With the visibly growth of population and acceleration of urbanization, people’s need are increased. Architects are devoting on seeking innovative styles and forms for architecture. However, due to the unconsciousness of the importance of humanitarian architecture, and the lack of conservation policy, designers tend to ignore the cultural meaning of the existing buildings and demolish them when a new program is launched. Such actions caused loss on both culture and humanity. To avoid such losses, reinvention should be considered as a main method for urbanization rather than demolition or simply expand the city area and build something new. In this paper, examples will be provided to support this argument.
From many perspective, New York city is one of the most modernized and developed cities on earth. If you ever looked into the urban design of New York, it is easy to tell that all the efficient infrastructures around New York have provided numerous fine connections from district to district. The advised city plan has brought, or still bringing New York better level of economy. However, failure on urban development still happened in this city. There is one example of a project that was abolished later on due the cursoriness to people: the reconstruction did not make to serve people from different social classes, on the contrary, caused people to lose their habitats. The project is called Bronx expressways which was managed by Robert Moses, the “master builder” of mid-20th century.In this project, Robert Moses accused to his idea of “car culture”. To accelerate the growth of the city, Robert was in favour on building highways instead of subways. To fulfill this task, he planned to demolish a large amount of neighbourhood and supporting facilities, the loss of home causing the residences aggressively antagonistic to the project. The worse thing was that he did not take the conditions of people from different social classes into consideration. Robert Moses neglected that a large amount of citizens could not even afford a car, instead, most of the people actually take subways as their main transportation. his ignorant of people’s habit on transportation caused a huge segregation between the middle and upper class residents to north of Bronx, leaving the rest portion of lower class residents suffering in the south part. Although this project may have benefited the upper class economics, it never worked because of the neglection of the minorities.
In order to avoid such conflicts that could happen in the demolition, some architects decided to deliberately ignore the existing cultural and humanistic elements and establish the “utopian” of their minds. However, culture and humanity are the intelligence and experiences that people gained over time. One can hardly innovate merely by getting rid of them. One famous example is Noisy-le-Grand, a post-modernism architecture complex which locates in the east suburb of Paris. The complex was designed by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill during World War II. With the concept of “utopian”, this “city” has the capacity for people from different social classes, it has 610 apartments and looks like a forest of concrete. He expected that his project would become a landmark and would work as the reference for other cities. However, he did not get his wish. The were several failures that happened in this project. Two of the major ones are about the negligence of humanity. First of all, the designer did not seek for any connection between the project and the old city. Bofill focused only on the new form of neighbourhood without paying attention to the needs of residences. Although the buildings are “well done”, the supporting facilities are inadequate. The residences still need to somehow go back to Paris to fulfill their daily needs. Afterall, even though the project is established away from the existing city, it is not as independent as it supposed to be, instead, it made people’s life harder. The other failure is the lack of communication in among people. Instead of having a sense of harmony in the neighbourhood, the large density of apartments makes the space look compressed and stressful, people are “trapped” in the fancy concrete boxes, the public spaces barely work, the whole place is a backwater. Can’t stand with the inconvenience and the lifeless atmosphere of the “city”, most residences moved out. Nowadays, only few elderly who feel rejected by the society still live in this deserted space. The similarity between these people and this neighbourhood shows flashes of tragedy. As Bofill admitted in an interview after the failure:”architecture does not change everything.” Negligence of culture of humanity is the major reason why the “city” waned.
Photo credit to:Laurent Kronental
On the other hand, there is still some great examples that had successfully incorporated the building into its surrounding atmosphere. Shanghai, as an international modern city, was still determined to maintain its old cultural district. At the same time, they demanded to integrate such districts into the city pace by adding the commercial elements. Tian-Zi-Fang, a famous old neighborhood formed by “Nongtang” (a type of traditional alley in Shanghai), was reinvented successfully. The native residences were all kept, but the first floor was redesigned in to stylistic café and creative groceries. Thousands of visitors are attracted to the area every day, produce the income for maintaining the district. Moreover, the reinvention of the neighbourhood also provides a better life quality for the residence because they were funded to decorate the old house. Such example shows us one possible way to solve the problems that could happen during the city development. For different sites, we can adjust the method, and finally take a humanitarian approach toward the growth of the city. Buildings should be something that people appreciate, a right way of reinvention can really revive an old city and bring better way of living to people who live there.
Photo credit to: http://www.douban.com/group/topic/44986535/
To Sum up, if we can reinvent old buildings, furthermore figure out the way to fit them into modern urban- planning, the charming connection between the “old” and the “new” will be created. The heritage of the culture will be kept and it enables the later generations tracking the development process of the city. Moreover, by respecting the culture and humanity, people will feel respected by the government and thus supporting the future urbanism. Negligence of culture and humanity will only retard the development of the city.
Source:
Helena L. Jubany. “The Social Responsibility of Architects”, Social Responsibility in Practice. June 29, 2011.
Stewart Brand. Emergence, desire lines and predicting behavior, “All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong”. How Buildings Learn, 1994, p. 160-178.
Vikas Shah. Thought Economics, The Role of Architecture in Humanity’s Story, June 2012.
Xusheng Zhang. Four Modes to Change the old neighbor, June 2010.
Chi-Wei Yang, GuiYangLouShi web, Reinvention of old new building: great examples, April 2014.
Siliang Fu, STLBEACON, Major Chinese cities face urbanization and demolition, June, 2012.