Modernism and Urban Living
June 20, 2006 9:50 AM
Two exhibitions in London on Modernism are generating some debate. I visited one of these, 'Modernism: Designing a New World' at the V&A, on Saturday. The period covered 1914 - 1939, so wasn't by any means a complete review of what we call 'modernism', and the focus was on architecture and design.
So one aspect that wasn't really looked at, but which has great significance for the 21st Century, is that of planning our cities. In 1935, the modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright constructed a model of a new urban scheme of living called 'Broadacre City'.
Designboom.com says:
"Wright was one of the first to perceive that the advent of the automobile had rendered obsolete the dense, insalubrious human concentration characteristic of the nineteenth-century city. He proposed a decentralized plan in which the necessary functions and services of modern life would be distributed over the landscape interspersed with farms and wooded areas."
Networks of roads thus became a central feature of city layout, as seen in this country in Milton Keynes.
As the years passed, city planners all over the world started building on the basis of road layouts and cities zoned into residential, commercial and industrial areas. The concept of the 'neighbourhood' diminished in importance. The car gives a sense of freedom to escape from socially deprived areas that occupy areas of modern cities. But such cities are very inflexible to changing needs.
New Scientist this week looks into the problems that result from this approach to city planning, and looks into alternative approaches being pursued, to improve social and environmental conditions of our cities in the 21st century.
Improving fuel technology isn't enough to address environmental factors, as cars still need massive networks of streets, roads and parking areas. Denser cities minimise driving around the city, but go too dense and you get new problems; the materials used in denser cities absorb more heat energy from the sun and heat up the air temperature at night leading to more widespread use of energy hungry air conditioning units.
New Scientist concludes that city planners can learn from organically grown shanty towns (high-density / low rise building, pedestrianisation, more efficient use of materials, flexibility of land use), and put people and the ecology first.
Links: New Scientist article http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025561.600
V&A Modernism mini-site: http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1331_modernism/
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