Reconstruction: Architecture, the Built Environment and the Aftermath of the First World War

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgement Figures 3, 4 and 7 are based upon Crown Copyright material and are reproduced with the permission of LPS under delegated authority from the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Crown Copyright and database rights 2009 MOU 203. Notes The Forum for Alternative Belfast is constituted as a Community Interest Company. It has seven Directors and a support network of around 30–40 people from various backgrounds who have contributed to both projects and events. The directors include practising architects and academics from both Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster. See, for example, Bernard, H.R., Social Research Methods; Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (London, Sage Publications, 2000); Creswell, J., Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Method Approaches (London, Sage Publications, 2009). Hamdi, Nabeel, Small Change: The Artistry of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities (London, GBR: Earthscan Publications Limited, 2004), p. xxi. See, for example, Cooke, P., ed., Localities: Changing Face of Urban Britain (London, Routledge, 1989) and Harvey, David, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996). Jones, P., 'Putting Architecture in its Social Place: A Cultural Political Economy of Architecture', Urban Studies, Vol. 46, Number 12 (2009), p. 2520. Massey, D., For Space (London, Sage Publications, 2005). Romann, M. and Weingrod, A., Living Together Separately: Jews and Arabs in contemporary Jerusalem (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991). Bollens, Scott, A., 'Urban Planning amidst Ethnic Conflict: Jerusalem and Johannesburg', Urban Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1998), pp. 729 – 750. Misselwitz, P. and Rieniets, T., 'Cities of Collision', in, Misselwitz, P. and Rieniets, T., eds, City of Collision: Jerusalem and the principles of conflict urbanism (Boston, Berlin, Birkhauser, 2006); Yiftachel, O. and Yacobi, H., 'Urban ethnocracy: ethnization and the production of space in an Israeli "mixed city"', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21 (2003), pp. 673–93. See, for example, Brand, R., 'Written and Unwritten Building Conventions in a Contested City: The Case of Belfast', Urban Studies, Vol.46, Number 12, (2009), pp. 2669–2689. Dovey, Kim, 'Memory, Democracy and Urban Space: Bangkok's 'Path to Democracy', Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2001), p. 267. Caldeira, T., City of Walls: crime, segregation and citizenship in Sao Paulo, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001). Weiner, R., The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill (Belfast, Farset Co-operative Press, 1980; 2nd Edition). See, for example, Brett, C. E. B., Buildings of Belfast (Belfast, Friar's Bush Press, 1985). Gaffikin, F. and Morrissey, M., eds, City Visions: Imagining Place, Enfranchising People (London, Pluto Press, 1999), p.165. In August, 1973, The Journal of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission reported that since 1969, 60,000 people in Belfast had been forced to move from their homes through intimidation in 'the largest enforced population movements in Europe since the Second World War'. Curtis, Jennifer, (2008) '"Community" and the Re-Making of 1970s Belfast', Ethnos, Vol. 73.3, p.402. Ibid., p.417. Neill, William J. V., 'Marketing the Urban Experience: Reflections on the Place of Fear in the Promotional Strategies of Belfast, Detroit and Berlin', Urban Studies, Vol. 38, Nos 5–6 (2001), p. 821. McEldowney, M., Sterrett, K. and Gaffikin, F., 'Architectural Ambivalence: the Built Environment and Cultural Identity in Belfast', in, Neill, William J.V. and Schwedler, Hanns-Uve, Urban Planning and Cultural Inclusion: Lessons from Belfast and Berlin (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York, Palgrave, 2001), p. 107. Local councils in Northern Ireland have only limited functions such as waste collection, maintenance of parks and cemeteries and building control. Planning, regeneration and housing responsibilities rest with central government departments. O'Dowd, L., Rolston, B. and Tomlinson, M., Between Civil Rights and Civil War (London, CSE Books, 1981). Bollens, S., Urban Peace Building in Divided Societies: Belfast and Johannesburg (Boulder, Co,Westview Press, 1999). Ellis, G., 'Addressing Inequality: Planning in Northern Ireland', International Planning Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2000), p. 350. Ibid., p. 351. Murtagh, B., The Politics of Territory: Policy and Segregation in Northern Ireland (Palgrave, 2002), p. 168. Department of the Environment (NI), Belfast Urban Area Plan (1986). See, for example, Cowan, C., 'Belfast's hidden planners', Town and Country Planning, 51, 6 (1982), pp. 163–167; Dawson, G., 'Defensive planning in Belfast', Irish Geography, 17. 