Follow us at:
ReformActivismDesign
  • Home
  • About
  • Projects
    • Design as a Social Act >
      • Library DVD Availability
  • Previews
  • Resources
    • Speculative Novels and Film
  • Blog
  • Store
  • Contact us

The Project Domesticated: Postmodern Retrofits to Public Housing

5/28/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Clinton Peabody, St. Louis, 1955

Clinton Peabody, St. Louis, 2017

"The Project Domesticated: Postmodern Retrofits for Public Housing"
Society of Architectural Historians
, Glasgow, Scotland, June 8, 2017
​

Michael R. Allen, Senior Lecturer, Washington University in St. Louis
Susanne Cowan, Assistant Professor, Montana State University
 
​In St. Louis, few realize that the city's two oldest public housing projects actually are preserved and still functioning for their original purpose. As HOPE VI felled the city's skyline of high-rise public housing, the St. Louis Housing Authority elected a different course for the city’s two low-rise, Wagner-Steagall era projects. However, the retention of these early projects reinforces the architectural mythology of public housing. The decision to demolish tower blocks while retaining low-rises reflected the influence of the contested physical determinist theories of Oscar Newman. Furthermore, the decision to modify the retained units adhered to postmodernist ideas that the International Style needed to be made palatable and contextual through the introduction neo-traditional building elements. The surviving low-rise projects were integrated into New Urbanist plans that erased original styles, altered the building forms and distorted historic landscape plans.
 
Here while the buildings could be said to be preserved, they have been stripped of the architectural features that characterized the original projects. The resulting landscapes present both the promise and ambiguity of preservation programs for public housing in an era where federal policies remain foundationally anchored to rejection of the negative image of public housing. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Susanne Cowan

    Susanne is an architectural and urban historian interested in social activism in design.

    Picture

    Ayda Melika

    Ayda Melika is an architectural historian and filmmaker interested in  the spatial manifestations of collective activism.

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    May 2017
    January 2017
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    March 2015
    January 2015