Author: Alex S.

Summary of Home Planning and Gender in Mandatory Palestine by Sigal Davidi

Lotte Cohn was the first woman to practice architecture in Eretz Yisrael in 1921 and promoted domestic planning in homes. Cohn later opened her own firm in Tel Aviv. European modernism in the early 20th century proposed revolutionizing domestic life through new technologies and materials. In Palestine, architects were focused on environment and economics. Cohn, among others, advocated for a greater focus on women’s domestic life and needs. This piece seeks to examine the role of gender as it relates to the rationalization of domestic space in Mandatory Palestine (later Israel), with a specific focus on kitchen space.

During the 1930s urban development in Palestine was growing quickly and more urban housing was being built, especially in Tel Aviv. However, even this rapid building was not meeting the extensive housing needs and costs became inflated through the mid-30s. Multiple different building companies became important players in adding housing, each with their own perspectives on home life. In architectural circles, research of domestic design expanded. Kitchen design became a central part of the home, as cooking had historically been a time intensive task, and new technologies improved efficiency to the benefit of the women cooking. Some modernists sought to masculinize typically “feminine” chores through design. Efficient, rational home design also fit in with the ideal of a “New” contemporary and capable Zionist housewife.

Summary of An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis, and Atbat-Afrique by Monique Eleb

In the 1950s, Moroccan architects shifted CIAMs understanding of habitat and the urban environment, showing the value of the transition from rural to urban and domestic function. Habitat is defined not just as the home but it’s internal and external contexts and relationships. The urban design of the French protectorate of Morocco was separated into regions that were supposed to house the different ethno-religious groups but were also segregated by economics. French magistrate A.H. Sabatier imagined habitats as portions of cities based on the ethnic origins of the containing population: “”population of European origin requiring a European-style habitat, if not quite identical to the European type of characteristic of the populations of the Mediterranean basin” (56). Michel Ecochard promoted the idea of separate habitat communities that would provide habitat “for the greatest number” (63). Ecochard theorized neighborhoods of 1,800 people based on grids of 8×8 meter housing blocks, referencing open-air markets in Northern Africa for population size. Courtyards were considered an integral part of the Muslim populations’ cultural life and they were included in the individual house designs. Into the 1950s, modernism was in full swing in Morocco. With younger international architects joining the scene.

Summary of The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession by David Harvey

This piece explores the collective public right to city space and its relationship with social structures. The design and evolution of cities is often largely out of the hands of the public, and due to industrialization, has been rebuilt and reorganized heavily throughout the last century. Cities exist as a focal point for resource surpluses and thus are connected with the economic systems extracting and bringing in resources to benefit the economic system, typically one that organizes resources for a few controllers (capitalism etc.). For the public to have power of the making and remaking of a city, it first needs to be established that it is possible to guide the growth and change of the urban landscape. The capitalist cycle of surplus and reinvestment propagates and often requires continuous growth and expansion. Without this cyclical growth cycle, capitalism ceases to operate in the ways that capitalists want them too: either a loss of labor, increased labor costs, etc. The interactions a city has with capital organizes what groups have control over the feel of the city, such as Haussmann’s reimagining of Paris that lowered the unemployment rate in the mid-19th century. In the mid-20th century US, Robert Moses was hard at work trying to destroy any vernacular urban environment for his “civilized” parks and freeway projects, which influenced the expansion of the suburbs and harmed or eliminated entire neighborhoods of color.

Critical Response

I really, really, dislike the ghost of Robert Moses and other urban planners of his ilk. He was not an elected official, yet he had the power to completely remake cityscapes – often for the worse. He was at the forefront of destroying Black neighborhoods to build highways, bridges, and parks, and the method of running highways directly through city centers stems from him. The ways that highways and freeways cut through the land and city has caused irreparable harm that even if removed, would hold a terrible racist and anti-environment history. In the US, racist urban planning and housing policies have been a cornerstone of ongoing oppressive systems that eliminate public and individual agency over space.

Application and Interpretation

Christiania, an Intentional Community within Copenhagen, Denmark

Freetown Christiania, often referred to as just Christiania, is an Intentional Community within Copenhagen located at a former military installation originally formed in 1971 and is still ongoing. The housing and market buildings in the community are built by and for the community, with no specific architect or planner. The community largely grows organically, and sometimes struggles with gang violence due to permissive drug policies (this has changed in recent years, and commercial drug sales are now limited). Materials are typically scavenged for building, and unique structures arise based on building codes implemented by the greater Copenhagen government. For example, one code said that only roofs could be built (an allowance for necessary repairs) and as such, community members began building habitats that were only roofs.

Take-Aways

– Social political and economic systems mold urban space
– The right to space, and the right to change a space, are often reserved for a slim few
– Robert Moses deserves to have a tarnished legacy