6 ms·

June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller Tried to Redesign Harlem

38 points by mitchbob 6y ago

Animats 6y ago
That was a terrible idea. Apartment buildings with 45,000 people each? Most with no exterior windows?
- LegitShady 6y ago
  the worst part of this is that at the time Pruitt-Igoe already was riddled with social issues, vandalism, crime, everyone who could afford leave doing so, etc.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Someone went to Kowloon walled city and said "Cool".
  - Animats 6y ago
    There are parts of Shenzhen that look like that.[1] But with better structural soundness. Here's a ground level view.[2] (That's a full sphere video; you can change the view direction, including looking straight up.) This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable. Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/@22.54024647,114.06560828,20.66510478a,1105.83450886d,35y,75.7406347h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/search/@22.54024647,114.0656082... [2] https://youtu.be/e-2n_HksLh0?t=220 https://youtu.be/e-2n_HksLh0?t=220
    - tomcam 6y ago
      [2] is an important historical document. Highly recommended.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Cool! It's nice to see there is something similar to to Kowloon Walled city still in existence. Last year we visited the Anata no Warehouse arcade in Kawasski, which had parts modeled after it. Unfortunatelly it closed at the end of November 2019: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anata-no-warehouse https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anata-no-warehouse
    - nemetroid 6y ago
      > This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable. > Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves. This is like suggesting that people who value having their own backyard are being inconsistent by not moving into the remote countryside. There's nothing inconsistent in promoting a certain set of values within desiring those values taken to the extreme.
- kingkawn 6y ago
  From the article; “ These towers would contain new dwelling space—light-filled apartments of twelve-hundred square feet, each equipped with a balcony and parking spot” Where does your assessment come from?
  - Animats 6y ago
    From the geometry. Those things have the diameter of a city block. That's the problem with those old giant arcology designs. Too much volume for the amount of outside wall. They look great in drawings. Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      > Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential. Most buildings in Budapest are set up this way and I don't see how it fails. Technically they are hallways, not balconies, but they function the same way.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        I think a lot of it has to do with the size of the court yard and the height of the building. Four stories with a court yard that's as long and wide as the buildings are high? That can work. 50 stories with a yard that's 50m across? The lower levels will live in perpetual twilight.
        keiferski 6y ago
        Brainstorming here: what about light tunnels every ±5 floors that use mirrors to funnel light from outside the building into the courtyard? In theory, this would work...I think.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        There are modern municipal housing buildings in Vienna that do this - mirrors for community space ilimunation during the day. :)
burlesona 6y ago
Here's an alternate source that's much better and has better (but not enough) images: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16868494/harlem-history-buckminster-fuller-development-rezoning https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16868494/harlem-history-buck... I don't really understand why this is the case, but a large percentage of stories about architecture, urban design, urban planning, development, etc. are written with thousands of words and no maps, diagrams, or pictures. The fuzzy black and white scribble on this one doesn't count. Why do writers bother penning these? Architecture and it's assorted offshoots are visual media, and spending a bunch of words to describe it is about as useful as writing an essay to say what the Mona Lisa looks like.
- andi999 6y ago
  Maybe copyright issues? (Same reason you do not see many night pictures of the Eiffel tower)
- nkoren 6y ago
  This really is a much better source -- thank you!
- prawn 6y ago
  You can write an article about something from afar, but can't photograph it. Leaves you trying to find Creative Commons images or licensing something. Writer isn't paid enough to do that, I'm guessing.
keiferski 6y ago
It's interesting how one generation's vision of utopia often becomes the dystopia of the following generation. In his time, Le Corbusier was heralded as the genius of modern architecture. Today, his buildings seem vaguely dystopian (to me, at least) and remind me of the recent 2012 Dredd movie. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dredd+movie+building&t=osx&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dredd+movie+building&t=osx&iar=ima... Fuller probably envisioned the shape of his buildings as futuristic and naturalistic, but to me, they look like nuclear power plants. Icons (as in a simplified, recognizable image) end up playing an unexpected role. From the countries I've visited, I'd say Berlin (especially Prenzlauerberg) and Tokyo had the most pleasant version of urban design. With Berlin, most apartments have balconies, streets are wide enough to let shops expand onto the sidewalks, and public transit works extremely well. Tokyo mixes commerce with residential in a way that American cities get completely wrong. There is also a city in Poland, Łódź, which also has a geometrically appealing layout: it's essentially a single long street with two concentrations at either end. The city itself is still recovering from the 90s and is fairly run-down outside of the center, but the conceptual simplicity has an appeal that's hard to describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street
- rmason 6y ago
  My first take was that they did look like nuclear power plant silos. But then I examined closer and the idea started to appeal to me more. I think these might work in Detroit. The city has lots of vacant land. These towers are wider at the bottom. Why not have shops and offices on the lower floors? The upper floors would offer great views of the Detroit river into Windsor or out to the suburbs. By staggering the rows everyone would have a great view. You'd be within walking distance of shops in the other towers, it would be village-like with a lot of green space. In effect you'd have a set of towers in the middle of a park.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    You should look up how the idea of “towers in a park” actually played out when implemented. It’s not a new concept.
throwaway316943 6y ago
Corbu got a few things right but he was off the mark when he said a house was a machine for living. A house cannot provides all the necessities for living, it must be integrated into a community. Monolithic buildings like this are an extension of his incorrect idea, they are the monoculture of urban design much like the suburb. We should take the good idea of simple and easy to manufacture buildings and use them to create human scale spaces that fulfill our needs as a community.
aaron695 6y ago
If you look at page 341 these would be solarpunk if drawn today. They are thin and constructed over existing buildings. But with ramps so you can drive a car up. https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2397578/dc67d37c83d910d2f027d855f42805a8.pdf?1530916557 https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2397578/dc67d37c8...

