Pruitt-Igoe Ideology
Pruitt-Igoe: The Making and Unmaking of Architecture’s Greatest Myth
The Making
In 1949, the United States Housing Act was passed, allowing the US government to introduce several urban rejuvenation projects, one of which was the Pruitt-Igoe public housing, largely created to restrict the growth of slums that were economically degrading the value of real estate in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. A 57 acre site was cleared for the construction of 5800 housing units that would house nearly 15000 residents.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, who was also responsible for the design of the World Trade Centre that went down in the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks, was commissioned by the St Louis Housing Authority for the design of Pruitt-Igoe in 1950. His initial design consisted of a combination of mid-rise …show more content…
and high-rise blocks, intermingled with lush green community spaces. However, his proposal was over ruled by the Public Housing Authority that insisted on a much denser scheme of 33 eleven-storey blocks. Yamasaki’s proposal for Pruitt-Igoe included several design features such as the skip-stop elevator, locally found at the Vikas Minar in ITO, and glazed internal galleries that were meant to promote “neighbourly interaction”. These features were initially heralded by leading architectural journals of the time as “innovative compensations for the short comings of the high rise form” (Bristol, 1991) but the same journals would go on to criticise Yamasaki’s efforts as a follow through to Charles Jencks’ initial critique of Pruitt-Igoe.
Section showing the skip-stop elevators (Image courtesy: Bristol, 1991)
The Unmaking
The downfall of Pruitt-Igoe began with its occupation. Construction was completed in 1954 for a residency that was expected to consist of one-third whites and two-third blacks but ended up housing 98% black residents due to the Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation (Birmingham, 1999). Immediately, funds for the project significantly dropped resulting in major modifications to the original design. The densities of the blocks were nearly doubled and landscape was discarded as an unnecessary expense. What was meant to be lush green community parks shrivelled into dry, dirt grounds, barricading the site from the context around it and spatially preventing any interaction with the surrounding city space, the interactive galleries contorted into gang hangouts, the skip-stop elevators that were designed to ensure usage of the gallery now forced residents to pass through the gang dense space that became epicentres of excessive violence. Yamasaki imagined a housing that would voice Le Corbusier’s “three essential joys of urbanism: sun, space and greenery” (Jencks, 1977) but the final product proclaimed mirror images of this hope. The safe, healthy environment as envisioned by the architect slowly morphed into a near prison like seclusion.
In an effort to reduce construction cost, the Authority used products of such low quality that they broke after initial use. In The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, Katherine Bristol talks about window panes made so poorly that they broke apart under wind pressure. Doorknobs and handles snapped when pulled, the thinnest plywood available was used in the kitchens.
The design elements that Yamasaki had so carefully thought of for Pruitt-Igoe were routinely vandalised by the local youth: graffiti, territorial gang symbols, covering most of its facades, doors and windows smashed in, plumbing destroyed. The Housing Authority enforced a number of odd, almost racist policies in an effort to curb the rising vandalism: heavy metal grills and chain link fences installed in the galleries, converting what should have been pleasant outdoor settings into unsafe, prison-like enclosures; armed men patrolling the housing complex, further emphasizing on the subtle message that Pruitt-Igoe was less a home and more of a prison. To begin with, the Housing Authority disallowed husbands from living with their families. It is argued that the lack of strong male figures within the community could be one of the reasons for the massive growth of gang violence. (Birmingham, 1999)
Vandalised windows as seen at Pruitt-Igoe The vandalised 3rd floor community gallery
The “Death of High Modernism”
I believe that Charles Jencks wrongly blamed the architect by calling Pruitt-Igoe the “death of high modernism”.
Pruitt-Igoe was a toxic amalgamation of bad policy making and the everyday racism of the day. It is true that Yamasaki, like most modern architects, had a utopian outlook. He was designing for people and that alone is where his fault lay. The Authority did not consider the residents of Pruitt-Igoe people, segregation had been abolished but years of the slave regime had hardwired the belief that black and white should never be treated the same. The policy makers of the day conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe as an effort to curb the overgrowth of the slums that would eventually lead to real estate disaster: land prices would plummet, money would be lost. To the policy makers, Pruitt-Igoe was an economic manoeuvre, disguised as an attempt to make lives better. Yamasaki, a Japanese architect, was not biased by American racial inclinations; he genuinely attempted to design a “clean, safe and democratic” environment (Birmingham, P297, 1999). High modernism did not just die at Pruitt-Igoe, high modernism was murdered, and murdered not by the designer but by the policy
maker.
Surprisingly, in the neighbourhood of Pruitt-Igoe existed one Carr Square Village, with similar populace, that flourished just as Pruitt-Igoe was collapsing, the village still exists to this day. Oscar Newman rightly questions this anomaly in Creating Defensible Space:
Across the street from Pruitt-Igoe was an older, smaller, row-house complex, Carr Square Village, occupied by an identical population. It had remained fully occupied and trouble-free throughout the construction, occupancy, and decline of Pruitt-Igoe. With social variables constant in the two developments, what, I asked, was the significance of the physical differences that enabled one to survive while the other was destroyed?
