Municipal Architect Research Articles

Architectural activity in the structure of the Vladivostok city government: the beginning of the 20TH century

The architectural activities of Vladivostok’s municipal government (city council and management) can be divided into two chronological intervals. The initial stage (1875-1898), considered by the author elsewhere, was a period of organization and appointment of the first city architect and definition of his duties, surveying and landscaping of the city’s central area, and construction of the first stone public and residential buildings for the civilian population. This publication continues the study of the planning, design and construction activities of Vladivostok’s municipal architects and engineers from the early 20th century until the revolutionary events of 1917. A characteristic feature of the time under consideration is periods of decline in design and construction (1898-1905); and activation in 1906-1917, directly related to events in the city, region, and the world. The study examines objects erected by the municipal authorities and city management structure, and presents a list of city architects, engineers and technicians. The publication is based on information from the Commemorative Books of the Primorye Region, early 20th century periodicals of Vladivostok, and funds of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East.

Rethinking Public Buildings’ Functions: The Case for Participatory Design Methodology

Municipalities often struggle with reconstructions and refurbishing of buildings in public ownership. This is not only because of limited expert capacities that municipalities struggle with (municipal architect position or urban planner position is vacant, or non-existent etc.) or lack of finances. There is an increasing need and demand from municipalities for redefining buildings’ original purpose and finding new, sustainable and innovate functions. They have to decide not only how to reconstruct, but how to rethink its original purpose. The case study from a city of Slaný shows how participatory design can serve the goal of finding new functions of a public building and effectively contribute to the planning phase of reconstruction projects. Sustainable urban development should react to people’s needs, new technologies and environmental challenges. Reconstruction projects should reflect innovations in both technologies and approaches and respond to newly emerged functions. The methodology demonstrated in the case study can serve as a tool for assessing preferences of citizens, needs of the municipality and bridge the gap between politicians, experts and citizens by supporting efficient communication and evidence-based decision making. Moreover, this case shows how to ensure social sustainability and project effectiveness by involving multidisciplinary teams, in this case architects, urban planners, sociologists, communications experts and environmental and engineering psychologists.

Designing Upstream: Rebuilding Agency Through New Forms of Public Practice

What went wrong with public‐sector architecture? In the immediate postwar period, the UK's municipal architects' departments were a hotbed of innovation, while today's planning authorities tend to be regarded as bureaucratic and stale. The social enterprise Public Practice was set up to counter this trend by recruiting talented professionals in architecture and related fields to fixed‐term contracts in public authorities, while reserving a tenth of their time for collective research. Finn Williams, one of its co‐founders, sets out the background, political and economic, and describes how it works.

Fernando Población del Castillo y la arquitectura española durante el Franquismo

En 1947 el arquitecto Fernando Población finalizó sus estudios en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid y, desde entonces hasta finales de la década de 1970, se convirtió en uno de los técnicos más representativos y prolíficos de la ciudad de Salamanca. Ejerció como arquitecto municipal, además de técnico de la Obra Sindical del Hogar, del Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda y de la propia Universidad de Salamanca. Igualmente, pudo compaginar estas responsabilidades con la práctica liberal de su profesión, diseñando inmuebles en los que fue evolucionando hasta lograr el paso definitivo hacia la modernidad, convirtiéndose en uno de los abanderados de esta tendencia en esta localidad.

Gubeng bridge in Surabaya, a dutch architect c. citroen’s work in the 1925 Paris exhibition

A Dutch architect Cosman Citroen (1881–1935) is recognized as one of the well-known architects in the Netherlands Indies or Indonesia nowadays. After leaving his job as an architect assistant in the architectural firm of B.J. Ouendag in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Citroen moved to Surabaya, Indonesia where he became a municipal architect. Here, he turned out to be a versatile architect whose projects range from furniture to town planning and from architectural designs to civil constructions. Discussion on Dutch colonial architecture in this city cannot be separated from his works. One of them was Gubeng Bridge that won an award at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. By using a combination of historical, descriptive, and archival methods, this paper reveals how initially Citroen involved in this civil project, how it was designed and built, which award is obtained, and why it could win the award. The result shows that design of the bridge is in accordance with the exhibition theme, namely Art Deco, and reflects the high aesthetic value of a civil construction.

