Architecture at Work

Architecture at Work Towns and Landscapes of Industrial Heritage ISBN 978-88-55210-25-6

9 788855 210256 ENG

€ 120,00

Architecture at Work Towns and Landscapes of Industrial Heritage Giovanni Luigi Fontana Andrea Gritti

I

52

The Mining Sites of Sulcis Iglesiente Giovanni Luigi Fontana

128

Port Sunlight Giovanni Bellucci

70 72 74 76

12 18

30

42

From work to territory Lucie K. Morisset

Scandinavian Copper Towns Sandro Nannucci Falun Røros The Major Mining Sites of Wallonia Chiara Caravello and Andrea Gritti Le Grand-Hornu Bois-du-Luc The French Royal Manufactures David Celetti and Giovanni Luigi Fontana Le Dijonval Villeneuvette

134

Guise Claudia Zanda

146

Mulhouse Andrea Gritti

152

158 164 166 168

San Leucio Gerardo Cringoli

170

88

New Lanark Marco Voltini

176

94

The Lowell System Towns David Celetti and Giovanni Luigi Fontana Lowell Amoskeag

82

96 98 100

Project capital: architecture, technique and industrial society Andrea Gritti

106

La Constancia Mexicana María Marta Lupano

I

112

Biribiri Adriana Giroletti

Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios Rolando Lloga Fernández

Bournville Andrea Oldani

140

Arc-et-Senans Claudia Zanda

Workers’ villages, company towns and industrial cities: the origins and development of a global phenomenon Giovanni Luigi Fontana

ORIGINS

230

Saltaire Silvia Tardella

66 68

Work as masterwork Michele Coppola Executive Director Art, Culture and Historical Heritage Intesa Sanpaolo

III

122

64

9

EXPANSION

Fuggerei Chiara Caravello

60 62

Towards a history of work communities Gian Maria Gros-Pietro Chairman Intesa Sanpaolo

II

46

58

7

ORIGINS

178 180 182 188 190 192 194 196 198 200

Schio Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Renzo Marchesini Crespi d’Adda Claudia Zanda The Catalan Textile Colonies Pere Vall Casas Colònia Pons Colònia Güell Noisiel Chiara Caravello Garden Cities Francesca Zanotto Hellerau Chemin-Vert Le Creusot Claudia Zanda The Krupp Colonies Francesca Zanotto Altenhof Margarethenhöhe American Company Towns Giovanni Bellucci Roebling Pullman Scotia

118

II EXPANSION

226

III MODERNISATION

306

IV RENEWAL

204 206

346

Repertoire

208

368

Company towns and industrial landscapes in the UNESCO World Heritage List Massimo Preite

Caetanópolis Domingos Giroletti

214

Meat Processing Towns María Marta Lupano Fray Bentos Colón

376

Bibliographical sources

380

Contributions to main entries and repertoire Photo credits

4

202

216 218 220

232 234

MODERNISATION Watchmaking Towns Andrea Gritti La-Chaux-de-Fonds Le Locle

236

Puerto de Sagunto Miguel Ángel Sáez García

242

Siemensstadt Francesca Zanotto

248

Dalmine Carolina Lussana and Stefano Capelli

254 260 262 264 266 268

Valdagno Giorgio Ferrari The Bata Towns Andrea Gritti Zlín Bat’ovany Bataville Batanagar

270

Yekaterinburg David Celetti

276

Russian Steel Towns Irina D. Turghel Magnitogorsk Nizhny Tagil

278 280 282 284 286

IV

RENEWAL

310

Ivrea Patrizia Bonifazio and Paolo Scrivano

316

Metanopoli Andrea Gritti and Claudia Zanda

322

Snezhinsk Irina Turgel, Mikhail Loginov and Nataliya V. Usova

328

The Manhattan Project Towns Andrea Gritti Oak Ridge Los Alamos

330 332 334

Caoyang New Village Edoardo Currà

340

Hitachi Shigeo Nakano, Yusuke Koyama and Junné Kikata

The Ford Motor Company Towns Andrea Gritti Dearborn Fordlândia

288

Hershey Rolando Lloga Fernández

294

Necaxa Luis Antonio Ibáñez González

300

Villa Flandria Mariela Ceva

Nitrate Towns Eugenio Garcés Feliú Humberstone Maria Elena

Tomioka Claudio Zanier

5

I

52

The Mining Sites of Sulcis Iglesiente Giovanni Luigi Fontana

128

Port Sunlight Giovanni Bellucci

70 72 74 76

12 18

30

42

From work to territory Lucie K. Morisset

Scandinavian Copper Towns Sandro Nannucci Falun Røros The Major Mining Sites of Wallonia Chiara Caravello and Andrea Gritti Le Grand-Hornu Bois-du-Luc The French Royal Manufactures David Celetti and Giovanni Luigi Fontana Le Dijonval Villeneuvette

134

Guise Claudia Zanda

146

Mulhouse Andrea Gritti

152

158 164 166 168

San Leucio Gerardo Cringoli

170

88

New Lanark Marco Voltini

176

94

The Lowell System Towns David Celetti and Giovanni Luigi Fontana Lowell Amoskeag

82

96 98 100

Project capital: architecture, technique and industrial society Andrea Gritti

106

La Constancia Mexicana María Marta Lupano

I

112

Biribiri Adriana Giroletti

Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios Rolando Lloga Fernández

Bournville Andrea Oldani

140

Arc-et-Senans Claudia Zanda

Workers’ villages, company towns and industrial cities: the origins and development of a global phenomenon Giovanni Luigi Fontana

