We must develop residential areas where people enjoy and can afford to live. Where all the different groups of society can live together, side by side.
Architect Fredrik Rosenhall certainly has a point article in GP in that modernist architecture and classicist can learn from each other. But certainly not in that modernist architecture would be allowed to continue to dominate in pure style. Nor that classicist style would mostly only be used in a few places.
We need to the first develop a neoclassical style that is not a pastiche of old buildings. Second, we need to develop a neomodernist style of architecture that mostly erases the elements that most conflict with classical, Greek rules of how to create beauty with rules of symmetry, variety, and decorum. Third, we need to develop develop a modern high-rise style with respect for the classical tradition. But the pure, modernist, anti-aesthetic style of architecture must be erased as the tragic, grotesque faux pas of history that it is.
Furthermore, a fault with many residential areas is that only one type of tenancy, for example villas or condominiums, dominates there. It is important that people with different backgrounds can meet in everyday life. Then hope and understanding can grow. However, it is of the utmost importance that a high proportion of the housing stock consists of tenements with low rents. In addition, this must be supplemented by the fact that in each area there are detached houses and condominiums at affordable prices. We achieve this by building so many low-rent rental properties that the demand for privately owned homes decreases enough to keep prices from skyrocketing.
#tenancy #housingpolicy #architecture
When it comes to the appearance of buildings - do you need to dribble with terms like modernism or classicism? Do you really need more than living up to Jan Gehl's principles of detail and human scale? See e.g. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.697.575&rep=rep1&type=pdf, or his book Cities for people, now finally in Swedish.
The question, however, is how this should be implemented. The client's assignment to the architect applies exclusively to economics and technology. Any positive or negative contribution of buildings to the urban environment is not part of the capitalist purpose of making money, and is therefore paid for by no one.
The whole thing is a parallel to other environmental destruction caused by economic activity and should in principle be able to be treated the same - the problem is that it is difficult to establish limit values for detail and human scale in a legal text.
But since the rebellion against unimaginative architecture seems to be stuck in mutual accusations, it would be great if someone else could take up the challenge from that perspective. Some kind of legal text that prevents repulsive urban environments is needed, but what should it look like?
Modernism's urban planning principles are more destructive than its house building ditto, as it assumes that distance is something positive. Everything built after about 1930 is sparse, distance-creating and expensive. Distance costs.
It costs money – about 2-4% of local GDP for each doubling of the area/person. It costs energy – 50% increased fuel consumption for every doubling of surface area/person. It costs human energy and wear and tear, but here the quantity is unknown, one only knows that those who live on the periphery are sicker than those who live centrally.
With reasonable density, the interaction in the cities would probably sort itself out. In any case, if we also remember to not only build "residential areas", but cities that also produce.