1, (1984), pp. 22–41; Hillyard, P., 'Law and Order', in, J. Derby, ed., Northern Ireland: the Background to the Conflict (Belfast, Appletree Press, 1983). Murtagh, B. (2002), op. cit., p. 164. Stollard, P., 'The Architecture of No-Man's Land', Architect's Journal, Vol. 180, No. 31 (1984), pp. 24–39. The Forum for Alternative Belfast initially emerged following an event at the Cathedral Arts Festival in the city in June, 2008. A small group of architects and urban planners invited Ron Weiner to speak at the Festival about the inspiration for his book The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill, published over thirty years ago. The book told the story of how a working-class community in Belfast was devastated by planning and redevelopment. The story inspired others across the world, including Mike Davis, to consider how working-class communities could challenge the authority and rationales of urban planning regimes: Davis, M., City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London,Verso, 1990); Davis, M., Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class (London, Verso, 2006). Bollens, S., 'Urban Governance at the Nationalist Divide: Coping with Group-Based Claims', Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2007), pp. 229–253. Ibid. p. 240. Murtagh, B., 'New Spaces and Old in "Post-Conflict" Belfast', Divided Cities/Contested States Working Paper Series (2008) (www.conflictincities.org/workingpapers.html), p. 3. Soja, Edward, W., (2009) 'Designing the Postmetropolis', in, Krieger, A. and Saunders, W.S., eds, Urban Design (Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 2009), p.259. Over a period of five days in August, 2009, around fifty architects, planners, students and others took part in the study, and each evening outside professionals, community representatives, artists and academics participated in reviews of the work. The outcomes of the research were formally presented in Belfast City Hall in January, 2010, at an event hosted by the Lord Mayor (now MP for East Belfast), Naomi Long, who fully supported the overall initiative. The Study Area was defined as an area within a 15-20 minute walking distance of Belfast City Centre. It covers all or part of a number of inner-city wards, including Duncairn, Crumlin, Shankill, Clonard, Blackstaff, Island, New Lodge, Waterworks, Falls, Shaftesbury, Woodstock and Ballymacarrett. All statistical calculations are based on Super Output Area Census and Mid-Year estimates provided by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) (http://www.nisra.gov.uk/). Each site was assessed both for its suitability and for its potential residential capacity. On the basis of this analysis, and using an agreed formula, it was estimated that the vacant land could accommodate at least an additional 50,000 people. Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency NISRA: based on 2006 projections. See, for example, Liam O'Dowd and Milena Komarova, 'Regeneration in a Contested city: A Belfast Case Study', Working Paper No. 10 (Belfast, Queen's University, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, 2009); http://www.conflictincities.org. Gaffikin, F, Sterrett, K., McEldowney, M., Morrissey, M. and Hardy, M., Planning Shared Space for a Shared Future (Belfast, The Community Relations Council, Northern Ireland, 2008). Ibid., p. 123. Gallagher, T., 'Education in Context', in Donegall Pass: Towards a Sustainable Community (Belfast, CU2, Queen's University, 2008). McKeown, Michael, Post-Mortem: An examination of the patterns of politically associated violence in Northern Ireland during the years 1969–2001 as reflected in the fatality figures for those years (Belfast, Cain: Conflict Archive on the Internet, 2009; http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/mckeown/). Morrissey, M. and Gaffikin, F., 'Planning for Peace in Contested Space', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30.4 (December, 2006), pp. 873–93. See, for example, Gehl, Jan, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (Copenhagen, The Danish Architectural Press, 2008). The Divis project now has the support, and technical assistance, of the Department of Regional Development's Roads Service (DRD) engineers, who, under public pressure, are beginning to think more imaginatively about road barriers in the city. As well as this, an implementation plan for the scheme demonstrates minimum cost to the public purse. Significantly too, the West Belfast Partnership Board (www.westbelfast-partnership.com) has supported the project, not least because of the need for both residential and office accommodation in this part of inner-city Belfast. See, for example, Shuttleworth, I. and Lloyd, C., Mapping Segregation in Belfast: Northern Ireland Housing Executive Estates (Belfast, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, 2007). Belfast Telegraph newspaper (25th January, 2010). Hamdi, Nabeel (2004), op. cit., p.101. Till, Jeremy, 'The negotiation of hope', in, Blundell Jones, Peter, Petrescu, Doina and Till, Jeremy, eds, Architecture and Participation (Oxford, Spon Press, 2005). See, for example, Gunder, M., 'Passionate planning for the others' desire: an agonistic response to the dark side of planning', Progress in Planning, 60 (2003), pp. 235–319. Till, Jeremy (2005), op. cit., p.40. Soja, Edward, W. (2009), op. cit., p. 260. See, for example, Gaffikin, F., McEldowney, M. and Sterrett, K., 'Creating Shared Public Space in the Contested City: The Role of Urban Design', Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 15, No. 4 (November, 2010), pp. 493–513. Also, Comedia, (2007) Bringing Communities and People Together. Commission on Integration and Cohesion, and DEMOS (2007) Equally Spaced? Public space and interaction between diverse communities. A Report for the Commission for Racial Equality. McNeill, D. and Tewdwr-Jones, M., 'Architecture, Banal Nationalism and Re-territorialization', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 27.3 (2003), pp. 738–43. See, for example, Morrissey, M. and Gaffikin, F. (2006), op. cit. O'Dowd, Liam, 'Belfast Transitions', in, Downey, Karen, Where are the people: contemporary photographs of Belfast 2002–2010 (Belfast, Belfast Exposed Photography, 2010).