ORIGINS

230

Saltaire Silvia Tardella

66 68

Work as masterwork Michele Coppola Executive Director Art, Culture and Historical Heritage Intesa Sanpaolo

III

122

64

9

EXPANSION

Fuggerei Chiara Caravello

60 62

Towards a history of work communities Gian Maria Gros-Pietro Chairman Intesa Sanpaolo

II

46

58

7

ORIGINS

178 180 182 188 190 192 194 196 198 200

Schio Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Renzo Marchesini Crespi d’Adda Claudia Zanda The Catalan Textile Colonies Pere Vall Casas Colònia Pons Colònia Güell Noisiel Chiara Caravello Garden Cities Francesca Zanotto Hellerau Chemin-Vert Le Creusot Claudia Zanda The Krupp Colonies Francesca Zanotto Altenhof Margarethenhöhe American Company Towns Giovanni Bellucci Roebling Pullman Scotia

118

II EXPANSION

226

III MODERNISATION

306

IV RENEWAL

204 206

346

Repertoire

208

368

Company towns and industrial landscapes in the UNESCO World Heritage List Massimo Preite

Caetanópolis Domingos Giroletti

214

Meat Processing Towns María Marta Lupano Fray Bentos Colón

376

Bibliographical sources

380

Contributions to main entries and repertoire Photo credits

4

202

216 218 220

232 234

MODERNISATION Watchmaking Towns Andrea Gritti La-Chaux-de-Fonds Le Locle

236

Puerto de Sagunto Miguel Ángel Sáez García

242

Siemensstadt Francesca Zanotto

248

Dalmine Carolina Lussana and Stefano Capelli

254 260 262 264 266 268

Valdagno Giorgio Ferrari The Bata Towns Andrea Gritti Zlín Bat’ovany Bataville Batanagar

270

Yekaterinburg David Celetti

276

Russian Steel Towns Irina D. Turghel Magnitogorsk Nizhny Tagil

278 280 282 284 286

IV

RENEWAL

310

Ivrea Patrizia Bonifazio and Paolo Scrivano

316

Metanopoli Andrea Gritti and Claudia Zanda

322

Snezhinsk Irina Turgel, Mikhail Loginov and Nataliya V. Usova

328

The Manhattan Project Towns Andrea Gritti Oak Ridge Los Alamos

330 332 334

Caoyang New Village Edoardo Currà

340

Hitachi Shigeo Nakano, Yusuke Koyama and Junné Kikata

The Ford Motor Company Towns Andrea Gritti Dearborn Fordlândia

288

Hershey Rolando Lloga Fernández

294

Necaxa Luis Antonio Ibáñez González

300

Villa Flandria Mariela Ceva

Nitrate Towns Eugenio Garcés Feliú Humberstone Maria Elena

Tomioka Claudio Zanier

5

FOREWORD

From work to territory

Lucie K. Morisset

In America, they are called “company towns”, itself a revealing expression, pointing to the cultural differences that separate and distinguish the various città del lavoro, scattered throughout our planet. The company town, often owned by a business and thus a “closed town” reserved exclusively for its workers, may well be quite different from other analogous models. The French cité ouvrière does not coincide with the Italian villaggio operaio, with the Catalan colònia, the German siedlung, nor indeed with the Chinese 单位宿舍 (dānwèi sùshè). The various idiomatic choices, which may hinge on factory ownership, on the worker, or on the physical organisation of the space or community, are translated into a multitude of different arrangements and visions of the world. The actual landscapes of the città del lavoro are clear evidence of this, showing us how, in contrast to an old received idea, the legacy of industry is neither monotonous, homogeneous, nor remotely universal. In fact, these landscapes allow us to glimpse what lies beneath and beyond the production processes. They stand as testaments to civilisations. In the plural.

First of all, let us try to agree on a heuristic definition that will let us identify the core issue: this volume presents us with models planned on the initiative of companies, aiming to establish, or make more efficient, a production centre, and in particular, enabling it to accommodate workers, white-collar or blue-collar, or both. Speaking in general terms, the subject of the città del lavoro is not new. The transformation of the manufacturing industry and the instability of the mining industry have attracted the attention of some governments, which have sought to assure their conservation, in that they are part of the cultural heritage. As our colleague, Massimo Preite, notes in the afterword to this book, some, though still far too few, are included in the list of UNESCO Cultural World Heritage sites. Too few, indeed, since the second wave of

Workers’ houses in the mining town of Arvida in the Canadian province of Quebec

12

13

FOREWORD

From work to territory

Lucie K. Morisset

In America, they are called “company towns”, itself a revealing expression, pointing to the cultural differences that separate and distinguish the various città del lavoro, scattered throughout our planet. The company town, often owned by a business and thus a “closed town” reserved exclusively for its workers, may well be quite different from other analogous models. The French cité ouvrière does not coincide with the Italian villaggio operaio, with the Catalan colònia, the German siedlung, nor indeed with the Chinese 单位宿舍 (dānwèi sùshè). The various idiomatic choices, which may hinge on factory ownership, on the worker, or on the physical organisation of the space or community, are translated into a multitude of different arrangements and visions of the world. The actual landscapes of the città del lavoro are clear evidence of this, showing us how, in contrast to an old received idea, the legacy of industry is neither monotonous, homogeneous, nor remotely universal. In fact, these landscapes allow us to glimpse what lies beneath and beyond the production processes. They stand as testaments to civilisations. In the plural.

