer.  After doing some more research into the Architect Buckminster Fuller, who we've been learning a lot about in class, I found out that he was actually the designer of this amazing sphere. The Biosphere-enviromental museum was built in 1967 for the 67 world's fair and originally had a real building enclosed around it. Within the dome are three building structures that scale upwards.

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Felipe Campolina

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Here is a link I found to a page about a new portable housing movement started by Architect/Designer Felipe Campolina. The movement was inspired by an even older 1950's Japanese prefabrication movement. The styling carries a very futuristic utopian sense which is capitalized upon through the projects environmentally sound and green features including a green roof and gutters system made to recycle water. Also included on the page are pictures of the various ways you can rebuild and  shuttle your futuristic mobile home.

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Heidelberg Project

Heidelberg Project is a project to revive the city Detroit.

Tyree Guyton, an artist, turned the street into a massive art installation, turning vacant lots and abandoned homes into gigantic sculptures. He integrates the street, sidewalks, and trees, using the help of neighborhood families and volunteers. His mission is to inspire people to use artistic expression to improve the social and economic health of their communities.

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