Architecture

This paper examines Germany's federally funded experimental building programs as cultural determiners and transformers. An analysis of studies and reports to sponsors of the past twenty years brings to light that from the urban environment to the architectural object, both tangible spatial objects and the process of their creation have become part of a culture of building that can successfully be guided through direct intervention. The paper concludes with suggesting further policy areas where this process can be implemented.

This paper compares two sets of planning paradigms in the Soviet Union and the United States. The projects analyzed are Mikhail Barshch and Moisei Ginzburg's Zelenyi Gorod ("Green City") of 1930, Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City of 1935, the anonymously planned Soviet mikrorayon, and William Drummond's competition entry for a neighborhood unit in Chicago, completed in 1913. The first two projects both propose dissolving the large city and dispersing the population across the land, while the second two envision cities composed of hierarchically structured communities with shared facilities. The paper highlights both the striking similarities and differences between the projects created in two very different national contexts.

One of the largest economic drivers in current-day Asia is China, a country that has experienced double-digit GDP growth for most of the past decade (World Bank 2014). With a centralized government still able to move mountains through policy, China’s cities have grown tremendously, both in terms of physical develop- ment and population. Although high-profile prestige projects, such as the build- ings developed for the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008 are the ones readily shown as the face of China’s new architectural allure, it is the country’s housing, an ubiquitous cultural need, that has most changed the face of the nation.
This paper will begin by surveying the major typologies of housing in China, with a focus on their enclosures, before turning to the literature on the now ubiqui- tous “sealed residential quarter” (fengbi xiaoqu), often called a “gated commu- nity.” Disagreement on how gated communities are affecting the Chinese city is strong, with some authors even making comparisons to gated communities in the United States. I examine whether existing urban theories – most of which are Western based, as the urban state and its production remains under-theorized in the Chinese literature (Tang 2000, Wei 2005) – can contribute to understanding the rapidly changing phenomenon of housing in China today.

Nation-states have long used representational architecture to create symbolic identities for public consumption both at home and abroad. Government buildings, major ensembles and urban plans have a visibility that lends them authority, while their repeated portrayals in the media cement their image as icons of a shared national character. Existing in tandem with this official self, however, is a second, often divergent identity, represented by the vast realm of domestic space defined largely by those who occupy it as well as those with a vested interest in its cultural meaning. Using both historical inquiry and visual, spatial and film analysis, this book explores the interaction of these two identities, and its effect on political control, class status, and gender roles.
Conflicted Identities examines the politicization of both public and domestic space, especially in societies undergoing rapid cultural transformation through political, social or economic expansion or restructuring, when cultural identity is being rapidly "modernized", shifted, or realigned to conform to new demands. Using specific examples from a variety of national contexts, the book examines how vernacular housing, legislation, marketing, and media influence a large, but often underexposed domestic culture that runs parallel to a more publicly represented one. As a case in point, the book examines West Germany from the end of World War II to the early 1970s to probe more deeply into the mechanisms of such cultural dichotomy. On a national level, post-war West Germany demonstratively rejected Nazi-era values by rebuilding cities based on interwar modernist tenets, while choosing a decidedly modern and transparent architecture for high-visibility national projects. In the domestic realm, government, media and everyday citizens countered this turn to state-sponsored modernism by embracing traditional architectural aesthetics and housing that encouraged patriarchal family structures.
Written for readers interested in cultural theory, history, and the politics of space as well as those engaged with architecture and the built environment, Conflicted Identities provides an engaging new perspective on power and identity as they relate to architectural settings.

This article analyzes the results of a broad-scale process of teaching ethics in architecture to both professional and research-based master’s students at a major U.S. university. Redefining ethics as a question of both power and empowerment (or agency), classical frameworks such as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative or Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism are re-cast as a framework of power discrepancies that can be addressed using negotiation strategies. Using examples taken from both professional practice and areas of current architectural research, students are asked to identify stakeholders and their values and interests, and then insert themselves into the framework as mediators in search of ethically responsive outcomes. This approach has allowed the perceived ethical neutrality of both design and research problem statements to be called into question, as students explore an enhanced role as professionals and researchers in relating problem statements to outcomes, and outcomes to broad stakeholder satisfaction.

The Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Gender reframes the discussion of modernity, space and gender; examining how "modernity" has been defined in various cultural contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, how this definition has been expressed spatially and architecturally, and what effect this has had on women in their everyday lives. In doing so, this volume presents theories and methods for understanding space and gender as they relate to the development of cities, urban space, and individual building types (such as housing, work spaces, or commercial spaces) in both the creation of and resistance to social transformations and modern global capitalism. The book contains a diverse range of case studies from the UK, US, Europe, and Asian countries such as China and India, which bring together a multiplicity of approaches to a continuing and common issue and reinforces the need for alternatives to the existing theoretical canon.

Cultural production finds constant reinforcement through the built environment, yet defining what “culture” is has become an increasingly contentious in recent years. In the United States, the rise of segregated physical spaces and the accompanying social stratification in the form of gated communities and pseudo-public spaces that attract homogenous communities has been well documented. Popularly, such segregation is linked to “living in a bubble”, in which different cultural norms within a society become isolated. Despite problems associated with such isolation, such as economic stratification and social intolerance, few architects and planners have addressed how the accompanying cultural production paradigms are related to the production of the built environment, and the architect’s role in this process.

This paper uses a variation of stakeholder theory to explore the consequences of our designs. Stakeholder theory, first proposed by R. Edward Freedman in the 1980s, states that in order to succeed, companies should create value for all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, financiers, and the community – and not just shareholders. Extended to the process by which the built environment is created, this means that the effects of our building patterns and practices must be considered through the lens of all possible stakeholders in order to produce successful projects. The first step is to gain a fuller understanding of a project’s short and long-term social and cultural ramifications. Using a method adopted from principled negotiation in which stakeholders and their interests are identified in order to develop scenarios by which a majority of interests can be accommodated, this paper will analyze several recent building projects in the United States to assess their impact on cultural production.

Research in architecture is a many-splendored thing. Technical questions on energy efficiency or materiality, social inquiry on user habits or satisfaction, and philosophical queries about the sense of space and place, all fall within the accepted realm of architecture and its creation. Much less considered is how the design process itself may purposefully be used as a research tool to elicit information that will adjust its outcome. This is perhaps because design is often considered "intuitive" rather than systematic, but it is nevertheless surprising when one considers the central role that design takes in architectural education, and more surprising still when one discovers that related disciplines, such as geography, have begun to examine pre-design steps for their research applicability. This paper examines how design-in this case the design charrette-may explicitly be used as a research methodology to change the very planning dialog that it is drawing upon for its process decisions, or put another way, how the designer uses focused discussions with user groups to obtain information vital to the planning process, while at the same time using the ensuing product to stimulate discussion beyond what would be possible without the design. Drawing on a case study taken from the teaching environment, this paper takes the position that design, both as an iterative process and as a participatory field-research process in the form of charrettes, may successfully be employed as a methodology to establish a dialog between researchers (in this case student-practitioners) and user groups. The latter provide initial design information to the researcher while at the same time using evolving products of the research to help define further parameters for exploration. This methodological approach has helped to focus the student-architects on genuine aspects of design problems, as opposed to self-fabricated ones.

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg übernahmen die Alliierten zunächst die politische Verantwortung über Deutschland; es folgten Entscheidungen über Politik, Presse, das Ausbildungssystem und die Gewerkschaft en. 1 Die USA, als dominierende Besatzungsmacht im Gebiet der Bundesrepublik, nutzte unter anderem den Marshallplan dazu, politische und gesellschaft liche Änderungen herbeizuführen. In den frühen Jahren des Kalten Krieges war es das Ziel, die Bundesrepublik als verlässlichen Partner in ein westliches Wirtschaft ssystem einzubinden. Um dies umzusetzen, versuchte man das deutsche Kaufverhalten zu beeinfl ussen: Ähnlich wie in den USA sollten die Verbraucher in Deutschland die Freuden des Konsums erleben. Das Einfamilienhaus als Eigenheim, vor dem Krieg für die kleinen Leute nahezu unvorstellbar, wurde ein Teil dieser Politik. Vom bürgerlichen Landsitz zum Häuschen im Grünen Eine Traditionslinie des Anziehungsobjekts ›Einfamilienhaus‹ führt aus den USA und Deutschland gleichermaßen nach Großbritannien, in dessen hierarchischem Klassensystem ein Landsitz, wie er in der Aristokratie üblich war, für höchsten gesellschaft lichen Status stand. Durch die Rezeption englischer Wertvorstellungen in den USA, die sich in der Architektur bereits in der andauernden Beliebtheit von Stilrichtungen wie ›Tudor‹, 1 Über den Einfl uss der USA auf die bundesdeutsche Nachkriegskultur und-institutionen ist viel geschrieben worden, siehe z.

