Yona Friedman
Encyclopedia
Yona Friedman is a Hungarian
-born French
architect, urban planner and designer. He became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the so-called age of megastructures
.
In 1956, the X International Congress of Modern Architecture in Dubrovnick, his "Manifeste de l'architecture mobile" contributed to question definitely the daring will planning to architectural design and urbanism. It was during that conference, and thanks especially to the youth of the Team 10, that "mobile architecture" was coined in the sense of "mobility of living." With the example of "Ville spatiale", Friedman set out - for the first time - the principles of an architecture capable of understanding the constant changes that characterize the "social mobility" and based on "infrastructure" that provide housing. Planning rules could be created and recreated, according to the need of the inhabitants and residents. Its focus on people themselves arises from its direct experience of homeless refugees, first in European cities facing war and disaster and later in Israel, where, in the early years of the State, thousands of people landed every day, with housing problems .
In 1963, he developed the idea of a city bridge and participated actively in the cultural climate and utopian architecture of the 60s known as the "Age of megastructures". Since the mid-sixties he has taught at several American universities. In the following decade he worked for the United Nations and UNESCO, through the dissemination of self-building manuals in African countries, South America and India. Despite the perennial utopian label, Friedman said: "I have always tried, in architectural studies, to develop projects that were feasible."
In 1978, he was commissioned to design the Lycée Bergson in Angers, France
, completed in 1981. On this occasion he published a procedure in which the distribution and arrangement of all the architectural elements were designed and decided by future users. Because even non-professionals can understand and apply his method, he wrote also howto comics.
Interest in the issue of participation has brought Friedman to architects like Giancarlo De Carlo
and Bernard Rudofsky
.
In 1987, in Madras, India, Friedman completed the Museum of Simple Technology in which the principles of self-construction from local materials like bamboo were applied.
He also authored books dealing with technical subjects (For a scientific architecture, Workshop 1975), sociological (L'architecture du survie, L'éclat 2003) and epistemological (L'univers erratique , PUF 1994).
The book that best represents, however, Friedman's ethics and spirit is perhaps "Utopies Réalisables (French for feasible utopias), published in France in 1975 and also published in Italian (Quodlibet 2003) describing a project to restructure our society in a genuine democratic way, seeking to escape any elitism through the theory of the critical group. The book is also a fierce critique of the myth of global communication.
From the book: "The analysis of social utopias presented in this book implies, implicitly in the act of accusation and criticism of these two 'plagues' of our times which are: 'the state mafia' and the 'media mafia' (press, television etc.). The existence of a state mafia resultsfrom the impossibility to keep the shape of the classic democratic state once its size exceeds certain limits, and the 'media mafia' is a direct result of an inability of global communication ( Worldwide). The Internet can be used as an example, that this inability is not the result of technical difficulties but rather stems from the fundamental human inability to universal communication (from all to all). The failure of these two generous utopias, democracy and the 'global communication' between men, logically leads to the formation of gangs who act in our behalf against our interests.
As well as an indictment, this book will simultaneously be an act of encouragement: the individual should be encouraged not to offer their help or their tacit consent to these two gangs. It is not a call for revolution, but a call to resistance. "
Mobile architecture is the "dwelling decided on by the occupant" by way of "infrastructures that are neither determined nor determining". Mobile architecture embodies an architecture available for a "mobile society". To deal with it, the classical architect invented "the Average Man". The projects of architects in the 1950s were undertaken, according to Friedman, to meet the needs of this make-believe entity, and not as an attempt to meet the needs of the actual members of this mobile society.
The teaching of architecture was largely responsible for the "classical" architect's under-estimation of the role of the user. Furthermore this teaching did not embrace any real theory of architecture. Friedman proposed then teaching manuals for the fundamentals of architecture for the general public.
The spatial city, which is a materialization of this theory, makes it possible for everyone to develop his or her own hypothesis. This is why, in the mobile city, buildings should :
This structure introduce a kind of merger between countryside and city (compare to Paolo Soleri
's Arcology
concept) and may span:
This spanning technique which includes container structures ushers in a new development in town-planning. Raised plans increase the original area of the city becoming three-dimensional. The tiering of the spatial city on several independent levels, one on top of the other, determines "spatial town-planning" both from the functional and from the aesthetic viewpoint. The lower level may be earmarked for public life and for premises designed for community services as well as pedestrian areas. The piles contain the vertical means of transport (lifts, staircases). The superposition of levels should make it possible to build a whole industrial city, or a residential or commercial city, on the same site. In this way, the Spatial City forms what Yona Friedman would call an "artificial topography
". This grid suspended in space outlines a new cartography of the terrain with the help of a continuous and indeterminate homogeneous network with a major positive outcome: this modular grid would authorize the limitless growth of the city.