The human being is the only living organism which steadily uses “tools”. We have used tools to cultivate our land, grow our food, build up cities and communication infrastructures – tools are the basis for phenomena as culture and globalization. Some even argue that tools (and especially the wealth they are able to create for a huge amount of people) are the basis for today’s global spread of freedom and democracy [1]. Especially tools which enhance our power in the field of mobility have played an important role in human history. The bicycle, an archetype of the assistance in physical ability and mobility, is based on the combination of human power and an artificial, technical system and was introduced by C. Drais in 1817. Later on, the car pressed ahead with this approach and supplemented human force by motor technology, a kind of actuator. Ergonomics and the research on efficient man-machine cooperation developed during First and Second World War in order to maximize the efficiency of man controlled artifacts as motor cycles, cars, airplanes, ships and other war equipment. After the Second World War, systematic science in improving man-machine systems led to airplanes and cars which more and more reduced the physical and cognitive workload of the human users. Today’s cars take over driving maneuvers in critical situations and electric cars equipped with sensor-actuator systems provide a multitude of possibilities to assist the driver and driving efficiency. Within the scope of research on the next generation fighter jet control an autopilot is used which is able to set its degree of autonomy in real-time based on the measured cognitive workload of the pilot [2]. An even closer relation between man and machine is represented by so called mobile suits envisaged by Japanese technology visionaries (e.g. in Japanese Mangas) since the 60 ’s. In 1963, the Rancho Arm was developed by Rancho Los Amigos Hospital (California) as an artificial limb for handicapped and later on integrated with computer technology by Stanford University. Experiments with whole mobile suits and power assistance devices were conducted by Japanese robotic scientists since the 70 ’s. Today’s version of HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) is controlled by bio-electric signals thus blurring the borders between man and machine. Further, modern power suits allow a stepwise regulation of the suits’ assistive power according to user’s individual needs. Finally, Toyota calls its next generation of downsized, personal, and electrical mobility devices like iReal and iSwing explicitly “Mobility Robots” and closely cooperates with top robotic researches to make them as intuitively operated as possible.

Civilization is the advanced social development that is believed to owe its origin to human interaction in cities. But cities do not always have a civilizing effect. In history, the size of a population has corresponded to the availability of resources, particularly food and water. Ever since the Age of Agriculture, the stability of food supplies and the relative security of group settlements have decreased mortality rate and increased fertility. The consequent increased demand leads to exploitation of resources, which invariably exceeds the accessible supply. As a result, a cyclical population decline occurs, through starvation, disease, social and economic declination, migration and war (Facing The Future: People and the Planet 1997). Historical examples abound: recurring famines, the Black Death, colonization, the two World Wars. As cities have historically been a place of gathering, of diversity and culture, trends in city planning are redefining the structure of cities into segregated zones separating the haves and the have-nots. Classified by political theorist Michael Walzer as “single-minded” spaces, most metropolises today comprise distinct business districts, industrial zones, shopping arcades, uptown residences, and lower class or racial ghettos. In contrast to “open-minded” spaces that interweave multiple functions for the masses, single-minded spaces, along with automobile dependency, promote social isolationism, in which city residents tend to minimize interaction with and within the city and the diversity thereof. In addition, the decentralization of megacities to a greater urban sprawl spring a number of design issues, including the harmonization of new business districts, mix-income residences, and land allocation for green areas. At present, urban development continues to follow the piecemeal approach, where districts are designed as an isolated project. Furthermore, infrastructure such as roads and public transportation must be considered with the environment and population density. In most of the countries (since the industrial revolution for some European countries) and in the beginning of the 1960’s in South America and Africa, it had been noticed a huge and unexpected migration from the rural to the urban areas. The attraction and migration to the urban areas can be explained by the search for a diversified environment (different ethnics, multitude of activities) offering many opportunities (in terms of jobs, leisure, health, communication, etc.) with the hope to change the social status, offer a better education to their progenitor. Certainly, this attraction has some positive aspects (amenities offered, well-being, increase of knowledge, etc.) but it has also some negative aspects from the environmental and psychological (anonymity, noise, aggression, vandalism, pollution, robbery, crimes, etc.). These negatives aspects led to a social and physical segregation of the city, usually the areas with a high-rise buildings or occupied by a low-income lack of gardens or playground for children and most of the urban furniture are damaged physically or having some graffiti on them. It seems that there is a very strong correlation between crime and density. In fact this kind of behavior is not specific to our contemporary life. Historically, and from the chronological point of the view, it was Leonardo De Vinci who tried to construct a safety space. Then the utopian who developed some spatial organizations highlighting the hygienic issues, and later Henard, Howard and Perry with their interests on the traffic problems, and public safety led to the development of a new of thinking about the production of our build environment and called Environmental Design.

