Athens Charter
Encyclopedia
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
published by the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
in 1943. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse
Ville Radieuse
Ville Radieuse was an unrealised project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1924.Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville Contemporaine in the 1920s, during the early 1930s, after contact with international planners he began work on the Ville...
(Radiant City) book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne
Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne
The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne – CIAM was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged around the world by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern...
(CIAM) in the early 1930s.
The Charter got its name from location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the SS Patris bound for Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
from Marseilles.
The Charter had a huge impact on urban planning post World War 2.
Background
Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville ContemporaineVille Contemporaine
The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealised project to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922....
in the 1920s, during the early 1930s, after contact with international planners he began work on the Ville Radieuse (Radiant City). In 1930 he had become an active member of the syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
movement and proposed the Ville Radieuse as a blueprint of social reform.
Unlike the radial design of the Ville Contemporaine, the Ville Radieuse was a linear city based upon the abstract shape of the human body with head, spine, arms and legs. The design maintained the idea of high-rise housing blocks, free circulation and abundant green spaces proposed in his earlier work. Le Corbusier exhibited the first representations of his ideas at the third CIAM meeting in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
in 1930 and published a book of the same title as the city in 1935.
The Functional City
The concept of the Functional City came to dominate CIAM thinking after the conference in Brussels. At a meeting in ZürichZürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
in 1931, CIAM members Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
, Siegfried Giedion, Rudolf Steiger and Werner M. Moser
Werner M. Moser
Werner Max Moser was a Swiss architect whose most famous work is the modern campus of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur....
discussed with Cornelis van Eesteren the importance of solar orientation in governing the directional positioning of low-cost housing on a given site. Van Eesteren had been chief architect of Amsterdam's Urban Development Section since 1929 and the group asked him to prepare a number of analytical studies of cities ready for the next main CIAM meeting planned to be in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in 1933. The theme for these studies would be the Functional City, that is, one where land planning would be based upon function-based zones.
Van Eesteren employed the city planner Theodor Karel van Lohuizen to use methods developed for the Amsterdam Expansion Plan, to prepare zoning plans that would predict overall future development in the city. He relied upon the more rational methods being promoted by CIAM at that time which sought to use statistical information for designing zone uses rather than designing them in any detail.
At a special congress meeting in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
later in 1931 van Eesteren presented his findings to his colleagues. He presented three drawings of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. The first at a scale of 1:10000 showed land use and density, the second showed transportation networks and the third, at 1:50000 showed the regional setting of the city. He also presented supporting information on the four functions of dwelling, work, recreation and transport. Based upon his presentation it was decided that the separate national groups within CIAM would prepare similar presentation boards for the Moscow meeting. A standard set of notation was agreed.
In 1932 Le Corbusier's Palace of the Soviets competition entry failed to gain acceptance from the jury and, due to the political conditions in Russia, CIAM's agenda became increasingly ignored. A new venue for the fourth CIAM conference was required.
CIAM 4
The fourth CIAM conference took place on board the S.S. Patris, an ocean-going liner journeying from Marseilles to Athens in July 1933.The national groups reported to the conference with the findings from their city studies, presenting in each case the agreed three boards showing a total of 34 cities. In addition, Le Corbusier and the group who had met earlier in Zürich hosted a meeting to state the core goals of the Functional City.
On arrival in Athens on the 3rd August an exhibition of the Functional City boards was held at the Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechneion (National Technical University of Athens) and inaugurated by Greece's prime minister. The boards were separated into seven categories: metropolises, cities of administration, ports, industrial cities, pleasure cities and cities of diverse function. The delegates remained in Athens for a number of days, some visited local classical sites and others visited nearby islands. On 10 August they embarked on the return journey to Marseilles.
During meetings on the return journey delegates found it impossible to agree on resolutions for the Functional City. Van Eesteren's original Amsterdam plan had, with greater resources, a basis formed by scientific data. The plans presented by the national groups did not have this and, despite Giedion's insistence delegates were reluctant to agree guidelines. Eventually, two groups agreed two separate texts: observations and resolutions.