The spaces in this grid are rectangular and habitable modular "voids", with an average area of 25-35 square meters. Conversely, the form of the volumes included within the grid depends solely on the occupant, and their configuration set with a "Flatwriter" in the grid is completely free. Only one half of the spatial city would be occupied. The "fillings" which correspond to the dwellings only actually take up 50 % of the three-dimensional lattice, permitting the light to spread freely in the spatial city. This introduction of elements on a three-dimensional grid with several levels on piles permits a changeable occupancy of the space by means of the convertibility of the forms and their adaptation to multiple uses.
In Yona Friedman's own words "The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth : a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles".
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
-born French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
architect, urban planner and designer. He became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the so-called age of megastructures
Megastructures (architecture)
Megastructures are an architectural concept popularized in the 1960s where a city could be encased in a single building, or a relatively small number of buildings interconnected together....
.
Early years
Yona Friedman has been through the Second World War escaping the Nazi roundups and lived for about a decade in the city of Haifa in Israel before moving permanently to Paris in 1957. He became a French citizen in 1966.In 1956, the X International Congress of Modern Architecture in Dubrovnick, his "Manifeste de l'architecture mobile" contributed to question definitely the daring will planning to architectural design and urbanism. It was during that conference, and thanks especially to the youth of the Team 10, that "mobile architecture" was coined in the sense of "mobility of living." With the example of "Ville spatiale", Friedman set out - for the first time - the principles of an architecture capable of understanding the constant changes that characterize the "social mobility" and based on "infrastructure" that provide housing. Planning rules could be created and recreated, according to the need of the inhabitants and residents. Its focus on people themselves arises from its direct experience of homeless refugees, first in European cities facing war and disaster and later in Israel, where, in the early years of the State, thousands of people landed every day, with housing problems .
Maturity
In 1958, he founded the Groupe d'études de architecture mobile (GEAM), dissolved in 1962.In 1963, he developed the idea of a city bridge and participated actively in the cultural climate and utopian architecture of the 60s known as the "Age of megastructures". Since the mid-sixties he has taught at several American universities. In the following decade he worked for the United Nations and UNESCO, through the dissemination of self-building manuals in African countries, South America and India. Despite the perennial utopian label, Friedman said: "I have always tried, in architectural studies, to develop projects that were feasible."
In 1978, he was commissioned to design the Lycée Bergson in Angers, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, completed in 1981. On this occasion he published a procedure in which the distribution and arrangement of all the architectural elements were designed and decided by future users. Because even non-professionals can understand and apply his method, he wrote also howto comics.
Interest in the issue of participation has brought Friedman to architects like Giancarlo De Carlo
Giancarlo De Carlo
Giancarlo De Carlo was an Italian architect.He was born in Genoa, Liguria in 1919. He trained as an architect from 1942 to 1949, a time of political turmoil which generated his philosophy toward life and architecture...
and Bernard Rudofsky
Bernard Rudofsky
Bernard Rudofsky was an Moravian-born American writer, architect, collector, teacher, designer, and social historian....
.
In 1987, in Madras, India, Friedman completed the Museum of Simple Technology in which the principles of self-construction from local materials like bamboo were applied.
He also authored books dealing with technical subjects (For a scientific architecture, Workshop 1975), sociological (L'architecture du survie, L'éclat 2003) and epistemological (L'univers erratique , PUF 1994).
The book that best represents, however, Friedman's ethics and spirit is perhaps "Utopies Réalisables (French for feasible utopias), published in France in 1975 and also published in Italian (Quodlibet 2003) describing a project to restructure our society in a genuine democratic way, seeking to escape any elitism through the theory of the critical group. The book is also a fierce critique of the myth of global communication.
From the book: "The analysis of social utopias presented in this book implies, implicitly in the act of accusation and criticism of these two 'plagues' of our times which are: 'the state mafia' and the 'media mafia' (press, television etc.). The existence of a state mafia resultsfrom the impossibility to keep the shape of the classic democratic state once its size exceeds certain limits, and the 'media mafia' is a direct result of an inability of global communication ( Worldwide). The Internet can be used as an example, that this inability is not the result of technical difficulties but rather stems from the fundamental human inability to universal communication (from all to all). The failure of these two generous utopias, democracy and the 'global communication' between men, logically leads to the formation of gangs who act in our behalf against our interests.
As well as an indictment, this book will simultaneously be an act of encouragement: the individual should be encouraged not to offer their help or their tacit consent to these two gangs. It is not a call for revolution, but a call to resistance. "
Mobile architecture
In 1958, Yona Friedman published his first manifesto : "Mobile architecture". It described a new kind of mobility not of the buildings, but for the inhabitants, who are given a new freedom.Mobile architecture is the "dwelling decided on by the occupant" by way of "infrastructures that are neither determined nor determining". Mobile architecture embodies an architecture available for a "mobile society". To deal with it, the classical architect invented "the Average Man". The projects of architects in the 1950s were undertaken, according to Friedman, to meet the needs of this make-believe entity, and not as an attempt to meet the needs of the actual members of this mobile society.