38 points by mitchbob 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

That was a terrible idea. Apartment buildings with 45,000 people each? Most with no exterior windows?

LegitShady 6y ago
the worst part of this is that at the time Pruitt-Igoe already was riddled with social issues, vandalism, crime, everyone who could afford leave doing so, etc.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oh_sigh 6y ago
Someone went to Kowloon walled city and said "Cool".
- Animats 6y ago
  There are parts of Shenzhen that look like that.[1] But with better structural soundness. Here's a ground level view.[2] (That's a full sphere video; you can change the view direction, including looking straight up.) This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable. Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/@22.54024647,114.06560828,20.66510478a,1105.83450886d,35y,75.7406347h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/search/@22.54024647,114.0656082... [2] https://youtu.be/e-2n_HksLh0?t=220 https://youtu.be/e-2n_HksLh0?t=220
  - tomcam 6y ago
    [2] is an important historical document. Highly recommended.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Cool! It's nice to see there is something similar to to Kowloon Walled city still in existence. Last year we visited the Anata no Warehouse arcade in Kawasski, which had parts modeled after it. Unfortunatelly it closed at the end of November 2019: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anata-no-warehouse https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anata-no-warehouse
  - nemetroid 6y ago
    > This meets most of the criteria you see the "strong towns" people plugging for. Walkable streets. Convenient retail. Few cars. Very low speeds. Excellent land utilization. No space wasted on parking. Affordable. > Of course, the people who write those articles wouldn't live in a place like that themselves. This is like suggesting that people who value having their own backyard are being inconsistent by not moving into the remote countryside. There's nothing inconsistent in promoting a certain set of values within desiring those values taken to the extreme.
kingkawn 6y ago
From the article; “ These towers would contain new dwelling space—light-filled apartments of twelve-hundred square feet, each equipped with a balcony and parking spot” Where does your assessment come from?
- Animats 6y ago
  From the geometry. Those things have the diameter of a city block. That's the problem with those old giant arcology designs. Too much volume for the amount of outside wall. They look great in drawings. Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    > Yes, you can have a hollow center with interior balconies. It's been tried. It fails for residential. Most buildings in Budapest are set up this way and I don't see how it fails. Technically they are hallways, not balconies, but they function the same way.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      I think a lot of it has to do with the size of the court yard and the height of the building. Four stories with a court yard that's as long and wide as the buildings are high? That can work. 50 stories with a yard that's 50m across? The lower levels will live in perpetual twilight.
      - keiferski 6y ago
        Brainstorming here: what about light tunnels every ±5 floors that use mirrors to funnel light from outside the building into the courtyard? In theory, this would work...I think.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        There are modern municipal housing buildings in Vienna that do this - mirrors for community space ilimunation during the day. :)

burlesona 6y ago

Here's an alternate source that's much better and has better (but not enough) images: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16868494/harlem-history-buckminster-fuller-development-rezoning https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16868494/harlem-history-buck... I don't really understand why this is the case, but a large percentage of stories about architecture, urban design, urban planning, development, etc. are written with thousands of words and no maps, diagrams, or pictures. The fuzzy black and white scribble on this one doesn't count. Why do writers bother penning these? Architecture and it's assorted offshoots are visual media, and spending a bunch of words to describe it is about as useful as writing an essay to say what the Mona Lisa looks like.

andi999 6y ago
Maybe copyright issues? (Same reason you do not see many night pictures of the Eiffel tower)
nkoren 6y ago
This really is a much better source -- thank you!
prawn 6y ago
You can write an article about something from afar, but can't photograph it. Leaves you trying to find Creative Commons images or licensing something. Writer isn't paid enough to do that, I'm guessing.

keiferski 6y ago

It's interesting how one generation's vision of utopia often becomes the dystopia of the following generation. In his time, Le Corbusier was heralded as the genius of modern architecture. Today, his buildings seem vaguely dystopian (to me, at least) and remind me of the recent 2012 Dredd movie. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dredd+movie+building&t=osx&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dredd+movie+building&t=osx&iar=ima... Fuller probably envisioned the shape of his buildings as futuristic and naturalistic, but to me, they look like nuclear power plants. Icons (as in a simplified, recognizable image) end up playing an unexpected role. From the countries I've visited, I'd say Berlin (especially Prenzlauerberg) and Tokyo had the most pleasant version of urban design. With Berlin, most apartments have balconies, streets are wide enough to let shops expand onto the sidewalks, and public transit works extremely well. Tokyo mixes commerce with residential in a way that American cities get completely wrong. There is also a city in Poland, Łódź, which also has a geometrically appealing layout: it's essentially a single long street with two concentrations at either end. The city itself is still recovering from the 90s and is fairly run-down outside of the center, but the conceptual simplicity has an appeal that's hard to describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street

rmason 6y ago
My first take was that they did look like nuclear power plant silos. But then I examined closer and the idea started to appeal to me more. I think these might work in Detroit. The city has lots of vacant land. These towers are wider at the bottom. Why not have shops and offices on the lower floors? The upper floors would offer great views of the Detroit river into Windsor or out to the suburbs. By staggering the rows everyone would have a great view. You'd be within walking distance of shops in the other towers, it would be village-like with a lot of green space. In effect you'd have a set of towers in the middle of a park.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  You should look up how the idea of “towers in a park” actually played out when implemented. It’s not a new concept.

throwaway316943 6y ago

Corbu got a few things right but he was off the mark when he said a house was a machine for living. A house cannot provides all the necessities for living, it must be integrated into a community. Monolithic buildings like this are an extension of his incorrect idea, they are the monoculture of urban design much like the suburb. We should take the good idea of simple and easy to manufacture buildings and use them to create human scale spaces that fulfill our needs as a community.

aaron695 6y ago

If you look at page 341 these would be solarpunk if drawn today. They are thin and constructed over existing buildings. But with ramps so you can drive a car up. https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2397578/dc67d37c83d910d2f027d855f42805a8.pdf?1530916557 https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2397578/dc67d37c8...