Most modernist architecture around the period was designed to be housing for the people.
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Architectural AH
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Artaxerxes
Senshi sautés seashells by the seashore
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I suppose yes but at the same time it feels more like "lets build the plebs what they should want to live in" rather than what they actually needed in a lot of cases.
The worst thing about architecture are the clients.
Artaxerxes
Senshi sautés seashells by the seashore
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- #VALUE!
That was the best thread on r\architecture this week.
My Favorite post was when a person proposed a house made of shipping containers which was then torn to shreds like a particularly unhappy architecture tutor.
- Location
- Derbyshire
There was something like that already in the catalogue homes- basically like modern kit houses where you just buy a pre-designed kit.
So you probably need some reason to get modernists to essentially offer their designs to a company like that. And maybe a poorer 50s so the idea of doing it 'on the cheap' from a catalogue like that is still current?
Fair warning: You can have non-mcmansion colonials and you can have modernist mcmansions(see Kate Wagner on the topic). Anyhow the Usonian house was partway there but FLW was really high up on supervising everything. The other key thing is the catalog/plans/cheap idea because so much of suburban development relied after WWII on being able to throw up houses quickly and cheaply with as much prefabricated/premade material. Think the sort of long-range descendant of the balloon/frame house.
What would be interesting is more Neo-Mughal architecture, which was in vogue during the late nineteenth century. Many buildings in New Delhi are obviously Neo-Mughal, for instance. Admittedly, I think that Neo-Mughal architecture loses something by losing much of the dashing colour of Mughal architecture, but I still gotta say, it looks pretty awesome in my opinion.
You could have it supplant some moorish revival architecture. Which could be interesting itself.
Indeed. Or the trend could begin earlier - if British people continued to view Indian culture (if not the people) positively, as in the eighteenth century, rather than view it as fallen and formerly-great, as in the nineteenth century, you’d see Neo-Mughal architecture well before the late nineteenth century.
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- Auckland via London
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- Location
- Auckland via London
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- He/him
Not that one, but there is another one here by her which kinda has one
http://www.yousubtitles.com/Why-Im-...-buildings-Liz-Ogbu-TEDxMidAtlantic-id-475190
@Guernsey Donkey @iainbhx @Meadow this is kinda shading out of architecture and into planning/transportation but I have some thoughts/questions.
I know OTL there was a lot of postwar investment in relieving urban crowding with building New Towns as well as the rationalization of the railway system. My question is twofold:
1) When building the New Towns(and I'll tack on postwar housing estates since it's a similar issue) was there consideration of mixed-scale housing; for example of combining townhomes and towers in the same district and different heights of apartment building? Was there also consideration of mixed auto and pedestrian space? I know OTL some of the New Towns had a very strong separation of automotive and pedestrian space. Also, was there much focus on housing proximity to commercial and industrial areas. I can post some models/anachronistic models if wanted.
2) I know Beeching involved a lot of cuts to rural railway lines; was there consideration of making some lines more viable and "killing two birds with one stone" by locating postwar developments and New Towns along them?
I know OTL there was a lot of postwar investment in relieving urban crowding with building New Towns as well as the rationalization of the railway system. My question is twofold:
1) When building the New Towns(and I'll tack on postwar housing estates since it's a similar issue) was there consideration of mixed-scale housing; for example of combining townhomes and towers in the same district and different heights of apartment building? Was there also consideration of mixed auto and pedestrian space? I know OTL some of the New Towns had a very strong separation of automotive and pedestrian space. Also, was there much focus on housing proximity to commercial and industrial areas. I can post some models/anachronistic models if wanted.
2) I know Beeching involved a lot of cuts to rural railway lines; was there consideration of making some lines more viable and "killing two birds with one stone" by locating postwar developments and New Towns along them?
- Location
- Derbyshire
There's a number of estates I can think of with a couple of towers and a couple of long 5/6 story blocks.
Mixed scale wasn't used much in the New Towns I'm most familiar with (i.e. Redd Itch and Telford) but it was used in inner Birmingham when replacing the slums. Highgate on the Middle Ring Road is a fine example of tower blocks, low rise blocks and more standard housing, much of which is still as designed. The New Towns had very strong separation of usage areas with the exception of "centres" in residential areas which usually had a parade of small shops and a pub. Commercial was originally kept to the old town centre, but supermarkets started cropping up on the edges in the 80's. Industrial was usually separated by a radial road from residential and often more directly connected to trunk roads.
The separation was such that pavements were not generally supplied on non-residential roads, instead separate footpaths were built that linked the different "centres" of the new town and into the original villages/urban core. A lovely idea, but 15 years on as they were now surrounded by mature trees and the lighting systems had suffered from municipal neglect - they became rapists and muggers paradises. Redditch also had the feature of the "Bus Ring" which was a ring road connecting parts of the New Town with the centre which was only open to buses, whilst this worked reasonably during the day with 15 minute services clockwise and anticlockwise, in the evenings and on Sundays with hourly services it was ill-used and attracted boy-racers.
Whilst Redditch retained its railway station it was a close run thing, there was no thought at keeping the line open through Alcester and Evesham although there is a lot of regret about that now, but back then beyond Redditch it was a 4 train a day service. Remember this was the age of the motor car supreme and in the case of the Midlands New Towns much of the original employment was connected to the automotive trade.
Yea, that seems to fit into the other part I've seen about basically separating cars and pedestrians. With iffy results. As for the Beeching/limited service thing, that was sort of why I brought it up; if you locate the new town along the railway then you can retain service by justifying more frequent trains and save congestion/stress on motorways(or so the thinking goes). But as you said that would go against the grain of the "auto age". Interesting to read about the Highgate development in Birmingham-it sound a bit like what inspired this, which is SW DC(where one of the architects reacted to criticism of "towers in parks" by dedicating the space in between to townhouses, low-rise schools, etc with through streets and plazas) and Reston(which is essentially an attempt to integrate townhouse development with commercial and retail).