THE FALL OF AN UTOPIA & REAPPROPRIATION

Modernist image went through hard time at the end of the XXth century and the fall of the movement will be presented in this chapter through the shift in the modernist meaning. Social and economic issues leaded to the comparison of modernism with penitential architecture. This chapter will also find how cities try today to re-appropriate those architectures through a outdated utopia.

The modernist imaginary is typically representative of the thoughts of the XXth century and a powerful manifest of urban development that totally changed our cities forever. But this utopia, that would have change the society and the world, seems to have collapsed after few decades. Already in 1959, Aldo Van Eyck (19181999) said that “this minimum form of housing is a ‘new kind of shack’ and that ‘die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum’ has become the manual for the housing administrator or entrepreneur with the sole interest in output” 17 However, the CIAM ideas kept on developing and the cities still were modernised through big urban projects.

Considered as the end of ‘high modernism’, the Pruitt-Igoe estate demolition is the starting point of a large reconsideration of the modernist vision. Pruitt-Igoe was a high-rise estate in St Louis, Missouri, build between 1954 and 1956 by the architect Minoru Yamasaki (19121986). Within a decade, the ensemble already suffered from poverty, and slowly ran down. In 1972, less than twenty years after its completion, the estate was torn down. This example became the most reputed example of the modernist decline.18 But architecture is not the only factor leading to the fall of modernism. In many estates, several social and technical phenomena deeply modified the purist modernist vision. Some recurrent problems such as the acoustic which makes the estate particularly unquiet, the accessibility to some dwellings were sometimes difficult in everyday life, or technical problems with the lifts or waste disposals; made those residence less attractive. Another issue is the peripheral location of the ensembles out of the city centre where the majority of the estate inhabitants had to go everyday for their profession.

Pruitt-Igoe destruction became an anthem for the modernists detractors, like the journalist Jane Jacobs or even Katherine G. Bristol (dates unknown), who assumed, in 1991 that the estate turned to be an ‘anti-utopian byproduct’. According to her, it was high necessity to demolish the building, following to several social issues (crime, vandalism). The inhabitants compared their dwellings as dormitories or as a ‘prison-like habitat’, a comparison that would become a real coup. Instead of contending that the tenants had to adapt themselves to the modernist utopia in order to suit as a ‘decent middle class hardworking citizen’ as what the modernist architects aimed for; she concentrated on the relationship between the inhabitants and their flat and the catastrophic reactions between them. But the evident symbolic resemblance to a penitential architecture also found its beginnings to the clear physical similarities with a prison trough the fences, metal bars before doors and windows, or even guards. In this context, a social imbalance grew in the modernist estates and a great serious appeared leading to an insecurity and somehow to the obsolescence of the modernist aspirations. The families that moved to the city in the hope to find a better future in the neo-capitalist era found themselves in a crisis situation when they couldn’t afford leaving the estates.

“Unfortunately the estates were being constructed in a time of increasing prosperity and the birth and rise of the welfare state. The budget of the households grew and consequently so did their choosiness with regard to their housing choices. Numerous high-rise social housing estates lost their popularity and were caught up in a downward spiral of marginalisation and decay. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that these estates are currently being restructured or even demolished.”19

With the decay of the modernist housing concept, it is the whole the architectural and urban modernist movement that collapsed. The image of the ‘good city’ and its benefice on the society started to become outdated and decadent. The modernist vision settled to answer the increasing need of dwellings but above all to update the image and identity of the cities that became finally the expression of a breathless bureaucratic society. The big scale projects that totally redefined the face of the modern cities became examples of a miss understanding between history, heritage, society and the needs of a city and its dwellers.

This substantial shift towards the modernist image and the urban development revealed another incomprehension. Indeed, with the negative meaning that modernism reached, society started to look backwards and analyse the impacts of the last fifty years on the urban fabric and on the landscape of the city. As modernism started to be inappropriate for the image of the city and gained a poor connotation, people slowly began to regret the old town. Some big scale modernist projects sometimes required the demolition of several buildings, sometimes even a whole neighbourhood, that was not considered to be qualitative at the beginning of the XXth century. Even if, at the end of the Second World War the preservation and restoration of the built heritage became a preoccupation, the XIXth century architecture and urbanism were not seen as an important inheritance to protect. As a matter of fact, the XIXth town was regarded as weak and not profitable for the development of the city. It seemed at the rise of modernism a potential field to develop a new urbanity. But, at the fall of the modernist magnitude, a nostalgia took over the people. Looking backwards to the typic city of the XIXth century with its traditional urban fabric and find how destructive modernism could have been, participated and reinforce the negative connotation thrown on the concrete city.

“There is no doubt that a new architecture would improve towns and the living situation of many, however to assume that it could improve the world as a whole is completely nonsensical. What about problems of economy and political debate? Perhaps the reason the modernist utopia is so often cited as a failure is because of its unrealistic ambitions. There is no doubt that modernism, to an extent, solved some design problems by keeping abreast of technology.”20

Modernism attained a certain level of disgrace that it was seen as the image of an outdated mighty power not corresponding to the urban aspirations of the arriving XXIst century. It even gained such a meaning that the modernists objects are said to be ugly by the majority sometimes even without any consideration. This sentiment towards the productions of last century is often translated into demolitions or desertion leading to abandoned areas as the witness of a real decadence of the modernist utopia.

These last 15 years, a timid shift about modernism occurred in the mind of people. Following the disinterest for the architectural and urbanist style, a questioning appears in the society to look at those buildings from another point of view, clearly shown through initiative such as DOCOMOMO21, or the presentation of modernism as a world heritage by the UNESCO22. The brutalistic elements that the modernist buildings characterise seems to gently gain the interest of the people. In reaction to the partly or entirely demolitions of several estates or public buildings, architects find through this architecture a sort of answer to the actual needs of the city. Indeed, a sort of disappointment towards the contemporary architecture highlights thus the qualities of the modernist approach. But also, as a trend, the rise of the reuse culture allows us to bring a second chance to those buildings. It is through careful observation, that we find in the modernist architecture a certain archetype in the functional disposals of the actual codes of architecture. Through the prism of a past utopia, the city tends to find in the refurbishment or reuse of the modernist ensembles a new ideology.

“I believe that the modern utopia begins today, in point of fact. It begins with the idea of recycling spaces, which allows of strategies of union, hybridisation and conversion; strategies that generate complexities one was unable to

The modernist structures have a strong potential to house new function following the high adaptability character of these. But the main challenge is now to go hand in hand with the actual codes of the city. The glass and concrete ensemble provided by the modernist period broke with the rest of the city due to the strict mono functional aspect of the place. No clear solution has been found to requalifiy those areas but one of the tracks is to mix the functions in order to generate a new identity to the place. The ongoing project by the office 51N4E in the affaire district in north of Brussels is redefining the modernist utopia. The ‘ZIN No(o)rd’ project aims to reuse the WTC I and II towers built in 1983 and transform the mono-functionality into a hybrid vertical neighbourhood with some offices, a hotel, some apartments, shops and sport areas. An added volume allows to link the two towers with housing, but the ensemble of the project lies in the complex mixed allocation of the program in the building. The hope is to operate a significant shift on the negative meaning of the modernist bureaucratic building to fit to the actual society codes.24

From a general view and following the rise of re-appropriation projects of modernist heritage in Europe, the modernist utopia seems finally to find a new meaning in the city and a place in everyone consciousness as a field to redesign the city but also to accept the vision of the modernist architects. It becomes not only the image of a past glory for capitalism but also the renew of the city on a historical basis.