First of all, let us try to agree on a heuristic definition that will let us identify the core issue: this volume presents us with models planned on the initiative of companies, aiming to establish, or make more efficient, a production centre, and in particular, enabling it to accommodate workers, white-collar or blue-collar, or both. Speaking in general terms, the subject of the città del lavoro is not new. The transformation of the manufacturing industry and the instability of the mining industry have attracted the attention of some governments, which have sought to assure their conservation, in that they are part of the cultural heritage. As our colleague, Massimo Preite, notes in the afterword to this book, some, though still far too few, are included in the list of UNESCO Cultural World Heritage sites. Too few, indeed, since the second wave of

Workers’ houses in the mining town of Arvida in the Canadian province of Quebec

12

13

FROM WORK TO TERRITORY

deindustrialisation we are experiencing now is more radical than the previous one, and the meagre acknowledgement these sites receive, disproportionate in relation to their importance in the world, will not be sufficient to fill the serious voids in our knowledge if they disappear.

It should be said that not much time has passed since science began to take the città del lavoro into consideration. Associated with the devastating effects of industrialisation, reduced to the image of the “coketown” of Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford, they have largely been treated as substrata of labour and class relations: at the peak of this historiographical version, in the mid-20th century, the concept of “paternalism” was even invoked to characterise them, reducing their analysis, as sometimes still happens, to the way in which their physical conditions would end up subjecting the workers to the benevolence or abuses of a master. This paradigmatic obsession, reinforced by the structuralist leaning of the social sciences of the time, has crystallised città del lavoro into a collective image of oppression or victimisation, compounded with the resentment and desperation of the rejects of deindustrialisation and amplified by the political strategies of local elites, still little understood. The città del lavoro are the Cinderellas of our modern science.

In short, we have branded them as horrendous and monotonous, even when we reified the value of the factories and machinery. Now this splendid book will redress this shortcoming.

Today we realise that these towns are much more numerous, more widespread and, above all, more differentiated than we thought. Sometimes the company coincides with the State, as is often the case in China, Korea or Russia; sometimes the “town” is little more than a few houses, as in the case of the settlements built for the surveillance of railway lines in immense, almost desert, plains, as in Australia, or a cluster of houses springing up around a wash-house, as can still be seen in Cochin. At times these towns grow along a row of mines, or clusters of houses are formed around individual factories, creating a string of colonies, as in the coalfield in Northern France or in Detroit. Obviously, they multiplied with industrialisation, but there were also precedents – work was not invented at the end of the 18th century!

We might recall the Arc-et-Senans saltworks, or the Nyboder district in Copenhagen,

14

FOREWORD

for example. Indeed, even a monastery might be considered a città del lavoro, if we disregard for a moment what makes a landscape industrial; but this digression makes us lose sight of what these settlements really have in common, setting them at the heart of this still under-explored modernity.

Indeed, one phenomenon defines them all: they are the fruit of a single gesture of creation. The città del lavoro are the villes nouvelles and new towns of modernity, the Sforzindas of that world, and they explore the way in which architecture and landscape can make men better. Because in the very effort of making workers sedentary, we have learnt how a space can become a “place”, charged with significance, and become the promoter of a social project: many città del lavoro , like Røros in Norway and Arvida in Canada, predated postmodernism and postcolonial critical approaches by many decades, investigating and then codifying cultures and ways of living, in order to produce identitary territories, capable of expanding, rather than disappearing, with the passing of time. Therefore, the città del lavoro are not simply artefacts, seen in terms of archaeology or the history of art: their creation is also the result of a dynamic, embodying temporality. The città del lavoro are an “open work”, as Umberto Eco would have said.

It is not surprising, then, that some aspects of such a complex subject still have to be discovered and investigated – which again highlights the value of the work undertaken by our colleagues, Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Andrea Gritti. The breadth of the chronological approach they take could have been risky, given that rhythms vary enormously depending on the continent in question and the degree of engagement of the State in the labour market, to cite but two variables. This risk, however, was averted: carefully avoiding the insidious hurdle of a superficial vision, to which the operational notion of “landscape” can lead, this approach avoids the great national narratives which have punctuated the writing of history and in which, especially after the advent of the second industrial revolution, the phenomenon of the città del lavoro is virtually absent.

Starting with the idea of offering accommodation to workers (and yes, also controlling them better) up to the development of fully-fledged territorial projects (let us not forget that company towns, in America, mark the entry of public authorities into

15

FROM WORK TO TERRITORY

deindustrialisation we are experiencing now is more radical than the previous one, and the meagre acknowledgement these sites receive, disproportionate in relation to their importance in the world, will not be sufficient to fill the serious voids in our knowledge if they disappear.

It should be said that not much time has passed since science began to take the città del lavoro into consideration. Associated with the devastating effects of industrialisation, reduced to the image of the “coketown” of Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford, they have largely been treated as substrata of labour and class relations: at the peak of this historiographical version, in the mid-20th century, the concept of “paternalism” was even invoked to characterise them, reducing their analysis, as sometimes still happens, to the way in which their physical conditions would end up subjecting the workers to the benevolence or abuses of a master. This paradigmatic obsession, reinforced by the structuralist leaning of the social sciences of the time, has crystallised città del lavoro into a collective image of oppression or victimisation, compounded with the resentment and desperation of the rejects of deindustrialisation and amplified by the political strategies of local elites, still little understood. The città del lavoro are the Cinderellas of our modern science.

