The End of Modernism?

Abstract

The making of People's Park in Berkeley, California, in 1969 was accompanied by some of the most violent student protests of its era. While these events can be seen as an episode in the movement of student radicalism that focused on the Vietnam War, Peter Allen suggests that conflicting visions of architecture and urban space stood at the center of the People's Park violence. The End of Modernism? People's Park, Urban Renewal, and Community Design argues that the movement to create the park was a reaction to a university program of campus expansion, which had razed existing older housing to build modernist high-rise residential towers, and the urban renewal scheme jointly supported by the city and the university. The events drew on new paradigms in planning and architecture, as People's Park attracted the support of many design professors and students. For them, it was a test case for theories of community-based development in architecture and planning, and their story provides a glimpse into profound divisions in the design professions in the late 1960s.