Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the experiences in the field of housing associated with the welfare state that emerged during the process of rebuilding the devastated countries of Western Europe after the Second World War. This process was marked by a period of economic growth that allowed the implementation of socio-economic policies and ambitious social welfare programmes with the aim of improving the lives of citizens. The three concepts explained in the following chapter attempt to summarise these interventions. Although they responded to ideas developed in specific geographical, social and cultural contexts, they quickly became paradigmatic actions that had a decisive influence on much of the urban development that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century.
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Notes
- 1.
“When the war was over the main reaction was one of simple elementary relief. There came a feeling of weariness, a desire to avoid basic problems, to be content with immediate, tangible results: unpropitious conditions for the careful consideration demanded by the gravity of the contemporary problems. (…) Since this process was a very rapid one, there was conflict almost everywhere between the emergency measures necessitated by the war damage and long-term measures necessitated by economic development; in short, between reconstruction and planning.” (Benevolo 1971, 684).
- 2.
The London County Council (LCC) was the main government body for the County of London, which had broad authority over matters such as education, planning and social housing.
- 3.
The 4 rings of the Greater London Plan comprised: the ‘inner ring’ (area of the County of London), the ‘suburban ring’ (suburban zone), the ‘green belt’ (green space that surrounded the present city and should be maintained) and the ‘outer ring’ (area destined for ‘new towns’). This plan based on concentric rings was totally contrary to the linear plans made for London by Ludwig Hilberseimer (1941) and by the MARS Group (1942) (Pizza 1987).
- 4.
The 13 first-generation ‘new towns’ were: Stevenage (1946), Harlow (1947), Crawley, (1947), Hemel Hampstead (1947), Hatfield (1948), Welwyn Garden (expanded 1948), Basildon (1949), Bracknell (1949), East Kilbride (1947) in Lanarkshire (Scotland), Peterlee (1948) in County Durham, Glenrothes (1948) in Fifeshire (Scotland), Cwmbran (1949) in South Wales, and Corby (1950) in Northamptonshire.
- 5.
F. Gibberd acted as a great disseminator of the principles of the Athens Charter, which made him one of the most salient figures of the Modern Movement in Britain. He took part in the CIAM 7 and 8 meetings, where he was able to share the experience of the British ‘new towns’, and he published the book Town Design in 1953, which was a reference manual for the construction of ‘new towns’ where special attention was given to the visual aspects of the urban space (Gibberd 1953).
- 6.
“New towns represented the implementation of such urban concepts espoused by the Athens Charter as master planning, separation of functions, urban hierarchy and separated circulation systems” (García Alonso and Luque Valdivia 2004).
- 7.
In his article “The Failure of the New Towns”, J.M Richards described these urban settlements as a social, economic and architectural failure (Richards 1953).
- 8.
With perhaps the odd exception, the setting of the ‘new towns’ formed a type of ‘architectural style’ defined as ‘new empiricism’ by the critics at The Architectural Review.
- 9.
Two ‘new towns’ can be considered part of this second generation: Hook (1960–61) in Hampshire, designed by the London County Council for 100,000 inhabitants but not built, and Cumbernauld New Town (1955–67), designed by the planner Hugh Wilson for 70,000 inhabitants, was created to decentralise the Scottish city of Glasgow. The result of the latter was criticised because its layout did not allow for future growth processes and produced significant traffic problems.
- 10.
Standing out from among the third generation of ‘new towns’ are Runcorn (1964–65) and Milton Keynes (1968–71), with the latter reaching the threshold of 250,000 inhabitants. The criticism directed at the latter was due to the excessive fragmentation of the land, which gave rise to a subdivision into ‘island neighbourhoods’, to the replacement of the urban value of the square with the central area for services located in a single container, and to the loss of the physiognomy of a city by turning it into a ‘Road Town’.
- 11.