In my opinion, unlike Pruitt-Igoe, Carr Village was not constructed as an economic safety measure and hence, was not scrutinized to the same degree by the policy makers.
Carr Square Village, a neighbouring row housing (Image Courtesy: Newman, 1996)
If one were to assess Pruitt-Igoe as it were originally conceptualised, it would appear to be an architecturally sound structure resonating the commonly practiced Modernist principles of the day. The project was intended to be delimited by a “river of trees” that ensured clear connections between the project and the adjacent locality. The almost barren, unembellished facades were meant to resosnate the suspension of old ideologies that promoted excessive ornamentation as a synonym of wealth. The economically favourable skip-stop elevators, were designed to encourage residents to use the common gallery spaces. The entire project was modelled metaphorically around a hospital, where units would open out into interactive galleries and “streets in the air” to ensure a pedestrian friendly environment. (Birmingham, P296, 1999)
The Pruitt-Igoe as is infamously remembered had large blocks shamelessly encircled by vast masses of flat nothing, as opposed to the lush greens Yamasaki hoped for, which ironically prevented any interaction with the adjoining cityscape. The local gangs took treating the facades into their own hands, marking their territories with large graffiti pieces. The galleries became gang hangouts and the skip-stop elevators, as mentioned earlier, unintentionally channelized residents directly into the way of gang violence by forcing them to pass through the gallery areas to reach the stairs. The resulting space that was Pruitt-Igoe was far from friendly, it was an urban prison.
The disconnecting dirt grounds surrounding the project (Image courtesy: USGS, 1968)
The modernist structure that Yamasaki had planned for never came into existence, what was eventually produced was a heavily mutilated shell of the architect’s original vision. The abnormal regulations enforced within Pruitt-Igoe created a crude, unfriendly space, an example of this can be seen in the Housing Authority’s policy to award residents that informed on the activities of other residents. It is true that the St Louis Housing Authority conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe with the parallel intention of dissolving the ghettos but by treating the residents as prisoners, as opposed to people, they succeeded in creating a ghetto with a density nearly double that of what previously existed on the site, forcing the demolition the entire project in 1972.
The infamous Pruitt-Igoe demolition images (US Department of Housing & Urban Development, 1972)
References
Birmingham, Elizabeth, Reframing the Ruins: Pruitt-Igoe, Structural Racism, and African American Rhetoric as a Space for Cultural Critique, Western Journal of Communication, summer 1999.
Bristol, Katharine, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, nd., University of California Berkeley.
Newman, Oscar, Creating Defensible Space, Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, April 1996.
The Making
In 1949, the United States Housing Act was passed, allowing the US government to introduce several urban rejuvenation projects, one of which was the Pruitt-Igoe public housing, largely created to restrict the growth of slums that were economically degrading the value of real estate in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. A 57 acre site was cleared for the construction of 5800 housing units that would house nearly 15000 residents.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, who was also responsible for the design of the World Trade Centre that went down in the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks, was commissioned by the St Louis Housing Authority for the design of Pruitt-Igoe in 1950. His initial design consisted of a combination of mid-rise …show more content…
and high-rise blocks, intermingled with lush green community spaces. However, his proposal was over ruled by the Public Housing Authority that insisted on a much denser scheme of 33 eleven-storey blocks. Yamasaki’s proposal for Pruitt-Igoe included several design features such as the skip-stop elevator, locally found at the Vikas Minar in ITO, and glazed internal galleries that were meant to promote “neighbourly interaction”. These features were initially heralded by leading architectural journals of the time as “innovative compensations for the short comings of the high rise form” (Bristol, 1991) but the same journals would go on to criticise Yamasaki’s efforts as a follow through to Charles Jencks’ initial critique of Pruitt-Igoe.
Section showing the skip-stop elevators (Image courtesy: Bristol, 1991)
The Unmaking
The downfall of Pruitt-Igoe began with its occupation. Construction was completed in 1954 for a residency that was expected to consist of one-third whites and two-third blacks but ended up housing 98% black residents due to the Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation (Birmingham, 1999). Immediately, funds for the project significantly dropped resulting in major modifications to the original design. The densities of the blocks were nearly doubled and landscape was discarded as an unnecessary expense. What was meant to be lush green community parks shrivelled into dry, dirt grounds, barricading the site from the context around it and spatially preventing any interaction with the surrounding city space, the interactive galleries contorted into gang hangouts, the skip-stop elevators that were designed to ensure usage of the gallery now forced residents to pass through the gang dense space that became epicentres of excessive violence. Yamasaki imagined a housing that would voice Le Corbusier’s “three essential joys of urbanism: sun, space and greenery” (Jencks, 1977) but the final product proclaimed mirror images of this hope. The safe, healthy environment as envisioned by the architect slowly morphed into a near prison like seclusion.
In an effort to reduce construction cost, the Authority used products of such low quality that they broke after initial use. In The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, Katherine Bristol talks about window panes made so poorly that they broke apart under wind pressure. Doorknobs and handles snapped when pulled, the thinnest plywood available was used in the kitchens.
