traffic congestion, the safeguarding of light and air, and all the other familiar difficulties which are present to a greater or lesser degree in nearly every big city in the world.
It will be obvious to anyone who examines the plan of any large European city that the daily life of its inhabitants is carried on with an accompaniment of difficulties and hindrances which are not in accordance with our present-day ideals of efficient organisation, and which in the aggregate are the cause of an enormous loss of working output, but more important still, of a serious curtailment of the leisure and recreation which are far too meagrely available for the average working citizen. There are difficulties of “circulation” in the process of reaching the place
of business, and lack of sufficient light and air in all but the least congested centres. The human machine labours every day under the handicap of effort spent in the overcoming of material difficulties, and nearly all of these would appear, in an ideally organised community, to be avoidable. Difficulties of similar nature are overcome in the smaller community which is contained within the walls of any well-planned and modernly-equipped individual building, where the architect has been more or less free to avoid by skill and experience a stupid loss of energy on the part of those who use it. But no building is independent of the surroundings which often partially dictate its plan; and if the plan of an individual structure is to be ideal, it must form a portion of a comprehensive general scheme in which the main factors which make for difficulties in each unit of the whole have been eliminated.
Of these factors the most important is congestion, arising from the desire or necessity of people — and consequently buildings — to congregate in one particular spot. Congestion has occurred in nearly every large city in the world, irrespective of whether it is new or old, and whatever legislation may do to palliate the resultant evils, it will probably never provide a cure for what is an essentially human trait, that of preferring one place to another. There are bound to be favoured zones in every town, for residence, business, recreation, and industry, and the problem is rather that of organising and controlling these zones than of suppressing them.
In the business zones of cities like New York the skyscraper has arisen as a practical means of accommodating a very large number of people on a very
limited area of land. But the congestion which arises from the resultant concentration is not entirely the fault of the skyscrapers, which in the whole of New York occupy a very small proportion of the total built-up area. It is not so much a question of tall building versus low building as that of another problem which is bound up with a decision between the merits of the two types, the problem of open area versus built-up area.
In a city of low buildings, a large number of people can only be housed on a given area by crowding the site to the limit and reducing passage and open space to a bare minimum. In a city of mixed type, low and high buildings cheek by jowl, more people are accommodated, but the area remains covered, and the already exiguous communications are congested by the extra load of traffic thrown upon them. If, however, the floor area of all the low buildings were arranged, not horizontally but vertically, in other words the low structure converted into a high one, there would result a city of towers in which the formerly builtup ground was freed from bricks and mortar and became available as open space. It will be seen, therefore, that a practicable solution for space in the centre of congested districts, for roads, public gardens, motor parks — provision, in fact, for all the requirements of this nature which are involved in modern life — lies not in the addition to the lowfrontaged streets (with their buildings of a maximum 80-foot elevation) of a few isolated tall buildings, but in the complete elimination of the low buildings and the grouping of their floor areas in tall vertical shafts, around the base of which would be the requisite space for circulation, light and air.
The idea is not a new one. In the Pavilion of “L’Esprit Nouveau, ” at the Paris Exhibition of 1925, were shown two plans of one of the most congested districts of Paris, one of them as at present existing, and the other showing the present buildings swept away, with in their place a series of towers surrounded by gardens and served by a series of magnificent boulevards and avenues. The section of Paris suggested for this treatment was that bounded by the Place de la Republique and the Rue du Louvre in one direction, and the Gare de l’Est and the Rue de Rivoli in the other; and the authors of the scheme, the architects Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, while proposing this treatment as a great forward step towards the improvement of the centre of Paris,
A PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH A CONSTANT RATIO BETWEEN THE VOLUME OF BUILDINGS AND THE STREET AREA. FOR EACH FOOT OF STREET FRONTAGE A DEFINITE BUILDING VOLUME IS ALLOWED BY LAW. A PROPERTY OWNER CAN EXCEED THE VOLUME ALLOWANGE PROVIDED HE SETS BACK, INCREASING THE STREET AREA PRO PORTIONATELY IN FRONT OF HIS BUILDING, OR EACH BUILDING AS IT IMPOSES AN ADDITIONAL LOAD ON STREET TRAFFIC PROVIDES THE ADDITIONAL STREET AREA TO CARRY IT.