“We can say, in short, that at its peak the new town experience stagnated into a double paradox: on the one hand, as a movement born out of an anti-urban ideology ending up defending the need for high urban density, but on the other, owing to a flawed initial approach, being unable to give a coherent shape to this unavoidable requirement.” (Gravagnuolo 1991).
- 12.
“So far no strong reaction is evident against the principles upon which functionalism was founded. Indeed, these principles were never more relevant than now. The tendency is, rather, both to humanize the theory on its aesthetic side and to get back to the earlier rationalism on the technical side. (…) However, the effort to humanize the aesthetic expressions of functionalism is open to many interpretations. The Swedish one, which is illustrated here, may, on the basis of statements made by Swedish architects themselves, be called The New Empiricism. Briefly, they explain it as the attempt to be more objective than the functionalism, and to bring back another science, that of psychology, into the picture.” in Richards (1947, 199).
- 13.
As with the first generation of British ‘new towns’, this architecture “proposed a style of urban planning that paid attention to the psychology of the user, accumulating experiences from the past, the specific and the detail. It meant, therefore, a reinterpretation of the vernacular architecture by looking to traditional tastes…” (Ordeig Corsini 2004, 125–126).
- 14.
Together with this empiricist attitude, the interpretation of nature emerges as a crucial concept that is more influential in the urban setting. The mental context, apart from the real, physical setting, continues to be the forest… “For example, for a Finn, the forest signifies protection and comfort, while for a Central European, it signifies a threat and anxiety. In summer, most Finns renounce the modern conveniences of the city and take pleasure in returning to the lifestyle of the earliest inhabitants of the forest.” (Ordeig Corsini 2004, 96).
- 15.
“Calling to mind the successful, early 20th-century garden suburb (villastad) interventions in Stockholm, Markelius based his plan on the complementarity between the high-density city centre and a ring of peripheral satellite cities to be built starting in the early 1950s: Vällingby (1953–1959), Färsta (1958), Skärholmen (1963–1968), Tenska-Rinkeby (1975), Norra Järvafältet (1977).” (Gravagnuolo 1991).
- 16.
The term ‘forest town’ comes from the housing project designed by the Finnnish master Alvar Aalto for workers of the Sunila Cellulose Factory (1935–39) and would have a decisive influence on Nordic urban design owing to its particular harmony between the landscape and the architecture. In addition to carrying out other planning projects of special relevance, Aalto was the head of the Finnish Office for Reconstruction in 1944. (Torres et al. 2006, 12–19).
- 17.
Tapiola was the initiative of Heikki von Hertzen, executive director of Väestöliitto (Population and Family Welfare Federation of Finland) and it was planned by Otto-Ivari Meurman, in collaboration with brilliant Nordic architects such as Aulius Blomstedt, Arne Ervi, Viljo Revell and Markus Tavio, among others.
- 18.
Like Fourier’s utopian designs for phalansteries dating from the first half of the nineteenth century, the unité was defined as a self-sustaining community in which the relationship between the number of residents, communal services and the space occupied by these is balanced by a functional organisation based on the social analysis of the time. Eduard Calafell, Las unités d'habitation de le Corbusier, Aspectos formales y constructivos. (Barcelona: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 200), 17.
- 19.
The Ministry of Reconstruction and Urban Development of France was created in 1944 to confront the problems created by the war. Minister Claudius Petit dealt with urban and rural planning and organised specific interventions that would attract the interest of the general public, and the unité in Marseilles would be the most outstanding project under his leadership (Benevolo 1971).
- 20.
The break in his career caused by the start of the Second World War allowed Le Corbusier to organise his ideas on architecture and urban development developed in recent years and to bring them together in the Unité d’Habitation à Grandeur Conforme (Calafell 2000, 15).
- 21.
“Architects such as Jaap Bakema and Jo van der Broek, who were leaders in Dutch post-war urban planning, took Le Corbusier’s unitary idea and totally deconstructed the volume into different blocks, giving rise to their most important contribution: the self-sufficient neighbourhood” (Benevolo 1971).