In short, we have branded them as horrendous and monotonous, even when we reified the value of the factories and machinery. Now this splendid book will redress this shortcoming.

Today we realise that these towns are much more numerous, more widespread and, above all, more differentiated than we thought. Sometimes the company coincides with the State, as is often the case in China, Korea or Russia; sometimes the “town” is little more than a few houses, as in the case of the settlements built for the surveillance of railway lines in immense, almost desert, plains, as in Australia, or a cluster of houses springing up around a wash-house, as can still be seen in Cochin. At times these towns grow along a row of mines, or clusters of houses are formed around individual factories, creating a string of colonies, as in the coalfield in Northern France or in Detroit. Obviously, they multiplied with industrialisation, but there were also precedents – work was not invented at the end of the 18th century!

We might recall the Arc-et-Senans saltworks, or the Nyboder district in Copenhagen,

14

FOREWORD

for example. Indeed, even a monastery might be considered a città del lavoro, if we disregard for a moment what makes a landscape industrial; but this digression makes us lose sight of what these settlements really have in common, setting them at the heart of this still under-explored modernity.

Indeed, one phenomenon defines them all: they are the fruit of a single gesture of creation. The città del lavoro are the villes nouvelles and new towns of modernity, the Sforzindas of that world, and they explore the way in which architecture and landscape can make men better. Because in the very effort of making workers sedentary, we have learnt how a space can become a “place”, charged with significance, and become the promoter of a social project: many città del lavoro , like Røros in Norway and Arvida in Canada, predated postmodernism and postcolonial critical approaches by many decades, investigating and then codifying cultures and ways of living, in order to produce identitary territories, capable of expanding, rather than disappearing, with the passing of time. Therefore, the città del lavoro are not simply artefacts, seen in terms of archaeology or the history of art: their creation is also the result of a dynamic, embodying temporality. The città del lavoro are an “open work”, as Umberto Eco would have said.

It is not surprising, then, that some aspects of such a complex subject still have to be discovered and investigated – which again highlights the value of the work undertaken by our colleagues, Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Andrea Gritti. The breadth of the chronological approach they take could have been risky, given that rhythms vary enormously depending on the continent in question and the degree of engagement of the State in the labour market, to cite but two variables. This risk, however, was averted: carefully avoiding the insidious hurdle of a superficial vision, to which the operational notion of “landscape” can lead, this approach avoids the great national narratives which have punctuated the writing of history and in which, especially after the advent of the second industrial revolution, the phenomenon of the città del lavoro is virtually absent.

Starting with the idea of offering accommodation to workers (and yes, also controlling them better) up to the development of fully-fledged territorial projects (let us not forget that company towns, in America, mark the entry of public authorities into

15

UNITED KINGDOM • Saltaire • Bournville • Port Sunlight • New Lanark × 003–004 × 025

FRANCE • Le Dijonval • Mulhouse • Villeneuvette • Arc-et-Senans • Le Creusot • Chemin-Vert • Noisiel • Guise • Bataville × 005–006 × 026–028 × 096–097

× 109 085 × × 086

× 112 × 111 × 110

GERMANY • Fuggerei • Hellerau • Altenhof • Margarethenhöhe • Siemensstadt × 001 × 019–024 × 055–058 × 091–092 041 × Røros • 074 × 073 × 075 ×

× 102

× 040

• Nizhny Tagil × 071 × 072 • Ekaterinburg Snezhinsk • × 119 • Magnitogorsk

118 ×

Tomioka • Hitachi • 114 × × 115

037 × Caoyang New Village • 052 × × 089

if

Colón • 105 × • Fray Bentos 083 × • Villa Flandria 046 ×

× 120

Indian Ocean

× 116

113 ×

Antarctica

O c n ea

048 ×

043 ×

× 087 117 × Batangar •

ic

• Biribiri Caetanópolis • × 103 × 104 × 079 × 080 × × 014 × 013 044 081 × 047 × × 082

• Main entries × Repertoire

088 ×

038 ×

045 ×

Humberstone • María Elena •

Towns and landscapes of industrial heritage: geographical locations of case studies

P ac

× 032 ITALY • San Leucio × 090 • Los Alamos • Oak Ridge • The Mining Sites of Sulcis Iglesiente × 054 • Schio • Crespi d’Adda SPAIN • Ivrea × 108 • Colònia Pons • Metanopoli • Colònia Güell • Dalmine × 015 • Puerto de Sagunto • Valdagno Hershey • Necaxa • • Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios × 008–010 × 029–031 107 × • La Constancia Mexicana × 106 × 098 × 033–036 016 × × 049 SWITZERLAND × 060–066 × 053 • La Chaux-de-Fonds × 099 • Le Locle

Fordlândia •

× 070

× 002 × 094 × 101 × 095 039 × BELGIUM × 059 011 × × 069 • Le Grand-Hornu Zlín • × 012 • Bois-du-Luc 067 × • Bat’ovany 100 × 068 × × 007

e an c O c i t n a l t A

• Scotia

Dearborn• 018 × 050 ו •Amoskeag • Pullman 084 × 017 × × Lowell 051 • Roebling

SWEDEN • Falun × 042 × 075–078 × 093

UNITED KINGDOM • Saltaire • Bournville • Port Sunlight • New Lanark × 003–004 × 025

