Cohousing-L Mailing List: Don't like architectural discussion? Don't read this.

[J . Massengale (J.Massengale]

I got an *offline* comment that I should have been more respectful of
Russell's musings. Here's a brief comment on why this is a bit of a sore
subject, with people like me, and probably with people like Harry Pasternak.

Architects are taught that the world is waiting for us to invent a new way
for it to live. Like Le Corbusier, for example, who made a plan for tearing
down all of Paris around the Louvre and the Palais Royal and replacing it
with concrete towers (all designed by him, of course) in parks. The
traditional Parisian street, star of stage, screen and song, was banished.

Or Frank Lloyd Wright, who wanted to demolish all American towns and cities,
as well as all forms of local government, and replace it with his plan for
Broadacre City. In that plan, Wright divided the entire country into 1 acre
plots, which was the minimum lot size everyone would get. The country was
also overlaid with large circles, which defined the area of the new
governments.

All buildings were to be one and two story, with the exception of the
government tower at the center of each circle. Each tower would be tall
enough so that the Architect-Governor, sitting in his office at the top of
the tower, would be able to survey his entire district.

Corbusier's Tower-in-the-Park model was the basis for what Jane Jacobs called
the Tower-in-the-Parking-Lot welfare housing that we built during our Urban
Renewal Programs. Urban Renewal, run by architects, usually meant tearing
down our old cities.

There are (as Harry likes to tell us, although I think his list is
incomplete) simple rules which time has shown to be the way to make places
which physically support public and community life. They have little to do
with style, but they are usually the opposite of what architects have been
talking about for the past 50 years.

John Massengale