The Pruitt Igoe Myth- Documentary
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth9 is a documentary film about the history of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, in St. Louis, Missouri. Directed by Chad Freidrichs, the movie released in 2011. The 80 minutes documentary includes interviews with former tenants about their experience and what they recall.
Images and short videos are illustrated to give a proper feel of the scene. ''Powerful story with a dramatic end'', as stated in the movie, the complex and its people experience steady deterioration of living conditions during the 1960s and early 1970s. It all ends by planned implosion of the buildings between 1972 and 1976.
The movie gives several theories for the failure of the Pruitt-Igoe complex that led to its destruction. The list also include mistake in the general notion of public housing or a slip of the modernist theory of architecture itself.
Following is a detailed outlook of how and possible why's of the failure of the Pruitt Igoe housing complex.
The start of something new
57-acres, 33 buildings,11-storey slab blocks-The Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese architect. The city decided to demolish a large region of shabby houses and set up instead Le Corbusier's dream.
The complex was designed in the early 1950s and construction was completed in 1955. The city planned two partitions: Pruitt for the black residents, and Igoe Apartments for whites. Streets on all sides enclosed the site. Upon its completion, the world's architecture magazines commended it as a beautiful example of International Style housing.
Many architects of the time believed it was just the way to alleviate poverty and to heal society's ills. An Architectural Forum titled "Slum S...
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...ap suburban dwellings facilitated open up the tight inner-city rental market to blacks. Many chose to live in cheap private houses instead of going for public housing.
There is a direct relationship between physical environments and human behaviour. According to Newman (1996)4, ''the widespread vandalism and violence resulted from the presence of excessive 'exposed' public spaces''. He continues by saying that ''public housing should provide an appropriate amount of private, semiprivate, and public space''.
An architect is controlled by the attitudes and conceptions of the clients and society.
This example of rational architecture failed because it divorced residents from personal and communal ownership of public spaces (Cendon 2012)7. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe was less of an architectural aesthetic failure and more of a planning, policy, and sociological one.
By giving the biographies of architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, Hines does nothing to remedy his aimless writing. He writes that Neutra had a variety of experience as an archi...
Sam Ridgway in The Representation of Construction emphasizes the role of representation in architecture stating, “The world of architecture is a world of representation” (268). He continues writing, “Architects do not build buildings; they represent them, mainly through drawings, models, words and numbers. In turn, buildings are also interpretations or representation of these mediating instruments and artifacts that precede their construction” (268). It is through realizing that representational tools are “value laden” that contemporary architects may move forward from the “ideological stagnation plaguing most architectural creation” (269). Comparing the preceding eras to the contemporary era, “there is an inverse relationship
Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American architecture.
The Chicago Housing Authority came about as a means to manage the large amount of poor Black residents. " In 1949, Congress, in addressing a postwar housing crisis, had authorized loans and subsidies to construct 810,000 units of low rent housing units nationwide" (p.21, Kotlowitz). During the 1950's the first of these new developments were constructed- The Cabrini homes were some of them. These first developments were only one or two stories and were well received by the city and its residents. Then the Chicago Housing Authority hired architects who designed a new type of development. A high-rise building (known as a project) with each unit having at least 15 to 19 floors, and approximately 5-15 buildings within each development. There was a political battle as to where these Projects would be built. After many meetings and court decisions they were finally built at the edges of the existing Ghetto's.
