Modern Architecture died in St. Louis,
Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous
Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final
coup de grâce by dynamite.
-Charles Jencks, The new paradigm in architecture: the
language of post-modernism
One of the implications of Jencks famous pronouncement on
the death of modern architecture is that of what might be termed architectural determinism. The growing
problem of substandard public housing in the 1960s—underfunded, caught in
political wrangling at the highest levels, and rife with mismanagement—could be
boiled down to a simple problem of poor design. Jencks critique of arid
landscaping and crime ridden hallways was linked to CIAM and Le Corbusier.
"Good form was to lead to good content, or at least good conduct; the
intelligent planning of abstract space was to promote healthy behavior".[1]
While ostensibly denying the power of architecture to accomplish such feats, he
later cites Oscar Newman's Defensible
Space, which is conversely a claim that architecture is capable of promoting
unhealthy behaviors.[2] Not mentioned were the deep budget cuts and political
pressure the architects had to contend with while they eschewed ideological
views ascribed to them.
Jencks aside, there is a larger problem within and outside of
architecture in attributing certain powers to architectural space. In the case
of Pruitt-Igoe, the notion that a style of architecture had graver effects on
the people of St. Louis than deindustrialization, poverty, and racism, obscured
these real problems and deflected criticism away from the political and
economic institutions that were to blame.[3] In accepting the blame architects
were free to offer new architectural solutions to solve these architectural
problems, thus the problem of architectural determinism remained unresolved.
