The Ur-Forms of Modernism. On 19th Century Hospitalized and Hygienic Dimensions of Architecture

Abstract
During the 19th century, a shift in the meaning of the notion of type took place, accompanied by the idea of an explicit inscription of habits and needs in space. A new correlation between the architectural type and the habitual was established. If only tentatively, esthetics and planning could now be harmoniously reunited through the introduction of new habits in order to generate a collective way of living. As a result, the object of architecture became to moralize and to reform. The “dream” of this period was that of a purely technological solution for civil building and housing. It would further expand into the vision of the exact partitioning of living space, and of the invention of perfect machines for healing, controlling, and living. In fact, two genealogies began to merge: total sanitariness, which led to the exact quantification of fluids piped into buildings; and total technology, which aimed, through the use of new materials, at the precise programing and optimization of space. Underlying the thousands of proposals in the 19th century, the idea of the circulation of goods and people was crucial, and dependent on the imperatives of mobility and decentralization. Traces of such “dream architecture” remained in the form of the features that would become an intrinsic part of 20th century, modern architecture.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture, Industrial city, House as living machine, 19th century cities.

Issue 62
Year 2020
Pages 18-27
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/62.A.IZO61SEB

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The Bacterial Clients of Modern Architecture

Abstract
The human is an unstable idea; simultaneously an all-powerful creature – capable of transforming the whole ecology of the planet – yet extremely fragile, a murky ghost. Contemporary research into our microbiome portrays the human itself as a mobile ecology constructed by the endless flux of interactions between thousands of different species of bacteria – some of which are millions of years old and others joined us just a few months ago. This challenges conventional understandings of architecture. What does it mean to house the human when we no longer think that the human organism is securely contained within its skin? What is the role of architecture when the humans occupying it are understood to be suspended in clouds of bacteria shared, generated and mobilized by other macro-organisms (pets, plants, insects…) and the building itself; when the human is not a clearly defined organism or in any sense independent; when the architectural client is a massive set of ever-changing trans-species alliances that make the apparent complexity of even the largest of cities seem quaintly uncomplicated. What kind of care do architects offer if we think of ourselves as alliances between bacteria within the apparent limits of the body and throughout the spaces we occupy? What faces 21st century architects in comparison to 20th century architects?

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture, Building ventilation, Cleansing architecture, Healing environment.

Issue 62
Year 2020
Pages 6-17
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/62.A.YSGG9KKU

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Cure and care at the cradle of innovation

Abstract
“Illness is the night-side of life” tying one’s up in its own body and weaknesses leading either to curative or care spaces that instead of bringing hope bring to mind loneliness and death. Even if the tendency is to believe in the efficiency of medical processes, the collective memory of healthcare buildings is related to discomfort. Ill bodies enter a machine where they are homogenized, losing autonomy and privacy. Intimacy is exposed in a public domain. In healthcare buildings the focus is on medical procedure and not on the prostrate body, which is the real origin and dimensional parameter of these spaces

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture.

Issue 62
Year 2020
Pages 4-5
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/62.A.GVFC4HW1

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Health at the core of Modern Movement Architecture

Abstract
Investigation into healthcare facilities involves dealing with multiple spheres beyond the technological, physical and psychological. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern buildings were cleansing machines, or that modern architecture and urbanism were shaped by bacteria. Presenting some stimulating philosophically-orientated essays, this journal makes a link between the Modern Movement and what we have entitled the “Cure and Care” concept, connecting health and the environment, body and design. Considering healthcare buildings and their role in the welfare policy of societies, the discussion addresses future challenges, driven by developments in technology and medicine, envisaging a key role for healthcare facilities in ensuring a sustainable built environment.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture.