FRANCE • Le Dijonval • Mulhouse • Villeneuvette • Arc-et-Senans • Le Creusot • Chemin-Vert • Noisiel • Guise • Bataville × 005–006 × 026–028 × 096–097

× 109 085 × × 086

× 112 × 111 × 110

GERMANY • Fuggerei • Hellerau • Altenhof • Margarethenhöhe • Siemensstadt × 001 × 019–024 × 055–058 × 091–092 041 × Røros • 074 × 073 × 075 ×

× 102

× 040

• Nizhny Tagil × 071 × 072 • Ekaterinburg Snezhinsk • × 119 • Magnitogorsk

118 ×

Tomioka • Hitachi • 114 × × 115

037 × Caoyang New Village • 052 × × 089

if

Colón • 105 × • Fray Bentos 083 × • Villa Flandria 046 ×

× 120

Indian Ocean

× 116

113 ×

Antarctica

O c n ea

048 ×

043 ×

× 087 117 × Batangar •

ic

• Biribiri Caetanópolis • × 103 × 104 × 079 × 080 × × 014 × 013 044 081 × 047 × × 082

• Main entries × Repertoire

088 ×

038 ×

045 ×

Humberstone • María Elena •

Towns and landscapes of industrial heritage: geographical locations of case studies

P ac

× 032 ITALY • San Leucio × 090 • Los Alamos • Oak Ridge • The Mining Sites of Sulcis Iglesiente × 054 • Schio • Crespi d’Adda SPAIN • Ivrea × 108 • Colònia Pons • Metanopoli • Colònia Güell • Dalmine × 015 • Puerto de Sagunto • Valdagno Hershey • Necaxa • • Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios × 008–010 × 029–031 107 × • La Constancia Mexicana × 106 × 098 × 033–036 016 × × 049 SWITZERLAND × 060–066 × 053 • La Chaux-de-Fonds × 099 • Le Locle

Fordlândia •

× 070

× 002 × 094 × 101 × 095 039 × BELGIUM × 059 011 × × 069 • Le Grand-Hornu Zlín • × 012 • Bois-du-Luc 067 × • Bat’ovany 100 × 068 × × 007

e an c O c i t n a l t A

• Scotia

Dearborn• 018 × 050 ו •Amoskeag • Pullman 084 × 017 × × Lowell 051 • Roebling

SWEDEN • Falun × 042 × 075–078 × 093

CHAPTER I

Origins

Workers’ houses, districts and villages, as well as corporate social and welfare schemes, are not the exclusive prerogative of modern industrialisation. Dwellings for miners, weavers, manufacturing workers, settlers and employees of commercial firms had all been built long before. The houses were constructed both by the company owners, who then sold, rented or gave them free of charge to their workers, and by rulers or states, which managed business activities and large enterprises ante litteram. The settlements, at varying distances from the production sites, might be configured as neighbourhoods or suburbs of important towns geared to commercial or manufacturing, or form an integral whole with extraction plants, as was the case with the oldest mining sites. Modern industrial landscapes thus derive from older “workscapes”.

The transition from these forerunners to their later descendants may be analysed by considering four time-sequences which, though not independent of each other, offer precise guidelines for research. The pioneering experiments which characterised the origins of the phenomenon, leading to the creation of the industrial heritage [see pp. 42-117], were followed by the development of more complex and advanced models, scattered throughout the latitudes [see pp. 118-225]. With significant variations in terms of space and time, the original range of services provided to meet the basic needs of workers was gradually replaced by organic operations that could discipline, stabilise and educate the workforce, while providing housing, educational, cultural and welfare facilities, as well as places for recreation and leisure – instruments for avoiding any conflict between capital and labour. This expansion phase, marked by the growth of businesses and industrial hubs in both urban and rural contexts, fostered the emergence of well-structured settlement models – from the workers’ village to the “social city”, from the industrial colony to the company town – destined to become among the

Worker using a divining rod and scenes of mine work. Woodcut by Georgius Agricola, De re metallica, Basel, 1556.

43

CHAPTER I

Origins

Workers’ houses, districts and villages, as well as corporate social and welfare schemes, are not the exclusive prerogative of modern industrialisation. Dwellings for miners, weavers, manufacturing workers, settlers and employees of commercial firms had all been built long before. The houses were constructed both by the company owners, who then sold, rented or gave them free of charge to their workers, and by rulers or states, which managed business activities and large enterprises ante litteram. The settlements, at varying distances from the production sites, might be configured as neighbourhoods or suburbs of important towns geared to commercial or manufacturing, or form an integral whole with extraction plants, as was the case with the oldest mining sites. Modern industrial landscapes thus derive from older “workscapes”.

The transition from these forerunners to their later descendants may be analysed by considering four time-sequences which, though not independent of each other, offer precise guidelines for research. The pioneering experiments which characterised the origins of the phenomenon, leading to the creation of the industrial heritage [see pp. 42-117], were followed by the development of more complex and advanced models, scattered throughout the latitudes [see pp. 118-225]. With significant variations in terms of space and time, the original range of services provided to meet the basic needs of workers was gradually replaced by organic operations that could discipline, stabilise and educate the workforce, while providing housing, educational, cultural and welfare facilities, as well as places for recreation and leisure – instruments for avoiding any conflict between capital and labour. This expansion phase, marked by the growth of businesses and industrial hubs in both urban and rural contexts, fostered the emergence of well-structured settlement models – from the workers’ village to the “social city”, from the industrial colony to the company town – destined to become among the

Worker using a divining rod and scenes of mine work. Woodcut by Georgius Agricola, De re metallica, Basel, 1556.

