Public
housing to me has always been something a bit distant and unknown. Growing up in a small town, public
housing to me are small-scale government projects that are extremely small,
brick duplex’s. Nothing in
comparison to the large oversized muti-family housing units presented by Le
Corbusier with his Unité d’habitation or Mis van der Rohe’s Weissenhof
Siedlung. But, these offer and
interesting alternative, especially for the large scale of the European urban
fabric, to the typical sprawl associated with urban growth.
To
start with, I find it extremely interesting and thought provoking was the
comparison of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation to an ocean liner. Even in its intention design of this
relationship, it serves as a dual meaning. On the one hand, it represents the
design of the time and the 5 points of architecture as defined by
Corbusier. On the other, it
represents the essential function of one of those large ocean liners of that
time. It was meant to efficiently
compact that large amount of people into one space and carry them safely to a
new life. To me, I find the
concurrence with Corbusier’s function too striking to ignore. Whether it was intentional by him or
not, it works very well, and it adds a whole new deeper layer of complexity. The function of this social housing was
to provide this new level of living for these people that may not have been
able to afford something of such quality before, and “carry” them to a new
place in their lives, the same with Jean Nouvel’s social housing. This is an interesting angle to look at
this to me, and it also parallel’s the mantra of the time “form follow
function.” In this case, I believe
that statement circles back on itself several times and thus perpetuates itself
in how the shape, function and use of the space is carried out.
As
far as the modern way of looking at this with BIG architects, the new use of
computer modeling has eased the conveyance of these ideas, but has not really
changed the whole idea, just provided a new way of looking at it. Their approach seemed to just make
sense. Their conveyance was spot
on and their analysis of the space, site, program and every other feature was
just amazing. Their method of layering each piece seemed so radical, but if you
look back at Corbusier’s ideals of his perfect city, you find the same things
and realize that it is not a new idea, just a new way of looking at it. Thus, the idea of architecture
perpetuating itself comes back into perspective and informs us a little bit on
where the future of architecture might go next. One thing is for sure though, there will always be a “new”
way of building a large social housing project, but the same idea exists. The cheapest idea, for the greatest
amount of people, which uses the space and materials in the most efficient way
as possible: this is the genesis of architecture: adapt, overcome, and solve
the next puzzle.
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