MAN AND HIS CITIES-III Town Planning For The Twenty-First Century

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31031, 11 April 1966, Page 12

MAN AND HIS CITIES-III Town Planning For The Twenty-First Century

The last of three articles from the World Health Organisation on this year’s theme for World Health Day.

Cities, like the people who live in them, are living organisms, growing constantly but not always developing harmoniously. For an improved balance, the better city requires good location, green belts around it and parks within, abundance of drinking-water, pleasant dwellings and smooth traffic flow.

Present city patterns can be improved further by applying sociology to urban conditions, by social psychiatry and by the collective effort of workers from many fields: town planning, engineering, architecture, art, economics, administration and public health.

The World Health Organisation has encouraged cooperation between planning experts, public health administrators and health engineers. Yet, such co-operation is still

the exception rather than the rule. The participation of doctors and health engineers, however, seems increasingly necessary if the three natural resources usurped by cities — earth, water and air—are to be organised and supervised with maximum efficacy. Every city ought to have a permanent planning department for environmental health with an adequate staff and budget. There should also be a programme to inform public opinion. The existence of many a traditional town or city characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can scarcely be justified any longer. If the nineteenth century town is no longer useful (and modern towns are still very similar) towards what sort of cities are we heading? One of the main ideas developed by a new generation of architects and town planners is that of artificial ground levels created by spatial structures. Towns are conceived as having several storeys, thus separating town activities such as transport, shopping, etc. These housebearing structures would be made of steel and correspond exactly to the wishes of some developing countries which advocate the creation of infrastructures by the public authorities, leaving it to the inhabitants themselves to use the space allotted as they think fit.

Yona Friedman's movable architecture responds to their desire by proposing the construction of a three-dimen-sional lattice on pillars. This conception provides for complete freedom on the ground surface and for the suspension of transformable dwellings, making it possible even to move the dwelling. Empty spaces are left between large portions of the structure in order to expose the ground to sunshine and permit it to be use! for cultivation. This also makes it possible to alter the disposition of dwellings. Other suggestions for homes suspended from a central structure have given rise to novel forms and techniques. House Clusters

The pyramids devised by the French architect Paul Maymont consist of a hollow, central mast containing all the vertical installations and linked by cables to the supporting groundwork of the town. The Swiss architect, Pascal Hausermann, has been studying plastic egg-shaped cells which can be hung up in clusters, and a young Japanese planner, Kurokawa, has devised a range of house-bearing structures that are almost floral in character. Other departures along these lines are Chaneac’s ‘’crater towns.” the “cybernetic towns” of Nicolas Schoffer and D. Giuresco's “towns in the air.” Other schemes are more naturalistic. They include the “funnel town” of another Swiss, Walter Jonas, and the “Mesa city” and “chemical architecture” of two Americans, Paolo Seleri and William Katavolos. Walter Jonas's funnel town of “Intra Haus” is placed in a series of connected artificial valleys and the houses are insulated against traffic noise and air pollution from exhaust fumes. Another feature of tfiis system is recovery of rain-water, which

was recommended by W.H.O. experts.

Building in the past aimed at defying the centuries, but this was because, from Parthenon to Crystal Palace, the world did not alter substantially. Stable social structures can command unchangeable architecture. For the last 100 years, succeeding generations have witnessed more sweeping changes than the world has experienced during the last 1000 years. Cities with motor traffic and television cannot be the same as those with horsemen and chimney fires. The city of the future will have to be so flexible as to be adaptable to ever-changing requirements or reflect a sense of the passing of values that will make it easy to transform it. All hew towns under construction at present were devised in terms of motor traffic; yet who shall say whether the future belongs to the automobile or to the helicopter or to some other form of locomotion yet to be discovered? Who knows whether our motorway networks will not be out of date before their completion? Suffice it to recall the number of airfields which had to be abandoned because of aeronautical progress. Ready For Change

Louis Armand, well known for his grasp of future technological trends and their probable impact on mankind, points out that the age of mobile structures has begun and that man must learn to find satisfaction in a constant process of change just as he once learnt to derive it from static forms.

A significant movement of anticipatory architecture is to be found in Western Germany with Frei Otto, Sehultzefielitz and Werner Ruhnau. Frei Otto and Ruhnau are particularly interested in indoor climatisation. Only structures easy to change and adapt will stand the test of time, in the view of Otto, because they alone will be constantly renewable. He adds that alongside amoeba-like structures changeable by adding or removing their components, there will be others in which almost nothing will be predetermined. As was the case

in olden times, homes will move with their occupants until the time-honoured tent will be so highly perfected that it will offer the greatest possible comfort under all existing climates on earth. The perfection of flexible structures that are easy to put up and carry about is the most urgent problem of all if a roof is to be given to everyone in the world. The American expert BuckminsterFuller, in inventing geodesic domes, has rendered mankind an incalculable service. These geodesical domes, which aim at covering entire towns or large areas for purposes of climate control, may become an emergency habitat made of plastic, metal or even cardboard.

They are light enough to be parachuted into areas that are hard of access. An interesting experiment on similar lines has been made in Africa where a sort of parasol consisting of a column and a roof is built by modern techniques, the rest of the home being left to the inhabitant’s own initiative. Town and Country Another prospect is opening up; the age-old distinction between urban and rural communities is disappearing. Perhaps, a generation from now, it will be possible to create communities combining the advantages of former city and country life, without their worst defects and drawbacks, with the most agreeable results for mental and physical health. When tele-communications start taking the place of transport, the volume of exchanges tween one machine and another will tend to replace the man-to-man pattern. This will transform social relations. Television has already altered family life and the telephone multiplies contacts. When telephone conversations between several persons become more practical, much travelling about and the meeting of groups will become unnecessary. All the prospective plans mentioned are the fruit of disinterested research, often conducted on empirical lines without private or public assistance. Study centres for architecture in the next century should be set up in every country and be granted budgets as large as or larger than those reserved for aeronautical and space research. The home of mankind is still on earth.—(Concluded)