Arquitecture

This paper investigates the hidden encounters and influences between the CIAM’s avant-garde ideas and Victor Gruen’s mass-consumption plans and projects. It reconsiders the effects on society by investigating some ideas shared by both
post-war CIAM and Gruen, such as the need for centralization, the symbolical and functionalist split between machines and human beings, vehicular and pedestrian flows, with emphasis on three-dimensional design and precursory ecological thoughts.
Mall-maker Victor Gruen indeed published his seminal book The Heart of Our Cities: The Urban Crisis: Diagnosis and Treatment
in 1964, a mere decade after the proceedings of the eight CIAM congress, entitled The Heart of the City: Towards the Humanization of Urban Life were released. According to Eric Mumford, CIAM 8 became a ‘reference point for the new forms of public space, including Shopping malls [...]’ as Sert, then president of CIAM, described the shopping centre as ‘an idea of what these new urban cores might be like.’; ‘our open expression of the
new humanizing trend in the urban scene’.
This encounter continued with the presentation of Gruen’s ‘Fort Worth’ at the First Urban Design conference organized by Sert at Harvard in 1956 and was further developed until the 1970s when Gruen authored his precursory manifesto Die Charta von Wien. Based on his beloved Vienna, this new manifesto was indeed
an attempt to adapt CIAM’s Charte d`Athenes – nearly fifteen years after the organisation’s demise – to contemporary conditions, developing the commercial architectural principles into ecological urban planning proposals and paving the
road for a possible continuation of the Modern Movement.

The design study for a Contemporary Art Museum feutures stylistic minimalism, permeably with the outside environment, and attention to visitors` visual experience.
On the outside the museum looks like a half-cube with an entrance cut into it on the north side in the shape of a truncated pyramid. This splaying effect creates an anti-perspective internal view, which means that visitors in the lobby cannot see the architectural mass of the museum separating it from the outside nature. In this way, the structure holding the works of art disappears from the view of the people inside, at the same time drawing surrounding nature inside the premises. At night-time, in contrast, this aperture turns into a powerful and highly visible light source. The building is also pierced from the roof by an impluvium, which, as it extends right up through the entire height of the structure, allows natural light to flow freely into the internal rooms. The atmospheric features penetrating into the main architectural body render the experience of observing the works of art and building as something entirely unexpected and unique.

Victor Gruen is the pioneer of the regional shopping centre, he is the " Mall Maker " , which, is also the title of a book by M. Jeffrey Hartwick about this Austrian-born architect. Well known for his first commercial projects, which have been copied and analysed worldwide, mostly negatively influencing the structure of cities and societies, Gruen had focused his attention on the importance of the environmental crisis in his both theoretical writings and projects as early as the 1960s. How can Gruen be personified as both the " Mall Maker " and the " Architect of the Environment'? In the early 1970s Gruen presented Die Charta von Wien, as an attempt to readapt the CIAM`s Charte d`Athenes to the contemporary conditions, with a brand new emphasis on the ecological environment as well. This paper will deal mainly with these contradictions and synergies between " consumeristic " architecture and its role in the city in relation to the environmental issues posed by its inventor. The complexity of the connections between consumerism and ecology and the references to CIAM and Gruen, appear to be important themes for a discussion on public space and our contemporary urban condition.

The ‘mall maker’ (Hardwick, 2004) Victor Gruen is well known as the architect who played a dominant role in the design and global proliferation of the shopping mall. His position is undoubtedly of great interest for a contemporary discussion on the public sphere, particularly if we acknowledge «the world of the shopping mall [...] has become the world» as Margaret Crawford (1992: 6) claimed in the early 1990s. While many recent publications already highlighted and re-evaluated the architectural importance of Gruen’s shopping center, the urban ideal/utopian projects proposed by Gruen have not been considered in depth thus far.
In a late attempt at redeeming the global evolution of his idea of the shopping center, Gruen mixed his design principles for shopping centers with ecological interpretations, proposing the Cellular Metropolis as a new urban utopia. This paper aims to shed light on Gruen’s urban ideas, from his critical idea of the ecological-commercial realm to the study of radical commercial hybridizations, which are still relevant lessons for the design of our socio-spatial contemporary condition. In particular, the article focuses the discourse on the case study of Louvain-la-Neuve to explain and ground Gruen’s abstract urban ideas into a real site.
Keywords: Gruen, commercial design, shopping center, cellular metropolis, Louvain-la-Neuve

This paper explores for the first time one of the last buildings designed and the first library built by Mies van der Rohe: the Martin Luther King Library in Washington D.C. (1965-1972). It reveals the different layers of complexity concerning the MLK Library, exploring its political purpose and its pre-existing socio-spatial context, tackling both Mies’ monumentality and social emancipation which are both radically manifested. By comparing the MLK Library with other low-rise Mies' buildings, the aim is to discover continuities and variations within the modernist language of the «benign monolith» Mies.

