Crespi d’Adda - a Workers' Utopia
A case study research site
Literature reviews
Before researching on the case, Crespi Dadda, a typical workers village in Italy, our group explored two literature pieces to back up the theory framework of such utopian model towns.
The City as a Project
by
Pier Vittorio Aureli
In response to the architects’ losing capability in relating single projects to the urban context, Aureli (2013) explored cases (architects, planning, theories) in chronological order, regarding architecture as a systemic discipline that motivates its urban environment and is guided by political powers. Within this treatise, the dwelling space as a means of individual emancipation and the urban structure as a means of domination are articulated.
The late 1st Century BC
Roman turned from Republic to Empire
Vitruvius
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Order as an architectural grammar to enhance governance.
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Architecture as a systemic discipline should have its political authority
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Architect as an independent profession from craftsmanship.
Roman architect and
civil engineer
The 18th Century
Rise of urbanism
Pierre Patte
French architect
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Regarding city as a result of engineering infrastructures, anonymous machine for regulating from birth to death.
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The emphasis on the control of inhabitants.
Vitruvius
Nicolas Delamare
French police commissioner
To achieve the happiness of the city's inhabitants, rules and principles were concluded to deal with finite incidents.
However, this approach failed in the lack of actual practice.
The 19th Century
After the February Revolution, 1848
Baron Haussmann
French official
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By linking urban form to the management of circulation and land speculation, stable political governance based on market development was established.
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Guidelines for Paris reconstruction were made to ensure a free-market environment.
The 14th Century
Great demographic crises
After the plague of 1348 (Black Death), which dramatically decreased the European population, the essentiality of production and labour force are valued.
After the plague of 1348 (Black Death), which dramatically decreased the European population, the essentiality of production and labour force are valued.
1378, The Ciompi
The first modern proletarian revolution
A rebellious campaign started by Italian wool-makers in demand for improvements in working conditions and higher wages.
The 15th Century
Making a productive city
Filippo Brunelleschi
Fundamental
Italian architect
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Architects started to gain more control of the project by reducing the autonomy of the builders through standardizing decorative units.
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Through modular thinking, architecture became a three-dimensional grid filled with repeating elements.
Leon Battista Alberti
Italian Renaissance architect
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Using the form of Order as an ornament element to separate the external skin, the façade, from the structural wall.
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Forming a negotiation, rather than confrontation, between public streets and buildings by extending the logic of a single building into the city order.
Sebastiano Serlio
Italian Mannerist architect
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The expression of equality by taking people from all classes into account.
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Social control of the city is expressed in the spatial organization of the single dwelling, within which the everyday life of the inhabitants happens.
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Order is expressed at the scale of a single house.
The 20th Century
WWI, an architectural protoype for urban reconstruction
Le Corbusier
Swiss-French architect
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The propose of Maison Domino as a prototype for post-war reconstruction
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By reducing architecture to only load-bearing structures, occupants were able to self-build their private property.
*Put cersor on to interact*
Utopia
Diagram Utopias: Rota and Network as Instrument
and Mirror of Utopia and Agronica
by
Christoph Lueder
By complying with Thomas Moore’s five clues, and informed by Simoson (2016), the ideal configuration of the island of Utopia has been shown:
Clue 1: Utopia is shaped as a crescent, the horns of which bound a large harbor on its eastern end.
Clue 2: If we loosely define the midline of the island as the perpendicular bisector of the crescent's two tips, then Utopia's cross-sections parallel to the midline are all about 200 miles, except near the extremes where it collapses to 0
Clue 3: This harbor is circular with a mouth of I1 miles so as to make a perimeter of about 500 miles
Clue 4: Utopia consists of 54 city-states, each separated from the nearest neighbour by 24 miles. Each city state is square-like with side lengths of at least 20 miles.
Clue 5: The capital city, located in the centre of the island, lies about 60 miles from the harbour and 140 miles from the opposite coast.
Andrea Branzi and the Spatial and Social Structure of Agronica
Andrea "envisions an urban system traversed by flows of information and transient inhabitation,Agronica is utopian, addressing a "nonplace" rather than a specific geographical location. Agronica aims to integrate with existing cities and urban agglomerations; it is utopian in the sense that it is projective, proposing new urban patterns, but it simultaneously articulates a critique of the contemporary political and urban situation"
Agronica is centrifugal and imperfect, its grid extrapolated to infinity in Branzi's "mirror simulator" and its componential architecture caught in perpetual reassembly. Where Utopia's syntax of street and quarter expresses social structure in spatial terms, Agronica operates in "an environment of functions without syntax and structure."Agronica rejects the identification of social structure with spatial structure; instead, it looks to virtual networks as a new model.