41 "Look children, how wonderful! An apartment with running water, private toilet, and balcony!" We had just moved in. I remember how my ecstatic mother almost flew across the empty living room of our new home onto the sunny balcony holding my little sister in her arms. 1 This is the way a man recalled his new childhood home of the early 1950s in the late 1990s, when more than 300 suburbanites recorded their written memories of suburban living in the Helsinki region from the 1950s to the 1970s. 2 Housing in Finland underwent a major change after World War II. New homes and their modern facilities revolutionized everyday life and held out optimistic promises of a better future. 3 The narrators repeatedly contrasted the luxuries of new spacious apartments with their previous inadequate dwellings. Modern conveniences such as piped water, indoor toilets, shining bathrooms, standardized kitchen fittings, and balconies symbolized the change and aroused feelings of joy and happiness. Both landscape and people were on the move as hundreds of thousands of new dwellings were constructed, from remote rural settlements to urban centers, and hundreds of thousands of people relocated to new home districts. The war had exacerbated the already existing urban housing shortage, as the economic recession had stopped almost all housing construction in the mid-1930s. Karelian refugees, more than 400,000 people (one-eighth of the total Finnish population) from the territories ceded to the Soviet Union, had to be resettled, and ex-servicemen, numerous new families established after the war, and the growing urban population needed new homes. The emergence of new kinds of domestic and urban spaces fundamentally changed the Finnish landscape, housing customs, and the details of daily life affecting the space, time, and bodies of inhabitants. Postwar housing construction led to the wholesale modernization of Finnish housing. The modernist principles of spatial differentiation and the urban middle-class ideals of habitation that had emerged since the late 1920s were applied both indoors and outdoors. The postwar (re)construction of housing had two solutions. The reconstruction began in the countryside. Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, the one-and-a-half-story standardized wooden one-family houses, nicknamed "veterans' houses," provided the main solution for new homes both in rural areas and population centers. The volume of urban construction only caught up with rural levels in 1956. 4 Until the 1970s, the principal solution for urban habitation was the suburban apartment close to nature (Figure 3.1).

Housing typologies in China have changed dramatically over the past hundred years. Economic liberalization is accelerating these changes, shifting the understanding of housing in ways that cannot be explained through Western housing theory. Most of China is moving towards housing in "sealed residential quarters" (gated communities), yet these communities have a role and significance very different from those in the West. Historical analysis of housing types in China brings out the ingrained role of enclosing walls in housing, a cultural value that is centuries old yet being given new meaning through the introduction of Western-style, developer-driven housing estates. This is contrasted by a Western understanding of urban systems as consisting of interlocking spaces and flows, where social interchanges may be initiated or sustained. To explore this interplay, we examine two communities in the industrial city of Shenyang, analyzing the role that their outdoor spaces play for the residents and their urban context. We find that the population readily accepts China's new, gated communities, even as they call into question the city beyond. This paper discusses several implications, both at the micro and the macro level.

Housing and the Politics of Cultural Representation (Routledge Research in Architecture) Alexandra Staub Nation-states have long used representational architecture to create symbolic identities for public consumption both at home and abroad. Government buildings, major ensembles and urban plans have a visibility that lends them authority, while their repeated portrayals in the media cement their image as icons of a shared national character. Existing in tandem with this official self, however, is a second, often divergent identity, represented by the vast realm of domestic space defined largely by those who occupy it as well as those with a vested interest in its cultural meaning. Using both historical inquiry and visual, spatial and film analysis, this book explores the interaction of these two identities, and its effect on political control, class status, and gender roles. Conflicted Identities examines the politicization of both public and domestic space, especially in societies undergoing rapid cultural transformation through political, social or economic expansion or restructuring, when cultural identity is being rapidly "modernized", shifted, or realigned to conform to new demands. Using specific examples from a variety of national contexts, the book examines how vernacular housing, legislation, marketing, and media influence a large, but often underexposed domestic culture that runs parallel to a more publicly represented one. As a case in point, the book examines West Germany from the end of World War II to the early 1970s to probe more deeply into the mechanisms of such cultural dichotomy. On a national level, postwar West Germany demonstratively rejected Nazi-era values by rebuilding cities based on interwar modernist tenets, while choosing a decidedly modern and transparent architecture for high-visibility national projects. In the domestic realm, government, media and everyday citizens countered this turn to state-sponsored modernism by embracing traditional architectural aesthetics and housing that encouraged patriarchal family structures. Written for readers interested in cultural theory, history, and the politics of space as well as those engaged with architecture and the built environment, Conflicted Identities provides an engaging new perspective on power and identity as they relate to architectural settings.

Cultural production finds constant reinforcement through the built environment, yet defining what “culture” is has become an increasingly contentious in recent years. In the United States, the rise of segregated physical spaces and the accompanying social stratification in the form of gated communities and pseudo-public spaces that attract homogenous communities has been well documented. Popularly, such segregation is linked to “living in a bubble”, in which different cultural norms within a society become isolated. Despite problems associated with such isolation, such as economic stratification and social intolerance, few architects and planners have addressed how the accompanying cultural production paradigms are related to the production of the built environment, and the architect’s role in this process. This paper uses a variation of stakeholder theory to explore the consequences of our designs. Stakeholder theory, first proposed by R. Edward Freedman in the 1980s, states that i...

This paper examines Germany’s federally funded experimental building programs as cultural determiners and transformers. An analysis of studies and reports to sponsors of the past twenty years brings to light that from the urban environment to the architectural object, both tangible spatial objects and the process of their creation have become part of a culture of building that can successfully be guided through direct intervention. The paper concludes with suggesting further policy areas where this process can be implemented. The process of focusing culture Germany has a long tradition of experimental building programs. Starting in the 1920s with social questions of providing housing for the masses and technical ones of how to get there, the focus in recent decades has turned to urban and suburban settlement patterns, sustainable building practices and ecologically sound living concepts – paradigms that have become critical in other European countries and the United States as well. ...