Movement 1 - Garden City by Ebenezer Howard
In 1876, Howard got into a firm producing which is the Official
Parliamentary reports sector. From here, he gets himself into thinking about
the social issues. In 1898, he published a book called To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. He emphasized on
the importance of a permanent girdle of agricultural land around the town. This
so-called concept then became part of the British planning policy. In the book
he mentioned "a Garden City that, as it grows, the free gifts
of Nature- fresh air, sunlight, breathing room and playing room- shall be still
retained in all needed abundance". Howard derived the radial diagrams for
Garden City from James Silk Buckingham's plan for Victoria in 1849. He was also inspired by an Utopian vision of a
future city and society to be involved in bringing a new better civilization into existence and he began to create his own plan. Buckingham stated that his
scheme was designed to avoid the evils of communism. Howard's illustrations are
only diagrams dependent on the site and this gave a new dimension to the town
plan; a versatile freedom during its creation. The basis came from his own
personal experiences. The aesthetic of the Garden City is at its best when it
involves winding gravel roads between avenues of trees.
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Movement 2 - Radiant City by Le Corbusier
Ville
Radieuse (The Radiant City, other than that known as the Housing Unit) is an unrealized urban masterplan by Le
Corbusier first presented in 1924. Its design is made so as to contain
effective means of transportation and also as an abundance of sunlight and
green space. His aims were to provide a better living condition in overcrowded
cities. The principles used in this concept were radical, strict and
totalitarian in its order, symmetry and standardization. These principles had
an influence on modern urban planning and led to the development of new
high-density housing typologies. Corbusier explains: "The city of
today is a dying thing because its planning is not in the proportion of
geometrical one fourth. The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition,
The result of repetition is a standard. The perfect form.”
The notion of zoning:
a strict division of the city into segregated commercial, business,
entertainment and residential areas. Business district was located in the
center which has the mega-skyscrapers of which reaches a height of 200 meters.
Pre-fabricated apartment buildings were what that makes up the housing
districts. The parks allows residents to live in an environment with maximum
natural daylight, a minimum level of noise and recreational facilities that are
easily accessed.
Corbusier designed the Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, which – inspired by The Radiant City’s Unités – contained
337 apartments in a single building, along with public facilities on the roof and ground floor. This typology of the brutalist
architecture provided an answer to the Post-War housing shortage and was
further adapted around the world in countless housing projects. Unlike any
other architects before him, Corbusier holistically highlighted on issues such
as healthy living, traffic, noise, public space and transportation and this continued
to be a major concern of city planners today.
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Movement 3 - Archigram
In the 1960s, in fashion it was the miniskirts, in music it
was The Beatles and in architecture it was the Archigram. In 1961, young
architects - David Greene, Ron Herron, Mike Webb, Warren Chalk, Peter Cook and
Dennis Crompton - shared one vision and they wanted to influence their
architecture to the generation in a fresh and modern way. Thus they produced a
magazine called Archigram, a word derived from the two words architecture and
telegram. The magazine's content looked rather more like a comic book, compared
to a normal architecture book - formal and mundane. Though none of their
buildings were ever made it off the drawing board, these architects were given
a prestigious award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). However,
in 1974, the group of architects decided to split up. Despite this, their
architecture and the influence of Archigram still manages to bloom and this can
be seen in high-tech buildings like Richard Roger's Pompidou Centre in Paris
and The Lloyd's buildings. Their pop-inspired ideas of mobility - walking
cities in particular - and radical urban design have inspired many contemporary
architects and has continued to inspire futuristic designs today. For
Archigram, mobility was important and omnipresent, even for urban landscape
that became a "Walking City". Archigram created an optimistic and fun
approach to nomadic architecture that was supposed to set people free. Archigram
might not have built anything but they changed the face of modern architecture.
They believed that the impossible is possible and there are remarkable
buildings that the idea of Archigram were inspired.
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