The Athens Charter
CIAM demanded that housing districts should occupy the best sites, and a minimum amount of solar exposure should be required in all dwellings. For hygienic reasons, buildings should not be built along transportation routes, and modern techniques should be used to construct high apartment building spaces widely apart, to free the soil for large green parks.
-Mumford, 2000, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, The MIT Press, p85
Additionally they said it was important to reduce commuting times by locating industrial zones close to residential ones and buffering them with wide parks and sports areas. Street widths and requirements should be scientifically worked out to accommodate the speed and type of transport. Finally, with regards to conservation, historic monuments should be kept only when they were of true value and their conservation did not reduce their inhabitants to unhealthy living conditions.
The observations formed the basis of Josep Lluís Sert's
Josep Lluís Sert
Josep Lluís Sert i López was a Spanish Catalan architect and city planner.- Biography :Born in Barcelona, he showed keen interest in the works of his painter uncle Josep Maria Sert and of Gaudí. He studied architecture at the Escola Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and set up his own studio...
book Can our cities survive? and were incorporated in Le Corbusier's Athens Charter published in 1943. The resolutions formed part of Le Corbusier's book The Radiant City published in 1935.
The text of the Athens Charter as published became an extension of the content of The Radiant City and Le Corbusier significantly re-worded the original observations. As well as adding new material he also removed the urban plans upon which the original text was based and the result somewhat diluted the original force of the observations.
Pre-war influence
After The Radiant City was published in France in 1933, Le Corbusier continued to develop his ideas of urban planning through a number of unrealised schemes. These included plans for Antwerp, Paris, Moscow, Algiers and Morocco.
In the Netherlands, CIAM delegates visited the Van Nelle factory
Van Nelle Factory
The former Van Nelle Factory on the Schie river in Rotterdam, is one of the most important historic industrial buildings in the Netherlands. It is a former factory currently used as an office complex for design and media firms....
designed in part by Mart Stam
Mart Stam
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle...
that was to have formed a larger part of a Functional City design.
CIAM 4 was the first congress that the influential MARS Group
MARS Group
The Modern Architectural Research Group, or MARS Group, was a British architectural think tank founded in 1933 by several prominent architects and architectural critics of the time involved in the British modernist movement...
from England was represented. In 1935 MARS member Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Russian émigré architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, London Zoo penguin pool, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate.-Early years:Berthold Lubetkin was born in Tiflis into a Jewish...
and his practice, the Tecton Group
Tecton Group
The Tecton Group was a radical architectural group co-founded by Berthold Lubetkin, Francis Skinner, Denys Lasdun, Godfrey Samuel, and Lindsay Drake in 1932. The name Tecton came from architecton, the Greek word for architecture...
completed Highpoint
Highpoint I
Highpoint I was the first of two apartment blocks erected in the 1930s on one of the highest points in London, England at Highgate. The architectural design was by Russian-born architect Berthold Lubetkin, the structural design by Danish engineer Ove Arup and the construction by Kier.Highpoint I...
in Highgate, London. The project comprised 56 dwellings grouped together as two crosses on plan, eight dwellings per arm. Each dwelling is linked to a central service core but is separated from its neighbour by a balcony - a design feature that virtually eliminated noise transfer between dwellings.
In 1937 with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
, Sert suggested that England and the United States may be the best place to focus CIAM's activities.
Post-war influence
The Athens Charter had a huge impact on planning thought after World War 2. However, its influence was more complicated because in the 1950s CIAM attempted to replace the Functional City described in the Charter with a different Charter of Habitat.France
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...
and St Dié. The urban plan allowed him to experiment with urban monumentality that had been somewhat underplayed in the Charter, but as part of the project he proposed eight Unité d'Habitation
Unité d'Habitation
The Unité d'Habitation is the name of a modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso...
flanked by a civic centre. Although these proposals were unbuilt, he had more success in Marseilles where an initial study for three Unités resulted in one being built. In line with the Charter, the Unité was a north-south orientated block eighteen storeys high set in parkland. There is a public 'street' on levels 7 and 8 that provides various shops, offices and a hotel. On the roof there is a nursery school, a running track and a pool. It opened in 1952 but had begun to influence architects even before it was complete.
