The Modernist Housing Project in the United States

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The Modernist Housing Project in the United States
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Vision of the Futurist City by Antonio Sant
Elia, c. 1914
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LeCorbusier, Ville Contemporaine, c. 1922
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LeCorbusier, Ville Contemporaine, c.1922
Weissenhofseidling, Stuttgart, Germany, c.1927
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Frank Lloyd Wright, St. Marks in the Bowery
Tower, project for social housing, ca.1929
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Frank Lloyd Wright, Price Tower, Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, c1950
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Minoru Yasmaski, Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, St.
Louis MO, c1961
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Modernism in crisis in the 1960s raised numerous
questions, for instance Is it possible to
pursue a social agenda through architecture? Is
a social agenda the same thing as social
engineering? What is the relationship of modern
architecture to history and tradition? Did
modern architects hoodwink corporate America into
accepting a socialist vocabulary to house the
institutions of capitalism? Should architecture
derive its theoretical stance from
socio-political theory and philosophy or is
architecture capable of establishing its own
agenda as a self-sufficient discipline? Does
form follow function or do function and form have
some other relationship? Is beauty a thing of
the past and no longer a value we can pursue?