43

ORIGINS

most significant contributions of corporate culture to processes of territorial transformation at all levels of involvement. In this context, the decision to make substantial investment in housing projects and comprehensive, decent and efficient services should be considered as an early manifestation of the corporate welfare policies that were to characterise the next stage of modernisation [see pp. 226-305].

In the interwar period, it was these very policies, strictly related to companies’ new production requirements, that had to adapt to profound economical, political and social changes, offering much scope for experimentation for architects and urban planners, who were determined to break away from 19th century forms of expression and building techniques, to try out those promoted by the Modern Movement. At that time, the shocks produced by the devastation of war and by persistent attempts to assure growth and profit had already triggered complex and contradictory dynamics, whose effects can still be seen today. After the Second World War, in various parts of the world, settlements based on logics of the exploitation of labour and the environment proved to be particularly enduring and widespread. Fortunately, the creation of dull production and residential sites in vulnerable contexts was countered by the resumption of more careful planning, based on the promotion of types of welfare negotiated between management and labour representatives, State and company, public and private operators, often prompted by the implementation of courageous reconstruction programmes or the introduction of a renewed sense of corporate social responsibility [see pp. 306-345].

If collectively these processes resemble a fibre bundle whose strands of development continuously intersect and overlap, their origin seems to spring from well-defined experiences which, seen from the perspective of economic and architectural history, fulfil the same function as that assigned to incunabula in the emergence of printing. Of course, these exemplary, radical processes underwent a long gestation period, marked by changes that mutually conditioned each other.

In Europe, from the first half of the 16th century, particularly in the northern regions, theories regarding initiatives aimed at helping the families of the poorest and neediest workers were firstly developed and then put into practice. Fugger’s project at Augsburg launched a process that, within the perimeter of urban settlements, would see the evolution of closely-defined “proprietors’ towns” towards more open workers’ districts [see pp. 46-51].

For many centuries, the concentration of workers in autonomous settlements had occurred outside town centres, especially near mining sites, which offered ideal ground for long-term typological experimentation, as in the cases of the Tyrrhenian Sea coal deposits [see pp. 52-57] and the Scandinavian copper-mining sites [see pp. 58-63], or, at a more intense and concentrated level, the Wallonia mining sites, where innovations in social pedagogy, architecture and engineering were applied to industrial logics [see pp. 64-69].

On the other hand, the shifting of relationships between technical knowledge, techniques and territories, which was already being documented at the turn of the 16th/17th centuries, had enshrined the inextricable link between spatial

44

CHAPTER I

and social aspects of production. The concentration of specialist craftsmen in large-scale buildings that sprang up close to, or inside, towns, in line with the strategic interests of the State, or in the country, to exploit the water resources of rivers and the availability of a rural workforce, had generated the typological excellence of the Manufactures Royales [see pp. 70-75].

From the 18th century, a growing number of industrial buildings were established along watercourses or within the urban fabric of small towns, integrating with the traditional residential environments, whose forms they imitated. Taking advantage of the saturation of urban spaces and the arrival of mechanisation, the new factories and old mining sites were converted into special places for the conception and creation of new production sites, equipped with housing and facilities for workers. In open-field experiments, favoured by generous land policies, aspirations towards the project of the “ideal city” were evoked, as in the case of the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans [see pp. 76-81].

The utopian tendency, deriving from Enlightenment thought, is also evident in San Leucio, the production annexe of the Reggia of Caserta, where an almost theatrical staging of the relationship between man, work and industry can be observed [see pp. 82-87].

The allusions to these illustrious precedents and attempts to overcome their contradictions can also be found in emblematic instances of social philanthropy and utopian socialism, of which the Scottish settlement of New Lanark was the most celebrated debut [see pp. 88-93]. The exportation of these models across the Atlantic produced important projects that contributed to the evolution of urbanisation processes in the emerging United States.

The factories, boarding-houses and workers’ districts of Lowell, Lawrence and Amoskeag, Massachusetts, can indeed be considered as incubators of modern townscapes. The alignment along the canals of the large factories and workers’ residences left the task of redesigning the regular grids of the new towns to the other industrial facilities and infrastructures that served them [see pp. 9499]. Driven by lesser ambitions, the first modern textile mills in Latin America reproduced well-consolidated European models, as is the case with the enclosed manufacturing complex of Constancia Mexicana [see pp. 106-111] or the autonomous “family-owned town” of Biribiri [see pp. 112-117]. However, the apparent reliance on external models, typical of the post-colonial setup, was transfigured by the fusion with amazing environmental contexts, which, in the case of Cuban sugar-cane or coffee industries, served as a backdrop for the economic and cultural processes associated with the production of tropical raw materials in the slavery-based plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries [see pp. 100-105].

45

ORIGINS

most significant contributions of corporate culture to processes of territorial transformation at all levels of involvement. In this context, the decision to make substantial investment in housing projects and comprehensive, decent and efficient services should be considered as an early manifestation of the corporate welfare policies that were to characterise the next stage of modernisation [see pp. 226-305].