Reviewed by: James Marston Fitch: Selected Writings on Architecture, Preservation, and the Built Environment Carol Poh (bio) James Marston Fitch: Selected Writings on Architecture, Preservation, and the Built Environment. Edited by Martica Sawin . New York: W. W. Norton, 2007 Pp. 312. $27.95. "In architecture there are no spectators: there are only participants." This dictum provides the overarching theme of this wide-ranging collection of the writings of James Marston Fitch (1909–2000), a towering figure in American architecture, criticism, and preservation. Wholly self-taught (though ultimately laden with numerous honorary degrees), Fitch joined the faculty of Columbia University's School of Architecture as a professor of architectural history in 1954 and went on to found, with Charles Peterson, the first program of formal study in historic preservation in the United States. His book American Building: The Historical Forces that Shaped It, first published in 1947 and subsequently revised and enlarged, pioneered a neglected subject and remains a standard reference. Organized thematically under the broad topics of criticism, history, preservation, and climate and environment, the essays gathered and edited by Martica Sawin (Sawin was married to Fitch during the last years of his life and is his literary executor) lead us through the evolution of the author's thinking about architectural design and historic preservation. Fitch began his career as a copyist, designing archaeologically correct period houses. He soon came to reject these as deceitful anachronisms, and in "The Houses We Live In" (1933) he complains about "the futility of all this clever and laborious use of archaic detail" (p. 36), the "machines [for climate control] smuggled between floors, concealed in closets, crammed [End Page 289] between walls" (p. 40). Instead, he becomes a devout proponent of modernism—what he calls "pure plan"—and pronounces that "utter honesty is modernism's biggest asset" (p. 31). Fitch offers paeans both to Louis Kahn's Richards Medical Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania for its "authentic, almost startling originality" (pp. 41–42) and, even while noting that its construction required the destruction of a large area of the oldest quarter of the city, to Boston's City Hall for its "Miesian precision" (p. 49). He lauds Germany's Bauhaus, established by Walter Gropius in Dessau in 1919, as "a radiant symbol of a whole new way of life" (p. 149); with its "elegance of the economical [and] functional," its implied "responsible handling of material resources," it represented to Fitch a veritable utopia, "the fruitful application of science and technology to the architectural needs of industrial democracy" (p. 154). Its lessons came late to America. By 1932, when the landmark exhibition The International Style opened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Nazi Party was closing down the Bauhaus, and its central tenet—that the designer must be socially accountable—was soon abandoned. Decades later, Fitch would have some choice words for the same museum—"the very temple of modernism itself" (p. 170)—charging that MOMA, with its show The Architecture of the E´cole des Beaux Arts and sponsorship of Robert Venturi's 1966 Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, had prepared the ground for postmodernism, a movement Fitch loathed as a "prison house of antique gesture" that threatened "to reverse the whole evolutionary course of architectural theory since the Bauhaus" (p. 64). In "The Palace, the Bridge, and the Tower" (1947), Fitch pays homage to the Crystal Palace, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Eiffel Tower. In each, he writes, theory, material, and technique combined to produce a radically new type; each represented "the full flowering of a structural concept" (p. 89). Other essays under the rubric of "history" discuss Mount Vernon and Monticello, the great "slave-powered" (p. 112) plantations of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson's brilliant plan for the University of Virginia, which Fitch pronounces America's greatest architectural achievement. He takes a holistic view of historic preservation as "the stewardship of the whole built world" (p. 173), critical not only to man's psychic and emotional well-being but also an urgent aspect of energy conservation. It is in the realm of microclimatology that Fitch, who was an air force weather forecaster during World War II, makes...

