Futures

Futures
Liz Cullen

Looking back at the Pruitt-Igoe housing estate in St.Louis, we are struck by how giant the problem of housing in crowding areas is. The houses in St. Louis were built out of necessity; former slums, the eleven tower blocks were built to solve the problem of homelessness. Designed to incorporate, 'space, design and greenery', these ground-breaking new homes decayed into a horror zone in little over twenty years, and were destroyed by clashes of culture, race and circumstance. This chain of events happens surprisingly often.

In the UK 'regeneration' is occurring everywhere from Glasgow to London. Birmingham's Bullring is a prized example. The Bullring has changed from a 1960's iron/concrete structure, well known for being one of the most dangerous areas of the city, into the largest shopping centre in Europe. The entire city centre was cut out and regenerated and now, the crime rate in Birmingham has actually fallen.

Therefore, questions about the connection between crime and environment are not unfounded. So in theory, build a haven, and people will be happier. But what is a Haven? Le Corbourier's idea of a haven was 'Radiant City', 1930-1935. Radiant city consisted of a complex of streets, shops and living space suspended above green fields. So ideally, we could have an urban culture and yet still live, in some sense, rurally. Le Corbourier was able to envision perfect living conditions as he did not have the means to envision all the flaws and imperfections that his design would encounter. Also by looking back, we can see the errors of the St. Louis project, however at the time, it seemed the perfect solution to a very difficult problem.

Le Courbourir’s idea of a utopia is in itself, flawed. The definition of utopia is ’nowhere’, so in designing a utopia you design your creation in a kind of limbo, existing nowhere except in a projection of a perfect world. Pruitt-Igoe designed for a perfect world and as a result was met with, ‘corruption, rioting and disaster’.

This vicious cycle of disposable housing is a growing problem. A lot of the responsibility lies with the designers. Instead of designing for a perfect world it is more realistic to be thoughtful about what it could descend into, and the problems it could encounter. By taking into account the flaws of our environment we can begin to design for a more realistic world. Michel Serres’ ‘Disequilibrium’ addresses this idea promoting the concept of the worlds flaws being a starting point for creativity and, instead of pretending the do not exist, we should embrace them and design for them.