Issue 62
Year 2020
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/62.A.6QVKSDMB

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Hiroyuki Suzuki (1945-2014)

Abstract
We must bring to you all a very heartbreaking notice of the sudden and totally unexpected loss of a giant, our beloved and most admired Professor Hiroyuki Suzuki, who was not only the former and first president of docomomo Japan but also a Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo, Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University Graduate School and the General Director of the Museum Meiji-Mura (a major outdoor architectural museum).

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Hiroyuki Suzuki, Hizuchi Elementary School, Matsumura Masatsune, Japanese modern architecture.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 90-91
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.BTHD3OXI

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Shukhov Tower, Moscow, 1922, by Vladimir Shukhov

Abstract
A world renowned engineering marvel and masterpiece of constructivist architecture, the radio tower designed by Vladimir Shukhov has garnered much attention lately. Citing the “dangerous” condition of the 92-year-old tower, in early February 2014 the Russian Ministry of Communications announced their plans for the 160 m structure: a two stage reconstruction-restoration, with the dismantling of the tower followed by reassembly at a new location. This has been deemed the de facto destruction of the tower by both experts and public opinion in general and has led to the Russian and international community to rally behind the campaign for the preservation of “Russia’s Eiffel Tower”.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Shukhov Tower, Vladimir Shukhov, Moscow modern architecture.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 88-89
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.JN8FKTWT

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Rereading Our Recent Past: Notes on Chandigarh and New Gourna

Abstract
This article focuses on two iconic architectural works that dominate the ongoing intellectual discourse on conserving our recent past — the City of Chandigarh in India designed by Le Corbusier, and the Village of New Gourna in Egypt designed by Hassan Fathy. By examining the differential between their originating visions and their legacies that were shaped over more than five decades through many unforeseen circumstances and unaccounted consequences, this article provokes deeper reflections on our modern heritage and on the forces and entities that should decide its future.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning, Chandigarh modern architecture, Le Corbusier, New Gourna modern architecture, Hassan Fathy.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 72-79
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.N0LHBQHC

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PREVI: The Metabolist’s first and only built Project

Abstract
Cities in the sky, superhighways over the seas, floating layers of techno-villages. These utopic proposals for Japan were generated by a passionate and extraordinary group of young Japanese architects fueled by the futuristic vision to rebuild their nation. Parallel to their idealism, was the path of Peter Land, an Englishman by way of Yale and South America, tasked to plan housing for the poor. Incredibly, their idealism would cross and the Metabolists’ first and only project would be for a United Nations social housing development in a place very far from Japan: Peru. Eui-Sung Yi sat down with the group’s last living member, Fumihiko Maki, and the organizer of the project, Peter Land, to discuss this project and its place in modern urban design (read the interviews in pg. 65 and 68, respectively).

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning, Ideal city, Metabolism, PREVI, Peruan modern architecture.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 58-71
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.I679BS7M

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Flexibility in the Density. Metabolism: Freedom in a Large Complex

Abstract
To find multiple possibilities and to create livable spaces in an extremely dense condition – that is what Japanese contemporary architects are particularly good at. Most of Japanese architects start their career by designing small houses in an urban environment; it is a good exercise for young architects to develop their design skills. The mini site and chaotic surroundings are far from an ideal condition; in fact it is a poor environment. But the architects come to learn that from this disadvantaged condition they can do something innovative.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning, Flexible architecture, Japanese modern architecture, Metabolism.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 52-57
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.L6KSWQ4E

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The “Densification” of Modern Public Housing: Hong Kong and Singapore

Abstract
In the Asian mini-city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, massive public housing programmes, far more extreme in density and height than their European and North American predecessors, have played an unexpectedly prominent role in development policy since the 1950s. This article explores some of the ways in which the original conventions of public housing were transformed and “densified” in these territories, and argues that the key influences in this process were not so much avant-garde modernist architectural discourses as the organisational mechanisms and political pressures within late British colonialism and decolonisation.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning, Large-scale public housing, Hong Kong modern architecture, Singapore modern architecture.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 44-51
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.2TTL4OUX

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