In the interwar period, it was these very policies, strictly related to companies’ new production requirements, that had to adapt to profound economical, political and social changes, offering much scope for experimentation for architects and urban planners, who were determined to break away from 19th century forms of expression and building techniques, to try out those promoted by the Modern Movement. At that time, the shocks produced by the devastation of war and by persistent attempts to assure growth and profit had already triggered complex and contradictory dynamics, whose effects can still be seen today. After the Second World War, in various parts of the world, settlements based on logics of the exploitation of labour and the environment proved to be particularly enduring and widespread. Fortunately, the creation of dull production and residential sites in vulnerable contexts was countered by the resumption of more careful planning, based on the promotion of types of welfare negotiated between management and labour representatives, State and company, public and private operators, often prompted by the implementation of courageous reconstruction programmes or the introduction of a renewed sense of corporate social responsibility [see pp. 306-345].

If collectively these processes resemble a fibre bundle whose strands of development continuously intersect and overlap, their origin seems to spring from well-defined experiences which, seen from the perspective of economic and architectural history, fulfil the same function as that assigned to incunabula in the emergence of printing. Of course, these exemplary, radical processes underwent a long gestation period, marked by changes that mutually conditioned each other.

In Europe, from the first half of the 16th century, particularly in the northern regions, theories regarding initiatives aimed at helping the families of the poorest and neediest workers were firstly developed and then put into practice. Fugger’s project at Augsburg launched a process that, within the perimeter of urban settlements, would see the evolution of closely-defined “proprietors’ towns” towards more open workers’ districts [see pp. 46-51].

For many centuries, the concentration of workers in autonomous settlements had occurred outside town centres, especially near mining sites, which offered ideal ground for long-term typological experimentation, as in the cases of the Tyrrhenian Sea coal deposits [see pp. 52-57] and the Scandinavian copper-mining sites [see pp. 58-63], or, at a more intense and concentrated level, the Wallonia mining sites, where innovations in social pedagogy, architecture and engineering were applied to industrial logics [see pp. 64-69].

On the other hand, the shifting of relationships between technical knowledge, techniques and territories, which was already being documented at the turn of the 16th/17th centuries, had enshrined the inextricable link between spatial

44

CHAPTER I

and social aspects of production. The concentration of specialist craftsmen in large-scale buildings that sprang up close to, or inside, towns, in line with the strategic interests of the State, or in the country, to exploit the water resources of rivers and the availability of a rural workforce, had generated the typological excellence of the Manufactures Royales [see pp. 70-75].

From the 18th century, a growing number of industrial buildings were established along watercourses or within the urban fabric of small towns, integrating with the traditional residential environments, whose forms they imitated. Taking advantage of the saturation of urban spaces and the arrival of mechanisation, the new factories and old mining sites were converted into special places for the conception and creation of new production sites, equipped with housing and facilities for workers. In open-field experiments, favoured by generous land policies, aspirations towards the project of the “ideal city” were evoked, as in the case of the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans [see pp. 76-81].

The utopian tendency, deriving from Enlightenment thought, is also evident in San Leucio, the production annexe of the Reggia of Caserta, where an almost theatrical staging of the relationship between man, work and industry can be observed [see pp. 82-87].

The allusions to these illustrious precedents and attempts to overcome their contradictions can also be found in emblematic instances of social philanthropy and utopian socialism, of which the Scottish settlement of New Lanark was the most celebrated debut [see pp. 88-93]. The exportation of these models across the Atlantic produced important projects that contributed to the evolution of urbanisation processes in the emerging United States.

The factories, boarding-houses and workers’ districts of Lowell, Lawrence and Amoskeag, Massachusetts, can indeed be considered as incubators of modern townscapes. The alignment along the canals of the large factories and workers’ residences left the task of redesigning the regular grids of the new towns to the other industrial facilities and infrastructures that served them [see pp. 9499]. Driven by lesser ambitions, the first modern textile mills in Latin America reproduced well-consolidated European models, as is the case with the enclosed manufacturing complex of Constancia Mexicana [see pp. 106-111] or the autonomous “family-owned town” of Biribiri [see pp. 112-117]. However, the apparent reliance on external models, typical of the post-colonial setup, was transfigured by the fusion with amazing environmental contexts, which, in the case of Cuban sugar-cane or coffee industries, served as a backdrop for the economic and cultural processes associated with the production of tropical raw materials in the slavery-based plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries [see pp. 100-105].

45

48

49

48

49

EXPANSION

THE CATALAN TEXTILE COLONIES

Colònia Güell

LATITUDE 41° 21’ 44.61" N CONTINENT Europe

LONGITUDE 2° 1’ 41.44" E NATION Spain

AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY Catalonia

MUNICIPALITY Santa Coloma de Cervelló

0

The Colònia Güell is a village of almost 800 inhabitants situated in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, in the comarca of Baix Llobregat, in an area now included in the south-west section of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The colony took its name from the entrepreneur Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, who commissioned its construction, after deciding to relocate the factories he owned in the Sants district of Barcelona to there.

