Installation of the superquadra model at the Modern City Revisited conference
photograph © Thomas Deckker 1999
The term "Modern City" conceals the diversity of approaches to Modernism before the Second World War. The supposed rationality of urban planning in this period encompassed a variety of attitudes towards history, technology, and culture. After the Second World War, architects were officially encouraged to apply these visions to urban problems, whether in suburbs of existing cities - such as Quartiere Triennale 8 in Milan - or in new cities - such as Brasília, in which these various attitudes were manifest. These were widely seen to have failed during the 1970s. However, such a wholesale condemnation hides that not only were some of these projects very successful, but that more recently in places such as Barcelona and Ticino recognisably modern architecture has been used to repair historical urban fabrics. Speakers attempted to define the complex realities underlying Modern urban planning, and to reassess the successes and the failures of the built results. The conference ended with an assessment of the enormous cultural changes which have taken place since the 1970s in which urban planning, and rationality itself, have been thrown into doubt.
Alternative Visions
- Bernd Nicolai: "The Symphony of the Metropolis: Berlin in the 1920s"
- Ken Lambla: "Housing and Social Action in Rotterdam in the 1920s"
- Catherine Cooke "Cities of Socialism: technology and ideology in the Soviet Union in the 1920s"
- John Gold: "Towards the Functional City: MARS, CIAM and the London Plans 1933-42"
- James Dunnett: "Cities without Streets: The Vertical Garden City"
The triumph and eclipse of Modernism
- John Allan: "Lubetkin and Peterlee"
- Judi Loach: "Italian Rationalism and the Quartiere Triennale 8, Milan"
- Andrew Higgott: "Birmingham: Building the Modern City"
- Thomas Deckker: "Brasília: City vs. Landscape"
- Michael Sorkin: "The City after Now"
A substantial part of the conference proceedings, with additonal contributions, were subsequently published as
The Modern City Revisited [London: Routledge 2000]:
