Summaries:

Home Planning and Gender in Mandatory Palestine

This article explores the transfer of ideas on household planning from Germany to Palestine. Mainly it looks through women’s eyes at the organization and design of modern kitchens, and how that affected Palestinian home design at large. During some of the first emigrations from Germany to Palestine the main architectural discourse revolved around climate conditions and less so about kitchen design. Erna Meyer immigrated to Palestine in December of 1933, and advocated for the modern kitchen. Women’s Zionist organizations held her work in high regard and believed running a home efficiently and in modern taste was their duty to create a new Jewish society in Palestine. Lilia Basevits makes a good argument in her 1929 article, that women are using these spaces (kitchens) so they should be designing them. Lott Cohn pushes for increasing the size of the kitchen and including a dining table to increase counter space. At Cohn’s lecture she puts forward an argument for larger kitchens and bathrooms, and shrinking bedrooms. There is also a quote of hers from this lecture that I enjoy and agree with, “our apartment, the setting of our private life, can create and maintain values much more important than those generated by numeric calculations”. Cohn continued to argue for designing and planning from a feminine perspective.

An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism

In the late 1940s the “housing function” was under much discussion in CIAM. The term “habitat” was borrowed from geographers and anthropologists, and was used to describe the home and everything appertaining to it. In Morocco the French built right next to old built environments, which at the time meant different ethnicities and religions lived side by side. To research how to build neighborhoods coastal cities were looked at for modest housing, and academic urban architecture was looked at for larger housing. Eventually the idea of neighborhood units, made up of 8x8m grids to accommodate most possible combinations of design was looked into. During the 1950s, there was prosperity in Morocco, so there were many building opportunities for architects in the area. Some of these designs, particularly the Moroccan display at Aix was a shock to the most radical CIAM members. North African architecture was transforming universalist positions with its emphasis on cultural adaptation. The choice between modernity and tradition is not easy, and some people saw this modernization of Morocco as colonization.

The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession

The author argues that the right to the city is one of the most precious, yet neglected of our human rights. Firstly a city is the world built by man, and the one he is condemned to. Secondly the right to the city is the right to change a city to our hearts desire, to reflect the values that we have as a society. Over the past 100 years, the pace of urbanization has seen cities made and remade many times. Part of the reason for making and remaking our cities at such a fast pace is due to capitalism, surplus capital and unemployment. Urbanization solves surplus capital and unemployment but can drastically change the environment. The scale of urbanization has also increased in the last 100 years, it is now global. With the modernization and globalization of society, capitalism is now the dominant economic system in the world. The globalization of capitalism has spread the risk of collapse, despite many regional recessions, there hasn’t been a global one…yet. The growth in cities puts an incredibly high value on centrally located land, which is usually being used by the working class, but becomes gentrified. In conclusion, urbanization and capitalism go hand in hand, as urbanization absorbs capital surpluses and lowers unemployment. The author ends by stating that there should be greater democratic control over the production and use of the surplus of our economies.

Critical Response:

While reading “The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession” I had a couple questions, and didn’t like the conclusion of the article. One question I had came up at the beginning of the article, and is about the right to the city. He states that the right to the city is a basic human right, but doesn’t explain why, and continues with his article. I would’ve liked an explanation there. In his conclusion he says that there should be greater democratic control over the production and use of the surplus of our economies. Whether or not I agree with his statement doesn’t matter, it’s a huge task. That would require either replacing our economic and political systems, or changing them to be unrecognizable. It’s a nice thought but as architects what are we supposed to do about it? Switch careers to politics, no thanks. I don’t think his solution is very helpful to us as architects.

Application and Interpretation:

While thinking about urbanization, growth, capitalism, and gentrification, New York City came to mind. With the incredible growth of the city over the last hundred plus years there has been much gentrification. Much like the last article talks about, as the city expands and grows, the centrally located neighborhoods get increasingly expensive to live in. This increase in price causes working class people and families to depart the city they once called home, as wealthier people move in. There are also always new, more expensive buildings being made, which just adds to the property values. Many neighborhoods that used to be working class have been overrun with luxury apartment and business buildings. Manhattan as the center of the larger city has soaring prices and I would bet no working class person or family is close to being able to afford living there anymore.

Takeaways:

• Design of a space needs to take great account of the ideas of those who use the space daily
• Rapid urbanization and growth leads to dispossession and gentrification