A rapidly increasing number of buildings have been erected in Japan since 1960, because of the high economic growth from the rehabilitation after World War II. Because of the limited residential space in densely populated Japan, buildings are becoming larger and taller as rapid progress is made in architectural techniques. These buildings were not constructed on the basis of a thorough consideration of maintaining and improving the sanitary environment, and there are too many inadequacies with respect to sanitary management after construction. As an increasing number of people spend almost all day in such buildings, attention began to be paid to the effect of the environmental sanitary conditions on the health of the people using the buildings. Faced with this situation, the Japanese government enacted ‘the Law for Maintenance of Sanitation in Buildings’ in 1970 and established the Building Sanitation Management Standards as an ordinance of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which specified management standards for adjustment of the air environment in buildings, management of water supply and sewage, cleaning and the control of rodents and insects. However, this law compels the observance of management standards in specified buildings with a total floor space of 3,000 m2 or more. Hence, problems may remain in buildings with a floor space of 3,000 m2 or less, which are not regulated under this law.

A rapidly increasing number of buildings have been erected in Japan since 1960, because of the high economic growth from the rehabilitation after World War II. Because of the limited residential space in densely populated Japan, buildings are becoming larger and taller as rapid progress is made in architectural techniques. These buildings were not constructed on the basis of a thorough consideration of maintaining and improving the sanitary environ ment, and there are too many inadequacies with respect to sanitary manage ment after construction. As an increasing number of people spend almost all day in such buildings, attention began to be paid to the effect of the environ mental sanitary conditions on the health of the people using the buildings. Faced with this situation, the Japanese government enacted 'the Law for Maintenance of Sanitation in Buildings' in 1970 and established the Building Sanitation Management Standards as an ordinance of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which specified management standards for adjustment of the air environment in buildings, management of water supply and sewage, cleaning and the control of rodents and insects. However, this law compels the obser vance of management standards in specified buildings with a total floor space of 3,000 m2 or more. Hence, problems may remain in buildings with a floor space of 3,000 m2 or less, which are not regulated under this law.

Holding Still: The Private Life of an Air Raid

Australia's first course in planning, a Graduate Diploma in Town Planning, commenced in Adelaide on 14 February 1949 at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries (School of Mines), a predecessor institution of the University of South Australia (UniSA), which was established in 1991.1 Planning courses began in other states soon after, first at the University of Sydney and then at the University of Melbourne. The emergence of the planning education course in South Australia coincided with a period of significant post-war metropolitan and rural expansion and a related boom in the housing and construction industry. However, the state had been without effective planning legislation or qualified planners since the late 1920s and when World War II ended, it was also without metropolitan and regional plans to guide its future development. Through the initiative of the South Australian Institute of Architects, the Town Planning Institute of South Australia (TPISA) was inaugurated in 1948 and lobbied strenuously, along with other professionals and concerned citizens, for a master plan for Adelaide and for new planning legislation. Perhaps fortuitously for the TPISA and the town planning cause generally, not long after the Institute emerged, Professor Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Professor of Town Planning at University College London, visited South Australia as part of a British Council-sponsored tour of Australia. In addition to supporting local moves to raise government and public consciousness about the need for town planning, Abercrombie encouraged the establishment in Adelaide of a professional course in planning. Consequently, following enquiries by TPISA Council member, Gavin Walkley (Sullivan, 2008), an architect closely involved in the architecture discipline at the School of Mines, a two-year, six-subject postgraduate planning course was developed in keeping with that offered by the Town Planning Institute in Britain. The new course was taught and administered through the School of Architecture, with Walkley lecturing on the History of Town Planning and steering its development during the 25 years that he was Head of School (1951-76). The first undergraduate course was made available in 1965, by which time the School of Mines had become the South Australian Institute of Technology. In 2009, planning is co-located with disciplines including building, construction, civil engineering, geospatial and environmental management in UniSA's School of the Natural and Built Environments within the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment.2 Its home is still in the Bonython Jubilee building (City East campus) where the planning course was first taught. Enrolments in the postgraduate and undergraduate planning programmes continue to grow, and local demand for planners remains high. The 60 years symposium The one-day symposium held on 13 February 