United Kingdom
Local government
Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...
to provide a balance of housing types for a range of communities, not just the working class. In the socialist post war atmosphere, architectural writer J M Richards
James Maude Richards
Sir James Maude Richards, FRIBA, MA, , was a leading British architectural writer.Richards was born at Epsom, Surrey. Educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Cambridge University, he trained as an architect at the Architectural Association, but his main career was as a writer on architecture...
praised Le Corbusier's Unité for "putting clean and healthy housing in a parkland setting".
Between 1952 and 1958 London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
built the Alton East
Alton Estate
The Alton Estate is a large council estate situated in Roehampton, southwest London. Alton Estate, one of the largest council estates in the UK, occupies an extensive swathe of land west of Roehampton village and runs between the Roehampton Lane through-road and Richmond Park golf courses, as can...
and Alton West high-rise blocks in Roehampton. Alton East comprised 744 dwellings within mainly 10 storey blocks and Alton West was 1867 dwellings in 5, 6 and 12 storey blocks. Both projects are set within parkland and have since been listed.
In Sheffield in 1958, the city architect, Lewis Womersley, designed the Park Hill Estate. The product of an entire slum clearance, three times the size of the Unité, dwellings were housed in a series of high rise structures connected by external decks. These 'streets in the air' are wide enough to incorporate bicycles and milk float
Milk float
A milk float is a battery electric vehicle , specifically designed for the delivery of fresh milk. They were once common in many European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, and were operated by local dairies...
s. Initial success came because whole streets were moved into adjacent dwellings on the new scheme. Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....
said it would "draw the admiration of the world".
In Scotland, the Department of Housing for Scotland encouraged Local Authorities to build more unified and open schemes. The Functional City prescribed the separation of industrial zones from residential ones by parkland. This concept suited the regeneration of industrial decay in Scottish cities. From 1956 the Hutchesontown Gorbals
Gorbals
The Gorbals is an area on the south bank of the River Clyde in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. By the late 19th century, it had become over-populated and adversely affected by local industrialisation. Many people lived here because their jobs provided this home and they could not afford their own...
area of Glasgow was redeveloped. The architect Robert Matthew
Robert Matthew
Sir Robert Hogg Matthew, OBE, FRIBA was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism.- Early life & studies :Robert Matthew was the son of John Matthew . He was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and attended the Edinburgh College of Art.- Career :Robert was apprenticed with his...
designed one of the four areas using 18 storey blocks on a north-south axis that ignored local street patterns.
In 1962 Alison and Peter Smithson
Alison and Peter Smithson
English architects Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated with the New Brutalism .Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England, and Alison was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire...
designed a 17 storey residential tower in Golden Lane
Golden Lane Estate
The Golden Lane Estate is a 1950s council housing complex in the City of London. It was built on the northern edge of the City, in an area devastated by bombing during World War II.-Origins:...
, London. It has a variety of dwellings and a good provision of supporting community buildings. Like the Unité it has a terrace on the roof. The Smithsons were against the four functions explored for the Functional City, renaming them House, Street, District and City. In the Golden Lane development the House became the family unit, the Street was an elevated access deck but the District and City lay outside the project's boundaries. Although they rejected the way that the Ville Radieuse was touted around by Le Corbusier they did the same thing with Golden Lane.
The Americas
Lucio Costa'sLúcio Costa
Lucio Costa was a Brazilian architect and urban planner.-Career:Costa was born in Toulon, France.Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and in Montreux until 1916, he graduated as an architect in 1924 from the School of Fine Art in Rio de Janeiro...
conception of the plan for Brasília
Brasília
Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...
saw the city as a manifestation of the Functional City. Like Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, it was seen as a method of imposing order, progress and stability to Brazil's new capital. Like Le Corbusier, Costa and Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
aspired to produce a city based upon equality and justice.
In a variation of the Functional City, Sert designed married-student housing for Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1964. Known as Peabody Terraces it was made up of three main towers set in lawns and sheltered pedestrian routes. It avoided the usual vacuum at the base by grading the scale between the towers and the lawns.
The rest of the world
In Japan in 1957, Kunio MaekawaKunio Maekawa
was a Japanese architect.-Formative years:He entered First Tokyo Middle School in 1918, and then Tokyo Imperial University in 1925. After graduation in 1928, he travelled to France to apprentice with Le Corbusier. In 1930 he returned to Japan and worked with Antonin Raymond, and in 1935 established...
designed the Harumi Apartment block in Tokyo based upon the idea of the Unité. Meanwhile, In Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
in 1963 CIAM member Jacob B. Bakema
Jacob B. Bakema
Jacob Berend Bakema was a Dutch modernist architect, notable for his public housing and involvement in the reconstruction of Rotterdam after the Second World War....
designed a Functional City proposal based upon Le Corbusier's Algiers scheme.
Criticism
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
award when it was built in 1951. Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks
Charles Alexander Jencks is an American architectural theorist, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of Modernism and Postmodernism were widely read in architectural circles and beyond....
proclaimed that the death of Modern Architecture
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
was on 15 July 1972 at 3.32pm when the Pruitt–Igoe housing scheme was demolished with dynamite.
Architectural critic Reyner Banham
Reyner Banham
Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...
was concerned that the supposed universality of the Charter concealed a very narrow view of architecture and planning that overly constrained the members of CIAM. The emphasis on tall high-density housing amongst wide, green spaces effectively killed research into other areas of urban housing.
In planning terms the Charter had set rigid geometries for urban planning, increasingly there became an awareness of words like 'neighbourhood', 'cluster' and 'association' that demanded a more organic approach to the image of the city.
Even by 1954 during the Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...
meeting of CIAM the younger generation riled against the pre-war utopian ideals that the Charter represented. This disillusionment would lead to the formation of Team X at the Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
meeting of CIAM that would eventually lead to the breakup of the Conference as an organisation.
In the case of Brasilia, whilst Niemeyer remained faithful to the ideas of zoning and green spaces, his revised urban utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
became based upon a smaller city with a high vertical concentration of people with increased pedestrian facilities. In 1958 he had warned that his utopian dream could not be fulfilled unless society itself was reorganised to suit it. At its inauguration the city was branded a Kafkaesque Nightmare with an Orwellian
Orwellian
"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society...
environment. Recently however the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
has said that Brasilia has the highest education rate and quality of life in Brazil.
To reduce the matter to high density when no due attention was given to communal facilities was to court disaster; to create open space without greenery was to devalue the idea of the community living in nature. The imitations of the Unité usually involved such drastic omissions. Does this mean that the prototype should be blamed for the later disastrous variations?
-Curtis, 1986, Modern Architecture since 1900, Phaidon, p293
Recent history
In 2003 the European Council of Spatial PlannersECTP-CEU
The European Council of Spatial Planners is the umbrella organisation for spatial planning institutes in Europe. It was founded in 1985 . In June 2009 it had 24 members in 22 European countries...
wrote a new version of the Charter.
Trivia
J. G. Ballard'sJ. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
book High Rise
High Rise
High Rise is a 1975 novel by J. G. Ballard. It takes place in an ultra-modern, luxury high-rise building.-Plot summary:The building seems to give its well-established tenants all the conveniences and commodities that modern life has to offer: swimming pools, its own school, a supermarket,...
is set in a 40 storey block set in parkland with other high-rises in central London. On the tenth floor is a wide concourse with supermarket, shops and gymnasium and a swimming pool. On the 35th floor there is a smaller swimming pool, a sauna and a restaurant. As the affluent tenants embark upon an orgy of destruction, Ballard tells the story of how the whole block slowly degenerates into anarchy.