It will be obvious to anyone who examines the plan of any large European city that the daily life of its inhabitants is carried on with an accompaniment of difficulties and hindrances which are not in accordance with our present-day ideals of efficient organisation, and which in the aggregate are the cause of an enormous loss of working output, but more important still, of a serious curtailment of the leisure and recreation which are far too meagrely available for the average working citizen. There are difficulties of “circulation” in the process of reaching the place
of business, and lack of sufficient light and air in all but the least congested centres. The human machine labours every day under the handicap of effort spent in the overcoming of material difficulties, and nearly all of these would appear, in an ideally organised community, to be avoidable. Difficulties of similar nature are overcome in the smaller community which is contained within the walls of any well-planned and modernly-equipped individual building, where the architect has been more or less free to avoid by skill and experience a stupid loss of energy on the part of those who use it. But no building is independent of the surroundings which often partially dictate its plan; and if the plan of an individual structure is to be ideal, it must form a portion of a comprehensive general scheme in which the main factors which make for difficulties in each unit of the whole have been eliminated.
Of these factors the most important is congestion, arising from the desire or necessity of people — and consequently buildings — to congregate in one particular spot. Congestion has occurred in nearly every large city in the world, irrespective of whether it is new or old, and whatever legislation may do to palliate the resultant evils, it will probably never provide a cure for what is an essentially human trait, that of preferring one place to another. There are bound to be favoured zones in every town, for residence, business, recreation, and industry, and the problem is rather that of organising and controlling these zones than of suppressing them.
In the business zones of cities like New York the skyscraper has arisen as a practical means of accommodating a very large number of people on a very
limited area of land. But the congestion which arises from the resultant concentration is not entirely the fault of the skyscrapers, which in the whole of New York occupy a very small proportion of the total built-up area. It is not so much a question of tall building versus low building as that of another problem which is bound up with a decision between the merits of the two types, the problem of open area versus built-up area.
In a city of low buildings, a large number of people can only be housed on a given area by crowding the site to the limit and reducing passage and open space to a bare minimum. In a city of mixed type, low and high buildings cheek by jowl, more people are accommodated, but the area remains covered, and the already exiguous communications are congested by the extra load of traffic thrown upon them. If, however, the floor area of all the low buildings were arranged, not horizontally but vertically, in other words the low structure converted into a high one, there would result a city of towers in which the formerly builtup ground was freed from bricks and mortar and became available as open space. It will be seen, therefore, that a practicable solution for space in the centre of congested districts, for roads, public gardens, motor parks — provision, in fact, for all the requirements of this nature which are involved in modern life — lies not in the addition to the lowfrontaged streets (with their buildings of a maximum 80-foot elevation) of a few isolated tall buildings, but in the complete elimination of the low buildings and the grouping of their floor areas in tall vertical shafts, around the base of which would be the requisite space for circulation, light and air.
The idea is not a new one. In the Pavilion of “L’Esprit Nouveau, ” at the Paris Exhibition of 1925, were shown two plans of one of the most congested districts of Paris, one of them as at present existing, and the other showing the present buildings swept away, with in their place a series of towers surrounded by gardens and served by a series of magnificent boulevards and avenues. The section of Paris suggested for this treatment was that bounded by the Place de la Republique and the Rue du Louvre in one direction, and the Gare de l’Est and the Rue de Rivoli in the other; and the authors of the scheme, the architects Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, while proposing this treatment as a great forward step towards the improvement of the centre of Paris,
A PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH A CONSTANT RATIO BETWEEN THE VOLUME OF BUILDINGS AND THE STREET AREA. FOR EACH FOOT OF STREET FRONTAGE A DEFINITE BUILDING VOLUME IS ALLOWED BY LAW. A PROPERTY OWNER CAN EXCEED THE VOLUME ALLOWANGE PROVIDED HE SETS BACK, INCREASING THE STREET AREA PRO PORTIONATELY IN FRONT OF HIS BUILDING, OR EACH BUILDING AS IT IMPOSES AN ADDITIONAL LOAD ON STREET TRAFFIC PROVIDES THE ADDITIONAL STREET AREA TO CARRY IT.