The teaching of architecture was largely responsible for the "classical" architect's under-estimation of the role of the user. Furthermore this teaching did not embrace any real theory of architecture. Friedman proposed then teaching manuals for the fundamentals of architecture for the general public.
The spatial city, which is a materialization of this theory, makes it possible for everyone to develop his or her own hypothesis. This is why, in the mobile city, buildings should :
- touch the ground over a minimum area
- be capable of being dismantled and moved
- and be alterable as required by the individual occupant.
The Spatial City
The Spatial City is the most significant application of "mobile architecture". It is a spatial, three-dimensional structure raised up on piles which contains inhabited volumes, fitted inside some of the "voids", alternating with other unused volumes. It is designed on the basis of trihedral elements which operate as "neighbourhoods" where dwellings are freely distributed.This structure introduce a kind of merger between countryside and city (compare to Paolo Soleri
Paolo Soleri
Paolo Soleri is an Italian-American architect. He established Arcosanti and the educational Cosanti Foundation. Soleri is a lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University and a National Design Award recipient in 2006.-Early life:Soleri was born in Turin, Italy...
's Arcology
Arcology
Arcology, a portmanteau of the words "architecture" and "ecology", is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and...
concept) and may span:
- certain unavailable sites,
- areas where building is not possible or permitted (expanses of water, marshland),
- areas that have already been built upon (an existing city),
- above farmland.
This spanning technique which includes container structures ushers in a new development in town-planning. Raised plans increase the original area of the city becoming three-dimensional. The tiering of the spatial city on several independent levels, one on top of the other, determines "spatial town-planning" both from the functional and from the aesthetic viewpoint. The lower level may be earmarked for public life and for premises designed for community services as well as pedestrian areas. The piles contain the vertical means of transport (lifts, staircases). The superposition of levels should make it possible to build a whole industrial city, or a residential or commercial city, on the same site. In this way, the Spatial City forms what Yona Friedman would call an "artificial topography
Topography
Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those ofplanets, moons, and asteroids...
". This grid suspended in space outlines a new cartography of the terrain with the help of a continuous and indeterminate homogeneous network with a major positive outcome: this modular grid would authorize the limitless growth of the city.
The spaces in this grid are rectangular and habitable modular "voids", with an average area of 25-35 square meters. Conversely, the form of the volumes included within the grid depends solely on the occupant, and their configuration set with a "Flatwriter" in the grid is completely free. Only one half of the spatial city would be occupied. The "fillings" which correspond to the dwellings only actually take up 50 % of the three-dimensional lattice, permitting the light to spread freely in the spatial city. This introduction of elements on a three-dimensional grid with several levels on piles permits a changeable occupancy of the space by means of the convertibility of the forms and their adaptation to multiple uses.
In Yona Friedman's own words "The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth : a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles".
Quotes
- "If a theory is well constructed and spread abroad, it has the advantage of no longer being the property of specialists, but of stemming from the public domain. The present-day monopoly of the architect has to do with the fact that there is no real theory, but merely a set of pseudo-theoriesä in other words, observations which only reflect the preferences of their authors".
- "A theory must be general and valid for anybody".
- "Everyone has their hypotheses. The general theory that I am trying to propound underpins all individual hypotheses".
Major written works
- 1958: Mobile architecture
- 1975: Towards a scientific architecture ISBN 0262560194
- 1980: A better life in towns: [campaign for the renaissance of cities]
- 2006: Yona Friedman: Pro Domo ISBN 8496540510
See also
- ArchigramArchigramArchigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s - based at the Architectural Association, London - that was futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects...
- Constantin XenakisConstantin XenakisConstantin Xenakis is a European artist based in France. His work often includes written script, in particular the Hebrew alphabet.-Life:...
- Manfredi NicolettiManfredi NicolettiManfredi Nicoletti is an Italian architect.- Biography :Born in Rieti, Nicoletti began his artistic and intellectual career very young in the studio of Giacomo Balla. In Rome he studied under Pier Luigi Nervi and graduated in architecture in 1954...
- Megastructures (architecture)Megastructures (architecture)Megastructures are an architectural concept popularized in the 1960s where a city could be encased in a single building, or a relatively small number of buildings interconnected together....
- Metabolist MovementMetabolist MovementIn the late 1950s a small group of young Japanese architects and designers joined forces under the title of "Metabolism". Their visions for cities of the future inhabited by a mass society were characterized by large scale, flexible, and expandable structures that evoked the processes of organic...
Further reading
- Annie Ratti, Yona Friedman, Luca Cerizza, Massimo Bartolini, Anna Daneri, Marco De Michelis, Manuel Orazi "Yona Friedman" Charta/Fondazione Antonio Ratti (March 1, 2009) ISBN 888158705X
External links
- http://yonafriedman.blogspot.com/
- http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5224
- http://www.frac-centre.fr/public/collecti/artistes/friedman/noti01en.htm
- Short biography on Megastructure Reloaded
- Blue Print Magazine June 12, 2009