2009 on the theme of 'The Future of Planning Education' provided a starting point for a year-long programme of activities celebrating '60 Years of Planning Education' at UniSA. Timed to coincide as closely as possible with the date of the first planning lecture at the School of Mines, the symposium was held in the Basil Hetzel lecture theatre (City East campus), one of a number of new buildings constructed by the University in recent years. The symposium, a free public event, was attended by about 150 people including academics in planning and the built environment disciplines, alumni of the South Australian planning programme, planning practitioners, undergraduate and postgraduate students and members of the National Education Committee of the Planning Institute of Australia. Most participants were from South Australia. However, some came from interstate and a few visited from New Zealand and also South Africa. UniSA's Deputy Vice Chancellor: Academic, Professor Peter Lee, welcomed the attendees and Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at UniSA, Stephen Hamnett, introduced the programme with a short overview of the background to the foundation of the first planning course in South Australia. …

194 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Anyone wanting to learn more about how our country came to be the way it is will find Highways to Heaven not only informative but the proverbial good read. Joseph J. Corn Dr. Corn’s most recent publication on automobile history is “Work and Vehicles: A Comment and Note,” in The Car and the City: TheAutomobile, the Built Environment, andDaily Urban Life, ed. Martin Wachs and Margaret Crawford (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). He is presently working on the history of automotive technical literature. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940. By John M. Findlay. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xiv+394; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $15.00 (paper). Long mythologized for its openness and freedom, the American West has lately become the province of revisionist historians intent on underscoring the grim economies of frontier life. Amid the bruit over this New West, John M. Findlay’s study of western cityscapes after World War II is especially timely, as it reveals both the shortcomings and the benefits of territorial—and technological—expansion. Findlay, a histo­ rian at the University of Washington, highlights the historical signifi­ cance of Disneyland, Stanford Industrial Park, Sun City, and the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, arguing persuasively that these four “magic lands” represented a new pattern in American urbanization: a movement away from the older, eastern model of central downtowns and concentrated capital toward an “assemblage of urban villages” (p. 280). Citing architect Amos Rapaport’s claim that “users” and “planners” often derive different meanings from the same environment, Findlay offers a “micro view” of western cities, based on “how average people created, and were affected by, a mid-20th-century urban culture” (p. 8). Despite critics’ fears that western urban sprawl—the consequence of rapid economic and demographic growth in the postwar years—would pro­ hibit the formation of communities and breed social chaos, Findlay finds that citizens worried about the “quantity of urbanization, rather than its shape” (p. 49). Even after 1965, when westerners were forced to acknowledge the problems of uncontrolled urban development, they continued to view growth as a positive sign of the region’s difference from the East. In four chapters focused on each magic land and its relation to the surrounding urban fabric, Findlay shows how the evolution of western cities during the 1950s and 1960s assumed a distinct pattern. Where entrepreneurs, academics, and city boosters confronted illegible land­ scapes, they created enclaves ofurban order where Americans could best “be themselves.” Disneyland epitomizes this reform impulse. Walt Disney intended his sanitized theme park to be an “antidote to the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 195 perceived urban malaise” (p. 67); its success, moreover, spurred him to include EPCOT (Environmental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) in his plans for Walt Disney World, an indication that a utopian vision was never very far from his impulse to entertain. Once on the ground, however, magic kingdoms had dramatic, sometimes negative effects on their environs. Disneyland transformed a predominantly agricultural area into an urban, commercial culture, compelling Orange County residents to imagine their futures in new ways. Sun City drew thousands of senior citizens into Phoenix, boosting the economy and making the retirement community nationally famous, but upset the political and physical landscape of Arizona. The futuristic Seattle World’s Fair, conceived to rejuvenate the downtown area, ironically reinforced the city’s decentralization. The juxtaposition of best-laid plans and unforeseen consequences is most effectively drawn in the case of the Stanford Industrial Park. Beginning in the 1950s, Stanford University invited firms like Hewlett Packard to design and build campus-like facilities on university land—a plan literally designed to nurture joint academic/industrial research in the sciences, boost Stanford’s real estate revenues, and maintain Palo Alto’s manicured, suburban setting. But while the park succeeded on all these counts and became the model for subsequent “research parks,” particularly in Silicon Valley, its much imitated success initiated a period of growth that clogged freeways, segregated classes, and in 1987 gave Santa Clara County the most toxic waste in the nation. Truly a New West, the cityscapes described in...

