Towers in the park is a morphology of modernist [1] high rise apartment buildings characterized by a high-rise building (a "slab") surrounded by a swath of landscaped land. Thus, the tower does not directly front the street.
It is based on an ideology popularised by Le Corbusier with the Plan Voisin, an expansion of the Garden city movement aimed at reducing the problem of urban congestion. It was introduced in several large cities across the world, notably in North America, [1] Europe [2] and Australia [3] as a solution for housing, especially for public housing, reaching a peak of popularity in the 1960s with the introduction of prefabrication technology. The towers themselves are typically simple, brick or concrete-clad high-rise buildings with little ornamentation. The footprint was designed with simple geometry to minimise construction costs whilst maximising light, air, and views of the surrounding open space for occupants, sometimes including balconies for the apartments.
It is now generally seen as a failure in urban planning for the many problems it introduced in urban sociology including isolation and segregation from the wider community, a lack of privacy, as well as inefficiency in land-use planning. While it is increasingly popular in Asia, it has declined in the Western world and many existing complexes especially those government owned, have either been earmarked for demolition and redevelopment.
Le Corbusier pioneered the "tower in a park" morphology in his unrealized 1923 Ville Contemporaine. Responding to the squalid conditions of cities in the 1920s, Le Corbusier proposed razing the old cities and replacing them with new, clean, hyper-rationalist layouts employing the "tower in a park" morphology. [4] The skyscrapers were intended to house the new city's three million residents on only 5% of the land. [4] By placing the buildings near the center of the block, there is room for parking, lawns, trees, and other landscaping elements. Le Corbusier further employed the morphology in his 1930 plan for Paris, the Ville Radieuse (also unrealized). Owing to the wide diffusion and influence of these two plans and their ideas post–World War II, especially the latter, the "tower in the park" morphology spread throughout Europe and North America.
By the early 1970s, opposition to this style of towers mounted, with many, including urban planners, now referring to them as "ghettos". [5] Neighbourhoods like St. James Town were originally designed to house young "swinging single" middle class residents, but the apartments lacked appeal and the area quickly became much poorer.
From its early days of implementation the concept was criticised for making residents feel unsafe, including large empty common areas dominated by gang culture and crime. The layout was criticised for normalising anti-social behaviour and hampering the efforts of essential services, particularly for law enforcement. [6] Within less than a decade Sydney's 1960s public housing developments at Surry Hills, Redfern and Waterloo were labelled the "Suicide towers" due to their high rates. [7]
Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri, was demolished in 1972 just a couple of decades after its construction due to deteriorating social conditions. Pruitt-Igoe's demolition became a major turning point in popularity of what was increasingly seen as a failed social experiment. Postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks called its destruction "the day Modern architecture died" and considered it a direct indictment of the society-changing aspirations of the International school of architecture and an example of modernists' intentions running contrary to real-world social development. [8]
By the mid 2000s, it became popular to reclaim the green space surrounding towers with lower buildings in an effort to increase density mix instead of segregate the land use. [1]
Some examples of the tower in a park morphology are below:
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, known together as Pruitt–Igoe, were joint urban housing projects first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The complex of 33 eleven-story high rises was designed in the modernist architectural style by Minoru Yamasaki. At the time of opening, it was one of the largest public housing developments in the country. It was constructed with federal funds on the site of a former slum as part of the city's urban renewal program. Despite being legally integrated, it almost exclusively accommodated African Americans.
Waterloo is an inner southern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Waterloo is located three kilometres (1.9 mi) south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. Waterloo is surrounded by the suburbs of Redfern and Darlington to the north, Eveleigh and Alexandria to the west, Rosebery to the south, and Moore Park, Zetland, and Kensington to the east.
Redfern is an inner southern suburb of Sydney located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. Strawberry Hills is a locality on the border with Surry Hills. The area experienced the process of gentrification and is subject to extensive redevelopment plans by the state government, to increase the population and reduce the concentration of poverty in the suburb and neighbouring Waterloo.
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, was an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction ; the principle functionalism ; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.
Ernő Goldfinger was a Hungarian-born British architect and designer of furniture. He moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and became a key member of the Modernist architectural movement. He is most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, some of which are now listed buildings.
Sir Denys Louis Lasdun, CH, CBE, RA was an eminent English architect, the son of Nathan Lasdun (1879–1920) and Julie. Probably his best known work is the Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank of the Thames, which is a Grade II* listed building and one of the most notable examples of Brutalist design in the United Kingdom.
The Unité d'habitation is a modernist residential housing typology developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso. It formed the basis of several housing developments throughout Europe designed by Le Corbusier and sharing the same name.
The year 1972 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The South Sydney City Council was a local government area covering the inner-eastern and inner-Southern Sydney suburbs of Sydney. It was forcibly merged with the Sydney City Council by the Government of New South Wales in 2004. The council chambers were located in the Erskineville Town Hall, with the administrative offices at Joynton Avenue in Zetland. The administrative offices were relocated to the TNT Towers in Redfern in 2001.
Strawberry Hills is an official Urban Place in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Strawberry Hills is located east of Central railway station, within the suburbs of Surry Hills and Redfern which are part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. The origin of the name is unknown.
High modernism is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The Athens Charter was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.
Housing NSW, formerly the Housing Commission of New South Wales and before that the New South Wales Housing Board, was an agency of the Department of Communities and Justice that was responsible for the provision and management of public housing services with the aim to prevent homelessness in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Cochran Gardens was a public housing complex on the near north side of downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Construction was completed in 1953. The complex was occupied until 2006. It was famous for its residents' innovative form of tenant-led management. In 1976, Cochran Gardens became one of the first U.S. housing projects to have tenant management.
A figure-ground diagram is a two-dimensional map of an urban space that shows the relationship between built and unbuilt space. It is used in analysis of urban design and planning. It is akin to but not the same as a Nolli map which denotes public space both within and outside buildings and also akin to a block pattern diagram that records public and private property as simple rectangular blocks. The earliest advocates of its use were Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter.
The Southgate Estate was a modernist public housing project located in Runcorn New Town and completed in 1977. The estate was designed by James Stirling, and comprised 1,500 residential units intended to house 6,000 people. The estate was demolished between 1990 and 1992 and replaced with another housing development, known as Hallwood Park, based around more traditional design principles.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a 2011 documentary film detailing the history of the Pruitt–Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis, Missouri, and the eventual decision to raze the entire complex in 1976.
The Plan Voisin was a planned redevelopment of Paris designed by French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1925. The redevelopment was planned to replace a large area of central Paris, on the Right Bank of the River Seine. Although it was never implemented, the project is one of Le Corbusier's most well known; its principles inspired a number of other plans around the world.