David Chipperfield Architects Unveils Restoration of Venice’s Procuratie Vecchie. Instantly recognizable from the exterior, the 16th-century building on St. Mark’s Square will be partially accessible to the public for the first time in 500 years.

Zuccaro Marchi L., “Rebirth in Venice.” Architectural Record vol 5 (May 2022: 48-52) (ISSN: 0003-858X)
Online:
Zuccaro Marchi L., “David Chipperfield Architects Unveils Restoration of Venice’s Procuratie Vecchie.” Architectural Record  (2022, April 7) (ISSN: 2470-1513) https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15609-david-chipperfield-architects-unveils-restoration-of-venices-procuratie-vecchie

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XSBS5QNPNIFPN8ZHFSVI/full?target=10.1080/02665433.2023.2197867
The paper is focused on the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural paradigm of ‘habitat’ – as the anthropological and ecological interdependency between domestic space and its environment. Since the mid-twentieth century, our built environment has faced a long totalizing, planetary urbanization process, which urges us to review the old conventional urban-architectural categories we use to describe and understand our cities and countryside. Faced with the urgency of a more inclusive understanding of our built environment, this paper sheds more light on the paradigm of Habitat as an interdisciplinary urban lexicon, as it gained momentum in post-war urban thinking and has influenced urban design ever since. The paper holds that the post-war discussion on Habitat represented a unique moment in which interdisciplinary thinking on the built environment became central. The paper shows alliances and resonances between the post-war CIAM’s discourse on Habitat and other coeval sociological and philosophical studies to delineate a complex theoretical framework. Beyond the parameters and boundaries that have been considered and presumed conventionally within ordinary urban design and social science, the paper focuses on the complex interdisciplinary meanings, interpretations, and translations regarding the paradigm of post-war Habitat as a complex social and spatial notion.

THE ABSENCE OF THE PAST AS FUTURE FOR THE CITY:
RECONSTRUCTION AS SITUATED MODERN URBANISM IN POST-WAR MILAN, ROTTERDAM AND WARSAW. |
Tom Avermaete (ETH Zurich) AND Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi (Politecnico di Milano) |

Following the Second World War, numerous European cities grappled with
the challenging task of reconstruction. Despite the transformative impact of
these reconstruction projects on the urban landscape of Europe, the
historiography of urbanism tends to acknowledge them only minorly, often
reducing them to the mere creation of new housing developments or city
centres.
However, the reconstruction plans for European cities went beyond surfacelevel
planning of neighbourhoods or central city areas. They were intricately
connected to specific instances of urbicide and involved elaborate
negotiations with pre-existing social, legal, economic, technical and
morphological conditions, as well as with prevailing agencies.
Focusing on the cities of Milan, Rotterdam and Warsaw, this article argues
that, due to their charged relationship with the existing fabric, urban
reconstruction projects appear as alternative approaches to post-war
urbanism. They emerge as exemplars of a ‘situated modern urbanism’ distinct
from their counterparts, as they establish a modern urbanistic approach
grounded in a highly nuanced understanding of the dimensions of time and
agency.

Pierre-Alain Croset, Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, Luca Capacci with Amir Adelfar, Francesca Diano, Alberto Geuna, Maria Chiara Giangregorio
(Politecnico di Milano, DAStU-Department of Architecture and Urban Studies)


Pierre Alain Croset, Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, and Luca Capacci led the Architectural Design Studio at Politecnico di Milano in 2023. The course engaged international students in reflecting on the complex vertical building program in the port city of Rijeka, Croatia.

https://www.portcityfutures.nl/news/vertical-social-condensers-and-fantastic-waterfronts-in-rijeka-croatia-architectural-design

Following the post-pandemic condition, the design studio relied on the assumption that there is a growing and urgent demand for social gathering spaces with intergenerational programs and a mix of cultural and physical well-being activities.
Students had to tackle this contemporary urgency by reflecting upon and designing a program for a complex building with mixed cultural and sporting functions organized as a vertical city. We proposed to name this new type of building a “post-pandemic cultural and sports hub.”
This vertical social condenser was aimed at becoming a new landmark on the waterfront of Rijeka, tracing a new profound identity of the city. 
The design task opened new research questions on the relation between the city and the harbour, the legacy and heritage of the port’s structures, and the equilibrium between Rijeka’s historical clashes and future uncertainties.