Thirty-Ninth Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology:"Technology, the Arts, and Industrial Culture," Barcelona, Spain, 10-14 July 2012 Bahar Emgin (bio), Georgina Ruff (bio), Matteo Serafini (bio), and Jytte Thorndahl (bio) The thirty-ninth symposium of ICOHTEC, "Technology, the Arts, and Industrial Culture," was held at Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria Industrial (ETSEIB) in Barcelona between 10 and 14 July 2012 (fig. 1). The meeting attracted a wide range of papers on topics such as the social history of military technology, media reception and representation of technology, technical education, materials, engineering, sports and leisure, technological heritage, and audiovisual communication. The papers were organized into five parallel sessions each day, which resulted in a fairly intense program. It is a compliment to the program committee chaired by Jan Kunnas (Finland) that we were spoiled by choice. Relevant to the conference theme, a number of sessions and papers addressed the interaction of technology and the arts, design, and architecture. Within this perspective, discussions focused on representations of technology in arts, particularly in paintings; the use of technology in the arts and design practice; the use of technology in the education of engineers, designers, architects, and artists; and changing styles and cityscapes through the influence of technological development. Another subject considered within this context was industrial heritage and alternatives to the renovation [End Page 158] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Vasily Borisov at ICOHTEC symposium headquarters, Barcelona. (Photo: Alla Borisova.) and re-use of architectural and industrial sites. On the first day, presenters at "(Re-use of) Industrial Heritage" asked difficult questions concerning the legacy of industrial sites in Italy, Germany, and Russia. Anatoly Kurlaev (Russia) traced the history of industrial preservation in the Urals since the 1920s, and Francesco Carlo Toso (Italy) gave an interesting paper on hydroelectric heritage in Alta Valtellina, the northernmost valley in Lombardy, which supplied Milan electricity via high-tension transmission. They agreed that these spaces should be neither overlooked nor overturned, but rather valued as part of the historic fiber of their respective regions and communities. Torben Ibs (Germany) argued for the importance of industrial areas that had shaped the community and not just preservation of aesthetically pleasing architecture and particularly renowned sites. He detailed the distinctive preservation effort of the coal mines of Lausitz [End Page 159] in the former GDR that, rather than using traditional physical preservation techniques, embraced the implementation of a regional program of preservation that will survive the imminent flooding of the old mines. The symposium was notable for research dealing with the influence of technology on both discursive and material construction of modernity. In the "Built Environment and Technological Modernization" session, Markku Norvasuo (Finland) discussed the emerging town-center concept in regional planning during the 1940s as "idyllic worker's communities," while Evangelia Chatzikonstantinou (Greece) argued that road design and urban planning in Athens at the beginning of the twentieth century was part and parcel of a search for a shortcut to modernization. A panel on "International Expositions circa World War II" offered the packed room fascinating images of these catalysts for patriotism and tools of propaganda. Arthur Molella (USA) elaborated on Mussolini's unrealized vision for the 1942 World's Fair in Rome, remarking that plans are concretizations of dreams and dreams are full of symbols. In this case, the symbols were those of a modern Roman empire. The most remarkable thing about these nationalistic dreams was the dominant role of technological modernization or, in the case of the 1937 German Schaffendes Volk exhibition, its rejection. To explain the unique German blend of folk aesthetic and modernist impulse during this time, Karen Fiss (USA) used the term "reactionary modernism"—one of many modernisms discussed during the conference. Among many technologies and infrastructures usually related to modernization, the history of electrification in Europe and America during the first half of the twentieth century was handled from different disciplinary perspectives in several sessions. Many of these papers converged in some ways, including those dealing with domestic electrification as an architectural element. Although presented in different sessions, "Invisible Mechanisms of the Modern Interior: Electric Lighting and the Expression of the American 'Machine...

“Campus Utopias: A Visual Re-reading” describes a multidisciplinary graduate course conducted collaboratively by TU Delft and METU Ankara’s Architecture Departments in 2022. The research course focused on the key urban and architectural features of selected campus projects, examining how the modernist architects engaged in these designs were able to use them as a basis for the experimentation of new educational-residential models for living.This research paper explores the formal aspects of these campuses and their architectural significance. It recognizes the diverse geographies where the modern architectural movement took root and the active role played by political, economic, and cultural agents in shaping these projects. Working with local agents and situating modern architecture within its surrounding infrastructure and landscape helped master architects to integrate local architectural values and new building technologies.The article presents three case studies: Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, the University of Baghdad in Iraq, and the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. These campuses were designed and built after World War II, representing the aspirations of newly installed governments. The article highlights the architectural approaches that incorporated environmental considerations and cultural inspirations and the socio-economic considerations in each project.The research methodology involves a comparative analysis of the campuses, focusing on their formal qualities and in-between spaces. The students involved in the graduate research course utilized various media and techniques of representation, including 3D digital drawings, models, collages, and physical reliefs. The work results were presented in the form of an exhibition titled “Campus Utopias” at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in April 2022. The student projects in this photo essay show the diversity of scale and make visible the similarities and differences in the overall campus design approaches of the three projects. The major focus is on the in-between spaces and the outcomes of the multidisciplinary work of architects, engineers, landscape architects, and artists.

