|
Essential Information & explanations, latest texts & monographs on
Pruitt-Igoe.
Pruitt Igoe Revisited (Oxbow
Monographs) by Chris
Bacon
Pruitt-Igoe
The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, originally built in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, has been regarded as one of the most infamous failures of public housing in American history.
Designed in 1951 by architect Minoru Yamasaki (who would later design the World Trade Center), it consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings on a 57-acre site, totaling 2,870 apartments, and was completed five years later. The project was commissioned as part of the post-WWII federal housing program, as an attempt to bring people back to the city, but within a few years it quickly fell into disrepair and disuse.
Many of the architectural design elements of Pruitt-Igoe, such as its galleries and "skip-stop" elevators (which stopped only at certain floors in an attempt to lessen congestion), turned out to be at best inconveniences and at worst breeding grounds for crime. The buildings remained largely vacant for years, and after several failed attempts to rehabilitate the area the St. Louis Housing Authority had the entire complex demolished in 1972.
Critics have cited the failure of Pruitt-Igoe as an example of how planned urban communities often fail. The complex had been designed as an attempt to emulate the public housing projects in New York City, but with little regard for the vast difference in economies and population distributions in the two cities.
Footage of the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe was incorporated into the film Koyaanisqatsi.
This article is adapted from from Wikipedia All Wikipedia article text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Pruitt Igoe Revisited by Chris Bacon
Latest books on: urban
housing design;
Housing
As If People Mattered: Site Design Guidelines for Medium Density
Family by Clare Cooper Marcus
The
Architecture of Affordable Housing by Sam Davis
Housing
and the Urban Environment: A Guide to Housing Design, Renewal and
Urban Planning by Barry Goodchild
Aging,
Autonomy, and Architecture: Advances in Assisted Living by
Benyamin Schwarz
Site
Planning and Community Design for Great Neighborhoods by
Frederick D. Jarvis
Duplex
& Townhome Plans: 51 Designs for Multi-Family Living by Home
Planners Staff
Re:
American Dream : Six Urban Housing Prototypes for Los Angeles by
Roger Sherman
Planning
Polycentric Urban Regions in North West Europe: Value, Feasibility
& Design (Housing & Urban Policy Eurabanet Report No. 2,
25) by E.J. Meijers
Housing
as if people mattered: Site design guidelines for medium-density
family housing (California series in urban development) by Clare
Cooper Marcus
Social
Rented Housing in Europe: Policy, Tenure and Design (Housing and
Urban Policy Studies ; 9) by B. Danermark
Housing
Design Quality: Through Policy, Guidance, and Review by Matthew
Carmona
RIBA
Book of 20th Century British Housing by Ian Colquhoun
New
Urban Housing: Fresh Thinking from the Pittsburgh Design
Competition by I. Community Design Center O.
Democratic
Architecture: Practical Solutions to Today's Housing Crisis by
Donald MacDonald
|