East End Enclaves

摘要

The international story of the architecture and planning of urban housing in the 20th century has been a tale of sharp swings -between Modernist and anti-Modernist patterns, high and low density, and so forth. In Britain, these swings have been accentuated not only by our particularly violent fluctuations in housing tenure, from private to public and back again, but also by the longstanding 'Pugin tradition of fierce architectural polemic between competing Utopian visions. One of the more esoteric and longest-running issues of contention in these housing wars has been the conflict between 'open' and 'closed' planning models. This was first provoked by CIAM's (International Congress of Modern Architecture) insistence on a striking, separate newness, with clearly geometrical blocks in continuous flowing space, laid out 'democratically' with no hierarchy, no front and back. The approach was exemplified by the zeilenbau pattern of rigidly parallel slabs, arranged to maximise sunlight orientation 'for all', without any regard for existing urban contexts. This pattern was realised on a vast scale in Glasgow's Sighthill development (1961-8), with its array of parallel 20-storey towers. Over the second half of the 20th century, the pendulum swung gradually back from this extreme, with efforts to restore enclosure and public/private differentiation - a trend that began with the 1960s rejection of isolated, high towers in favour of complex 'low-rise, high-density' layouts, and culminated in the Post-Modern years' championing of the 'traditional street'. Now, however, the pendulum is returning to greater openness, as shown strikingly in the Moore Street project, the second phase of the Graham Square development in Glasgow.