Preface Introduction: Holistic Sensibilities in the Long 1960s Chapter 1: The Natural Environment: Rachel Carson's Web of Life Chapter 2: The Built Environment: Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth Chapter 3: The Social World: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Beloved Community Chapter 4: Cosmic Dimensions: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point Chapter 5: The Psychological Realm: Abraham Maslow's Self-Actualized Individuals and Eupsychian Community Chapter 6: The Esalen Institute: A Center for Holistic Pursuits Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Gaze upon the Helliers’ half-built house in Bristol, Vermont, and you might think you’re looking at an ordinary home construction project. Table saws, building materials, and piles of earth lie around the newly framed dwelling, while a crew of carpenters mills around the site, dressed for warmth in the chilly fall air. But look closer, and some unique features emerge. The exterior frame is wrapped in an outer layer of heat-trapping insulation. Sunshine streams in through large, south-facing windows, flooding the interior living spaces with light. Once the house is completed, solar panels will supply the family’s hot water and much of its electrical power. And indoor finishes, paints, rugs, and fabrics will be nontoxic. In short, the Helliers’ house is being built to be green. And that puts it in good company; new green homes jumped in number by 30% between 2005 and 2006 and could include up to 5% of the entire U.S. housing market within five years, predicts McGraw-Hill Construction, an industry information provider, in its June 2006 Residential Green Building SmartMarket Report. That makes green homes bright spots in an otherwise dismal housing market facing its worst slump in decades. To everyone’s benefit, green homes link sustainable materials and practices with better human and environmental health. “You’re really looking at a tripod of components,” says David Johnston, president of green building consultancy What’s Working and author of Green from the Ground Up, a forthcoming book on sustainable residential design. “First, energy efficiency has to be above minimal code requirements for your climate. The second component has to do with improved water and resource efficiency, and the third concerns indoor air quality. If your design doesn’t address all three of these issues, then you don’t have a green home.” According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation, indoor air is typically 2–5 times more polluted than outdoor air, owing to the presence of asthma-inducing agents such as mold and toxic chemicals in carpets, paints, and other synthetic materials. In fact, the EPA ranks indoor air as one of the top five human health risks, says agency spokesperson Dave Ryan. By requiring nontoxic materials, green designs limit indoor exposure to carcinogens such as formaldehyde in manufactured wood products including sheathing and particleboard, and to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in finishes. Home energy uses also contribute to global warming. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington, DC, estimates that domestic power demands account for 21% of all the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States. The construction industry as a whole accounts for 48% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to advocacy group Architecture 2030. And by optimizing insulation, green designs save on oil and gas bills, which are (quite literally in poorly insulated homes) going through the roof. But even as green homes gain in popularity, they’re also dogged by a sticky association with the rich, seen by many as too pricey for ordinary buyers. Indeed, McGraw-Hill Construction identified cost perceptions as a top obstacle to green building among homeowners and builders alike. Fueling that preoccupation with cost is a media obsession with “eco-mansions,” laments Charles Lockwood, a green building consultant in Los Angeles and New York. “Most of what you see in the press would leave you thinking you’d have to live in Malibu or Aspen to afford one of these places,” he says. To wit: the Maine Sunday Telegram in Portland ran a feature on 4 November 2007 titled “Unaffordably Green?” about a $1 million ultra-green home in nearby Freeport that was unsold after a year on the market. Christopher Briley, an architect with Green Design Studio in Yarmouth, Maine, concedes that most people who build their own houses have above-average incomes (McGraw-Hill Construction’s SmartMarket Report shows that nearly two-thirds of those who buy green homes make more than $50,000 a year). And buyers with more money to spend, Briley says, are apt to mix green design elements in with a host of other more expensive features—radiant floors and granite countertops, for instance—that skew costs higher. “A lot of these houses are going to be expensive anyway,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have an affordable green house. It’s all about where you decide to spend your money.”

Architecture for the New Man in the 1950's in Romania. First Glimpse of Communism Build Environment