Housing in Paris—Programme Architecture Nouvelle
Paris, France
1975
This project approaches the question of housing on the basis of a critical reevaluation of some key notions that have been elaborated from the 1920s to the present about housing and its architecture. This can be illustrated by the two extreme and antithetic positions that define the spectrum of design strategies of this century in terms of control versus participation. On the one hand is the canonical proposition of the Modern Movement, expressed by the Congrés Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne postulates, which implies total intervention and control of the environment by the architect. On the other hand is the populist ‘theory,’ an inversion of these principles as a reaction to the ‘failures’ of modernism. It proposes the users’ participation as the determinant force in the configuration of the environment.
This project intends to displace the focus from the architect/user opposition to the question of reading and writing the architectural text itself. By posing the question in terms of reading and writing it recognizes the existence of a specific architectural knowledge that deals with form giving and it restates the question of the user in terms of reading. Design as reading presupposes the selection, combination, and transformation of forms and meanings, which have a cultural tradition, rather than the direct participation of a user in the design process.
This displacement is accomplished through the notion of type as a mediator between architecture and urbanism. Building types developed through centuries in urban agglomerations are significant cultural elements. The persistence of their ‘functional’ and symbolic codification is a proof of their institutionalized nature. They are recognized, understood, and accepted by their users as the norm. The urban context supplies the material from which types can be inferred and transformed generating a range of possible combinations and articulations.
The relationship between architecture and the city is accomplished by a mechanism of mise-en-sequence applied to different specific urban situations. In this process operations of transformation and articulation of types are performed.
This approach represents the contradictions between the forces of culture and the economic forces of the development of the city. It bypasses historicist and stylistic issues.
Our approach recognizes that building types represent only one element of the urban fabric, and that the articulations between public, semipublic, and private spaces are the elements that are essentially urban.
Thus, parallel to the housing types, we also propose a typology of connections or articulations developed almost independently of the housing, resulting in the enrichment of the chosen housing types through their connections. As a result of this operation, the traditional elements of entries, staircases, galleries, etc. allow for multiple readings. Thus the entry to one type—the apartment house—is at once a door, a staircase, a transition between city and house and between sidewalk and square, and a communal area for the units grouped in the building.
By combining, articulating, and transforming a given context of urban configurations, the mise-en-sequence models itself after the process by which the city develops.
This project intends to displace the focus from the architect/user opposition to the question of reading and writing the architectural text itself. By posing the question in terms of reading and writing it recognizes the existence of a specific architectural knowledge that deals with form giving and it restates the question of the user in terms of reading. Design as reading presupposes the selection, combination, and transformation of forms and meanings, which have a cultural tradition, rather than the direct participation of a user in the design process.
This displacement is accomplished through the notion of type as a mediator between architecture and urbanism. Building types developed through centuries in urban agglomerations are significant cultural elements. The persistence of their ‘functional’ and symbolic codification is a proof of their institutionalized nature. They are recognized, understood, and accepted by their users as the norm. The urban context supplies the material from which types can be inferred and transformed generating a range of possible combinations and articulations.
The relationship between architecture and the city is accomplished by a mechanism of mise-en-sequence applied to different specific urban situations. In this process operations of transformation and articulation of types are performed.
This approach represents the contradictions between the forces of culture and the economic forces of the development of the city. It bypasses historicist and stylistic issues.
Our approach recognizes that building types represent only one element of the urban fabric, and that the articulations between public, semipublic, and private spaces are the elements that are essentially urban.
Thus, parallel to the housing types, we also propose a typology of connections or articulations developed almost independently of the housing, resulting in the enrichment of the chosen housing types through their connections. As a result of this operation, the traditional elements of entries, staircases, galleries, etc. allow for multiple readings. Thus the entry to one type—the apartment house—is at once a door, a staircase, a transition between city and house and between sidewalk and square, and a communal area for the units grouped in the building.
By combining, articulating, and transforming a given context of urban configurations, the mise-en-sequence models itself after the process by which the city develops.