The design elements that Yamasaki had so carefully thought of for Pruitt-Igoe were routinely vandalised by the local youth: graffiti, territorial gang symbols, covering most of its facades, doors and windows smashed in, plumbing destroyed. The Housing Authority enforced a number of odd, almost racist policies in an effort to curb the rising vandalism: heavy metal grills and chain link fences installed in the galleries, converting what should have been pleasant outdoor settings into unsafe, prison-like enclosures; armed men patrolling the housing complex, further emphasizing on the subtle message that Pruitt-Igoe was less a home and more of a prison. To begin with, the Housing Authority disallowed husbands from living with their families. It is argued that the lack of strong male figures within the community could be one of the reasons for the massive growth of gang violence. (Birmingham, 1999)
Vandalised windows as seen at Pruitt-Igoe The vandalised 3rd floor community gallery
The “Death of High Modernism”
I believe that Charles Jencks wrongly blamed the architect by calling Pruitt-Igoe the “death of high modernism”.
Pruitt-Igoe was a toxic amalgamation of bad policy making and the everyday racism of the day. It is true that Yamasaki, like most modern architects, had a utopian outlook. He was designing for people and that alone is where his fault lay. The Authority did not consider the residents of Pruitt-Igoe people, segregation had been abolished but years of the slave regime had hardwired the belief that black and white should never be treated the same. The policy makers of the day conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe as an effort to curb the overgrowth of the slums that would eventually lead to real estate disaster: land prices would plummet, money would be lost. To the policy makers, Pruitt-Igoe was an economic manoeuvre, disguised as an attempt to make lives better. Yamasaki, a Japanese architect, was not biased by American racial inclinations; he genuinely attempted to design a “clean, safe and democratic” environment (Birmingham, P297, 1999). High modernism did not just die at Pruitt-Igoe, high modernism was murdered, and murdered not by the designer but by the policy
maker.
Surprisingly, in the neighbourhood of Pruitt-Igoe existed one Carr Square Village, with similar populace, that flourished just as Pruitt-Igoe was collapsing, the village still exists to this day. Oscar Newman rightly questions this anomaly in Creating Defensible Space:
Across the street from Pruitt-Igoe was an older, smaller, row-house complex, Carr Square Village, occupied by an identical population. It had remained fully occupied and trouble-free throughout the construction, occupancy, and decline of Pruitt-Igoe. With social variables constant in the two developments, what, I asked, was the significance of the physical differences that enabled one to survive while the other was destroyed?
In my opinion, unlike Pruitt-Igoe, Carr Village was not constructed as an economic safety measure and hence, was not scrutinized to the same degree by the policy makers.
Carr Square Village, a neighbouring row housing (Image Courtesy: Newman, 1996)
If one were to assess Pruitt-Igoe as it were originally conceptualised, it would appear to be an architecturally sound structure resonating the commonly practiced Modernist principles of the day. The project was intended to be delimited by a “river of trees” that ensured clear connections between the project and the adjacent locality. The almost barren, unembellished facades were meant to resosnate the suspension of old ideologies that promoted excessive ornamentation as a synonym of wealth. The economically favourable skip-stop elevators, were designed to encourage residents to use the common gallery spaces. The entire project was modelled metaphorically around a hospital, where units would open out into interactive galleries and “streets in the air” to ensure a pedestrian friendly environment. (Birmingham, P296, 1999)
The Pruitt-Igoe as is infamously remembered had large blocks shamelessly encircled by vast masses of flat nothing, as opposed to the lush greens Yamasaki hoped for, which ironically prevented any interaction with the adjoining cityscape. The local gangs took treating the facades into their own hands, marking their territories with large graffiti pieces. The galleries became gang hangouts and the skip-stop elevators, as mentioned earlier, unintentionally channelized residents directly into the way of gang violence by forcing them to pass through the gallery areas to reach the stairs. The resulting space that was Pruitt-Igoe was far from friendly, it was an urban prison.
The disconnecting dirt grounds surrounding the project (Image courtesy: USGS, 1968)
The modernist structure that Yamasaki had planned for never came into existence, what was eventually produced was a heavily mutilated shell of the architect’s original vision. The abnormal regulations enforced within Pruitt-Igoe created a crude, unfriendly space, an example of this can be seen in the Housing Authority’s policy to award residents that informed on the activities of other residents. It is true that the St Louis Housing Authority conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe with the parallel intention of dissolving the ghettos but by treating the residents as prisoners, as opposed to people, they succeeded in creating a ghetto with a density nearly double that of what previously existed on the site, forcing the demolition the entire project in 1972.
The infamous Pruitt-Igoe demolition images (US Department of Housing & Urban Development, 1972)
References
Birmingham, Elizabeth, Reframing the Ruins: Pruitt-Igoe, Structural Racism, and African American Rhetoric as a Space for Cultural Critique, Western Journal of Communication, summer 1999.
Bristol, Katharine, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, nd., University of California Berkeley.
Newman, Oscar, Creating Defensible Space, Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, April 1996.