Análisis gráfico de los criterios de proyección de la Gran Vía de Colón de Granada y de su evolución constructiva

<p class="referenciacitapgina">La construcción de la Gran Vía de Colón de Granada se desarrolla entre 1898, año en el que se construye la Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón y 1934, fecha aproximada de finalización del edificio de la Caja de Previsión Social. A partir del análisis gráfico del plano de distribución de fincas del proyecto original, firmado en 1891 por el arquitecto municipal Modesto Cendoya y Busquets, de las tipologías edificatorias empleadas -modelo de vivienda de renta- y utilizando el dibujo como herramienta de interpretación de la cronología edificatoria, se revela la evolución de los criterios proyectuales iniciales de esta singular operación de apertura en contraste con el resultado final. Su ejecución estuvo permanentemente condicionada a circunstancias económicas y factores de improvisación que supusieron, entre otros efectos, la alteración del reparto original de solares, adaptándose a las vicisitudes económicas y técnicas sobrevenidas durante los treinta y seis años que duró su construcción.</p>

Self-help or public housing? Lessons from co-managed slum upgrading via participatory budget

What can the Participatory Budget (PB) teach us about slum upgrading in the cities of the Global South? This article describes the process of slum upgrading via PB in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Participatory budgeting _PB is a renowned mechanism of resource allocation that transfers decision-making power over the capital expenditure portion of the municipal budget from the City Council to public assemblies. However, the impact of PB on municipal service delivery in general and housing in particular is understudied.Ethnographic findings are based on slum upgrading process via PB in an informal settlement in the East District of Porto Alegre. Fieldwork included 16 interviews with residents who had been PB delegates, PB councilors, municipal architects, lawyers, and the social worker involved in the slum upgrading project of Vila Radiante, East District. Furthermore, analysis of district-level expenditures on public works required for slum upgrading as well as analysis of site plans informed the conclusions.The Porto Alegre PB demonstrates that slum dwellers' involvement in all stages of the slum upgrading process, from resource allocation to service delivery, contributed to the effective distribution of housing and basic infrastructure. Slum dwellers are a heterogeneous group with diverse housing needs. Housing via PB addresses this diversity and provides an alternative to the dichotomist debate in international planning between, on one hand, slum clearance followed by public housing projects and, on the other, the promotion of assisted self-help housing through programs of land tenure and basic infrastructure provision.

Beyond Utopia: Representing Life in the Productivist City

During the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union’s first five-year plan, the city of Magnitogorsk was built on a sparsely inhabited site in the Western Siberian steppe marked by a geological anomaly: a mountain of almost pure iron ore. Magnitogorsk was nominally designed by Ernst May, a founding member of CIAM and former municipal architect of Frankfurt who had come to the Soviet Union with his “brigade” of leftist German and Austrian architects. The May brigade would, however, struggle with both material difficulties and a constellation of ideological conflicts that would make the city into a screen onto which were projected ambitions, aspirations and anxieties about social transformation effected or facilitated by architecture. Magnitogorsk was conceived of as a city organized completely by production where the linearity of the assembly line and the continuous casting mill would extend into the kitchens and bedrooms of the workers and become the basis for a radical new culture. This would be contested by the Socialist Realist call for symbolic form and cultural continuity and the humanism of the Western media until the city, and its real conditions of radical change, would disappear under competing regimes of image production.

ARCHITECT COSMAN CITROEN (1881-1935) Family Background, Arrival to- and Career in Surabaya

A Dutch architect Cosman Citroen (1881-1935) was one of the most remarkable architects in the Netherlands Indies. He left his position in Amsterdam and then went to Surabaya to be an advisory architect of the Municipality of Surabaya. During his career in the city, he designed many buildings and constructions so that any discussion about Dutch colonial architecture in the city cannot be separated from his works. This article explains from which family he came, how situation of Surabaya when he arrived, and what his activities other than as the Municipal architect.

Between public and private: town architects in Belgium during the interwar period

For want of legislation, municipal architects in small Belgian towns were able to develop flourishing private practices until the Second World War. Their resulting, rather ambiguous, position in between public and private allowed them to influence interwar reconstruction efforts in myriad ways, from sweeping, top‐down projects led by the central government to local initiatives. More than has been acknowledged thus far the private practice of municipal architects seems to have influenced efforts to create aesthetically distinctive townscapes. This argument is advanced here with reference to the case of Dendermonde, a town heavily damaged during the First World War.

Adolf Fick (1829-1901), physiologist: a heritage for anesthesiology and critical care medicine.

Adolf Fick (1829-1901), physiologist: a heritage for anesthesiology and critical care medicine.

Washington after the War

DURING the greater part of the months of September and October, 1945, an Exhibition was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art entitled Washington after the War. It was sponsored by the National Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, in cooperation with the Architect of the Capitol; the Public Buildings Administration and the Public Roads Administration, Federal Works Agency; the United States Engineer Office; the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior, the Director of Highways and the Municipal Architect of the District of Columbia Government; the National Housing Authority; and the Washingtoniana Division of the Public Library, District of Columbia. The Exhibition was highly appreciated by those who are particularly interested in the development of our National Capital and was visited by thousands of persons, including visitors from many States. The Exhibition stressed projects that are in a pending building program for the further development of the City of Washington, and thus quite a number of the designs were shown here for the first time.