References
Benevolo, L. 1971. History of modern architecture [Storia dell’architettura moderna, 1960]. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press.
Calafell, E. 2000. Las unités d’habitation de le Corbusier. Aspectos formales y constructivos. Barcelona: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos.
Gravagnuolo, B. 1991. La progettazione urbana in Europa, 1750–1960: storia e teorie. Bari: Laterza.
Monteys, X. 1996. Una síntesis. La Unité d’habitation. In La gran máquina. La ciudad en Le Corbusier, 147–161. Barcelona: Demarcación del Barcelona del Colegio de Arquitectos de Cataluña y Ediciones del Serbal.
Ordeig Corsini, J.M. 2004. Diseño urbano y pensamiento contemporáneo. Barcelona: Monsa.
Torres, J., D. Domingo, F.J. Nieto, R. Castellanos, C.E. Mejía, J. Deltell, M. Pérez, et al. 2006. Tapiola. DPA Documents de Projectes d’Arquitectura 22. Barcelona: UPC.
Weston, R. 2004. Jørn Utzon Logbook Vol I: The Courtyard Houses. Denmark: Bløndal.
Further Readings
Avermaete, T., and D. van den Heuvel, ed. 2011. The European Welfare State Project: Ideals, Politics, Cities and Buildings. Footprint, Delf Architecture Theory Journal 9.
Bardí i Milà, B., D. García Escudero, A. Frediani, J.J. Ferrer Forés, H. Palmer, U. Grønvold, P. Thule, et al. 2010. Nórdicos. DPA Documents de Projectes d’Arquitectura. Vol. 26. Barcelona: UPC.
Canizaro, V.B. 2007. Architectural Regionalism. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Colquhoun, A. 2002. Neoclassicism, organicism, and the welfare state: architecture in scandinavia 1910–1965. Modern Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
García Alonso, M., and J. Luque Valdivia. 2004. Frederick Gibberd 1953, Town Design, Architectural Press, London. In Constructores de la ciudad contemporánea. Aproximación disciplinar a través de los textos, 413–420. Madrid: Cie Inversiones Editoriales—Dossat 2000.
Gibberd, F. 1953. Town Design. London: Architectural Press.
Hall, T. 1991. Planning and urban growth in the Nordic countries. Oxford: Alexandrine Press.
Lujanen, M. 2004. Housing and housing policy in the Nordic countries. Copenhage: Nordic Council of Ministers.
De Maré, E.S. 1948. The antecedents and origins of Sweden’s latest style. The Architectural Review 103: 9–10.
Montaner, J.M. 1993. Arquitectura nórdica: ‘New empirism’ y la arquitectura en el detalle. In Después del movimiento moderno. Arquitectura de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, 83–94. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Pizza, A. 1987. Acontecimientos catastróficos y modelos de regeneración: Casa, barrio, ciudad, en las experiencias de la reconstrucción europea. 1945–1955. In La arquitectura de los años 50 en Barcelona, ed. X. Monteys, 234–267. Madrid: MOPU.
Swenarton, M., T. Avermaete, and D. van den Heuvel. 2015. Architecture and the Welfare State. London: Routledge.
Richards, J.M. 1947. The new empiricism: Sweden’s latest style. The Architectural Review 101: 199.
Tafuri, M., and F. Dal Co. 1979a. Between nationalism and populism: The bay region style, Scandinavian neo-empiricism, Italian neo-realism, the work of Alvar Aalto. Modern Architecture [Architettura Contemporanea, 1976]. New York: Electa–Rizzoli.
Tafuri, M., and F. Dal Co. 1979b. Urbanistic administration and building policies after world war II. Modern Architecture [Architettura Contemporanea, 1976]. New York: Electa–Rizzoli.
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Dean, A. (2018). Welfare Planning and New Towns (1945–1970s). In: Díez Medina, C., Monclús, J. (eds) Urban Visions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59047-9_6
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