Unlike most of the other industrial colonies, which developed around the factory, Colònia Güell was designed in a studio by the architect Antoni Gaudí, who, starting in 1890, collaborated with some of his most talented associates to design the complex of buildings that integrated the mill and the workers’ housing. Francesc Berenguer was responsible for the design of the cooperative, the school, the cultural centre and the parish house; Joan Rubio for Ca l’Ordal and Ca l’Espinal. Gaudí, who oversaw the masterplan, also worked on the design of a church, of which only the crypt was completed; today its is under the aegis of UNESCO, along with his other works in Barcelona. Colònia Güell, sold to the Bertrand i Serra family in 1945, was shut down in 1973, when the crisis in the textile industry was at its most acute.

100m 500m 1km

168

Side view of Plaça Joan Güell, with the Joaquím Folguera Municipal Library in the background.

169

EXPANSION

THE CATALAN TEXTILE COLONIES

Colònia Güell

LATITUDE 41° 21’ 44.61" N CONTINENT Europe

LONGITUDE 2° 1’ 41.44" E NATION Spain

AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY Catalonia

MUNICIPALITY Santa Coloma de Cervelló

0

The Colònia Güell is a village of almost 800 inhabitants situated in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, in the comarca of Baix Llobregat, in an area now included in the south-west section of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The colony took its name from the entrepreneur Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, who commissioned its construction, after deciding to relocate the factories he owned in the Sants district of Barcelona to there.

Unlike most of the other industrial colonies, which developed around the factory, Colònia Güell was designed in a studio by the architect Antoni Gaudí, who, starting in 1890, collaborated with some of his most talented associates to design the complex of buildings that integrated the mill and the workers’ housing. Francesc Berenguer was responsible for the design of the cooperative, the school, the cultural centre and the parish house; Joan Rubio for Ca l’Ordal and Ca l’Espinal. Gaudí, who oversaw the masterplan, also worked on the design of a church, of which only the crypt was completed; today its is under the aegis of UNESCO, along with his other works in Barcelona. Colònia Güell, sold to the Bertrand i Serra family in 1945, was shut down in 1973, when the crisis in the textile industry was at its most acute.

100m 500m 1km

168

Side view of Plaça Joan Güell, with the Joaquím Folguera Municipal Library in the background.

169

EXPANSION

Noisiel

LATITUDE 48° 51’ 15.70" N

LONGITUDE 2° 37’ 43.02" E

CONTINENT Europe

COUNTRY France

DEPARTMENT Seine-et-Marne

TOWN Noisiel

0

Noisiel is an example of the cité ouvrière, founded near Paris by the heirs of Jean-Antoine-Brutus Menier, a pharmacist turned chocolate magnate. Under his impetus, the Chocolaterie Menier became one of the most famous confectionery manufacturers of all time. Built from 1870 at the wishes of the Meniers, to meet the increasing demand for manpower to be employed in chocolate production, the workers’ town had expanded to 150 residential units by the end of the 19th century. The two-family house, with independent access, orchard and garden was the most popular model among those designed by Jules Saulnier, the architect responsible for the design of the original urban plan of the workers’ town, which contained, besides the factory and the workers’ housing, a school, a library, refectories, shops, a church and a cemetery. After 1959, growing competition prompted continuous changes of ownership up to 1988, when Chocolaterie Menier was taken over by Nestlé, which had operated in France since 1868.

In 1994, after much debate, the Swiss multinational invested over 600 million Swiss Francs (almost 100 million euro at current rates) in the renovation of the production site, where it established its French headquarters.

100m 500m 1km

170

Pavilion-style houses in the workers’ town, between Rues Henri Menier and Jean Jaurès.

One of the streets along the grid of the workers’ town.

In the following pages, the Saulnier Mill (1869-1872) and the current headquarters of Nestlé France.

171

EXPANSION

Noisiel

LATITUDE 48° 51’ 15.70" N

LONGITUDE 2° 37’ 43.02" E

CONTINENT Europe

COUNTRY France

DEPARTMENT Seine-et-Marne

TOWN Noisiel

0

Noisiel is an example of the cité ouvrière, founded near Paris by the heirs of Jean-Antoine-Brutus Menier, a pharmacist turned chocolate magnate. Under his impetus, the Chocolaterie Menier became one of the most famous confectionery manufacturers of all time. Built from 1870 at the wishes of the Meniers, to meet the increasing demand for manpower to be employed in chocolate production, the workers’ town had expanded to 150 residential units by the end of the 19th century. The two-family house, with independent access, orchard and garden was the most popular model among those designed by Jules Saulnier, the architect responsible for the design of the original urban plan of the workers’ town, which contained, besides the factory and the workers’ housing, a school, a library, refectories, shops, a church and a cemetery. After 1959, growing competition prompted continuous changes of ownership up to 1988, when Chocolaterie Menier was taken over by Nestlé, which had operated in France since 1868.

In 1994, after much debate, the Swiss multinational invested over 600 million Swiss Francs (almost 100 million euro at current rates) in the renovation of the production site, where it established its French headquarters.

100m 500m 1km

170

Pavilion-style houses in the workers’ town, between Rues Henri Menier and Jean Jaurès.

One of the streets along the grid of the workers’ town.

In the following pages, the Saulnier Mill (1869-1872) and the current headquarters of Nestlé France.

171

172

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Architecture at Work Towns and Landscapes of Industrial Heritage ISBN 978-88-55210-25-6

9 788855 210256 ENG

€ 120,00

Architecture at Work Towns and Landscapes of Industrial Heritage Giovanni Luigi Fontana Andrea Gritti