This paper will be predominantly focusing on public housing within Ontario. Not only will it look at the basics of Ontario but examine more directly on Regent Park within Toronto. It will discuss what public housing is and the explanation for why it exists, the government housing programs that are present with regards to public housing and the results of the government programs. The Purpose of this essay is to argue that the problem of public housing will never
She also introducing new urban building standards. This this article she talks about, the idea some people have of tearing it down and rebuilding. She also talks about ideas people have about some parts of towns. In Boston, she talks about the area of North End, and the change that it was over gone. During her second visit to this area, she discovered that it had changed. She talked to other about it, although the statistic were higher than the city, the people still saw it as a slum. They felt that they needed to tear it down in order to build something better. This leads to the conclusion that the urban planners to do understand that the people of the city need. They have ideas that were developed years ago that they are still using. These ideas do not take account what the people want. The author also introducing new ideas of a perfect city to live in and what it would look like. The idea of a garden city was introduced. This city would be built around a park. Although the new ideas sounded great they could not be put into place today. The idea of a Garden City is something that sounds nice, but it is not possible in society today. Today a city should reflect economic status, and in order to achieve this the city should be big, and convey an image of power. A city that has aspects of nature in it would not convey that image. That upkeep of a city of that kind would also be difficult. The do understand the author's point of view. The planners often times do not take into account the desires of the people. The town that I grow up in want to become more urbanized. In order to do this, they are building a large shopping center. This shopping center is located in the canyon rim. This canyon rim has been important the people for many years. We come to the area to walk, what bass jumpers, and enjoy the scenic views. This new shopping center took away this area. Many of the people
The Victory City project does look a lot like the Pruitt-Igoe project, these types of little cities have been tried before and failed. People’s lives were changed forever and not in a good way. The city of the future looks a lot like a prison of the future. Although I can understand the concept of the Victory city, the idea of building something to house that many people in one place can turn out to be one big nightmare for all residents, just like Pruitt-Igoe site. The idea of no crime, no pollution, or overcrowding sound great. Mr. Simpson’s ideas may have come from a good place to help the planet and expand people’s ideas of the perfect place to live. Unfortunately, when you add the human element there is no way to control how people will
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
To appreciate a row house neighborhood, one must first look at the plan as a whole before looking at the individual blocks and houses. The city’s goal to build a neighborhood that can be seen as a singular unit is made clear in plan, at both a larger scale (the entire urban plan) and a smaller scale (the scheme of the individual houses). Around 1850, the city began to carve out blocks and streets, with the idea of orienting them around squares and small residential parks. This Victorian style plan organized rectangular blocks around rounded gardens and squares that separated the row houses from major streets. The emphasis on public spaces and gardens to provide relief from the ene...
To be as upfront about the question proposed as the movie, ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’ is, the myth of Pruitt-Igoe is, in the simplest terms, the myth that the goals that Pruitt-Igoe was built on would come to pass. The goal of public housing? No, other large scale forms of public housing have worked and will continue to work. Rather, the idea of allowing Pruitt-Igoe to segregate people simply by continuing to stand, this is what would not pass. To usher a race of people, swaths of them, into a confined area away from the judgmental eye of a still largely prejudiced people, dictate how their lives should be led, and then to stop funding their housing and forget about them is an idea so steeped in racial prejudice and short-sightedness. The concept was doomed to failure, not by its insidious qualities but for being, simply, a bad idea, or as Ayn Rand puts it: “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
Hastings County, Social Housing, “Boxed In” April 2005 (pg. 6, 7, 15, 16, 23, 24, 108) Local Sources (pg. 110-114) Retrieved from: http://www.hastingscounty.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115&Itemid=88
Many researchers have theorized why the wealthy desire to move back into the city. Schwirian believes that many wealthy people are drawn to the architectural design of some of these old houses in urban areas (Schwirian 96). Harvey believes in a number of theories, and ...
...the predominant theme of disorientation and lack of understanding throughout the film. The audience is never clear of if the scene happening is authentic or if there is a false reality.
Frank Lloyd Wright was perhaps the most influential American architect of the 20th century and one of the greatest to ever live. What was well known about Wright was that he was deeply ambivalent about cities and metropolis centers. His key criticism of large cities was that the advancing technologies had rendered the cities, which were created industry and immigration in the late 19th and early 20th Century, completely obsolete. He famously quoted that, “ The present city…has nothing to give the citizen…because centralization have no forces of regeneration”. Instead, Wright envisioned decentralized settlements (otherwise known as suburban neighborhoods) that would take advantage of the mobility offered by the automobile, telephones, and telegraphic communication. Because of the rise of the suburban complexes in the post WW2 era, this is where Wright first got the reputation has being a prophet for the architecture world.
Schonwandt, Walter L. 2008. Planning in Crisis? Theoretical Orientations for Architecture and Planning. Ashgate Publishing: Burlington, VT. pp. 10