The demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project will be 50 years old in 2022. Many ideas of how to live collectively have changed since then. Check out some housing projects in which the placement values encounters and community living.
The Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, is considered a landmark of modernist architecture. Its high towers, inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, which totaled almost 3000 units, set out to fill about half of the government-indicated housing deficit in the 1950s in St. Louis, USA. Besides the innovative architectural project, the government also bet on an interracial coexistence that involved poor and vulnerable strata of society - in the middle of the segregationist period in the United States.
The project's decline has taken place since the conclusion of its construction in 1955. Less than 20 years later, in July 1972, the first phase of its demolition was completed. On the one hand, a project that put all the modernist concepts into practice, aiming to solve a large part of the city's housing deficit. On the other, a partially built one that gave up its landscaping and collective spaces to save resources amid a segregationist conjuncture in a poor peripheral neighborhood.
Since then, architecture has been designing housing projects that were apart from modernist ideals and concepts without denying them completely, aiming at better integration with the context, both in terms of scale and in terms of creating collective spaces that favor encounters and the creation of communities. Check out a selection of projects that relate to the site in different ways.
In contrast to the old modern idea of isolated buildings arranged side by side, some projects that occupy lots and blocks seek to adapt to the available space, mainly in already saturated cities where there is little area for expansion of the urban fabric. That is the case of Llacuna Building / ARQUITECTURA-G, which uses the plot geometry and corners to fit the residential building.
In cities where plots are still available to construct new buildings, they are usually small, so isolated and vertical buildings are more common. Chiripa Building / PALMA, for example, solves its allocation in a small plot ensuring communication between neighbors, without overlapping the surroundings, respecting the context and still taking advantage of the views.
The occupation of perimeter blocks - also practiced in the post-modern period - seeks more integration with the city. Housing operation Île Saint-Denis / Périphériques Architectes, while rescuing the corner as a city landmark, also creates collective spaces on the ground floor, in the form of small patios.
Another project that takes advantage of the perimeter occupation is the Bruz Utopia Housing / Champenois Architectes, which features a large, covered inner courtyard. As it is located in a less dense neighborhood, it can refer to post-modern megastructures without losing the possibility of creating a close relationship between its residents.
Finally, White Clouds / POGGI & MORE architecture also recalls megastructures, but in a reinterpretation, since it is exclusively housing. A housing complex of social interest that, despite being different from its surroundings, seeks contact with the neighborhood through balconies, openings and the dynamics of its facade.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on October 21, 2022.
