Review: Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69 by Eric Mumford

Abstract

Eric Mumford . Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69 . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 272 pp., 15 color, 91 b/w illus. $55, ISBN 9780300138887 In this meticulously documented book, Eric Mumford describes the formation of the influential Urban Design program at Harvard, emphasizing the role of its founders and their roots in the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM). This research builds on two of Mumford's earlier publications: his 2000 book The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 ,1 which chronicles the international conferences in Europe, and his publication in 2008 with Hashim Sarkis, Josep Lluis Sert, The Architect of Urban Design, 1953–1969 .2 The latter is a book of essays on the architect who served as president of CIAM from 1947 to 1956 and directed the Harvard Urban Design program as dean and chairman of architecture at the Graduate School of Design between 1953 and 1969. Mumford's goal in the present work is to elucidate and defend the role that CIAM-influenced urban design played in America. He believes it has been misunderstood-that most people associate it unfairly with the wholesale demolition of urban areas and the building of inhumane high-rise housing inspired by Le Corbusier, while attributing a sensitive contextual approach to the rebuilding of cities to Jane Jacobs. Mumford describes numerous attempts to accommodate existing fabric in postwar plans and takes pains to explain how Le Corbusier's influence has been misconstrued, noting how his ideas changed over time. When he came to New York in 1935, for example, Mumford points out that the Swiss architect was much more interested in Rockefeller Center than in slum clearance housing projects (29). Defining Urban Design surveys early CIAM meetings and discusses the impact that the immigration of early participants from Europe had on American education. It describes the formation of the Harvard Urban Design program under Dean Joseph Hudnut in 1936 and Walter Gropius, who served as architecture chairman from 1937 to 1952. …