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in economic conditions favourable to traditional forms
of production and apparent inertia in the construction
world (on the part of both builders and companies) led
to a generalised drop in quality in the building domain,
which only high-end projects managed to avoid.
Following this marked decrease in construction activity
between 1930 and 1950, a loss of quality was primarily
noticeable in the large-scale works that characterised
the 1960s, particularly in housing. However, it would
obviously be an error or an illusion to attribute only
positive technical qualities to older architecture and its
modes of construction. One hopes that recent tech-
nological advances will be able to bridge the gap that
prevents them from being used on a wide scale and at
an affordable cost, with energy efficiency and durability.
If there is a critical thrust for architectural research and
innovation, it should be in this direction, rather than
towards the invention of extravagant forms.
As far as urban planning is concerned, there was, and
continues to be, a fierce struggle between champions
of the Athens Charter and those who favour more
traditional design. On the one side you have Brasilia
(whose architectural plans were prominently displayed
at the 1958 World’s Fair) and the remarkable Lijnbaan
in Rotterdam, and on the other, the English new
towns (one of whose descendants was, from 1967,
Louvain-la-Neuve), Auguste Perret’s Le Havre and
the unimaginative reconstruction of entire bombed
French towns. The supporters of the Athens Charter
defended Le Corbusier’s unités d’habitation and major
ensembles. It would take urban sociologists at the
beginning of the 1960s to perceive that even though
the much maligned charter found only scant expres-
sion in architectural forms, it did great harm through
the separation of social functions – even damaging the
basic urban fabric – as is the case in Brussels with its
successive transformations of the European Quarter. It
is worth noting that, on the whole, urban modernism
and post-war architecture were much better received in
the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands than in
southern European countries – without even discussing
those that remained in the grip of totalitarian regimes.
In the case of Scandinavia, it is not impossible, as has
been suggested, that the Protestant tradition played a
role in this regard. As for prefabrication, it was almost
exclusively concerned with building shells, and there
was an economic fight to the death between partisans
of heavy prefabrication (based on panels, slabs, beams
and columns made of reinforced concrete) and those
who favoured a lighter version (steel and light metals).
The former fairly quickly prevailed. Architects had
almost no say in the debate and meekly acquiesced
to the technique of building housing blocks with rail-
mounted cranes, subsequently creating urban planning
disasters whose consequences are still felt today. The
height of buildings often depended on strictly economic
criteria, and for a long time these criteria held sway
in the philosophy of modern urban planning, despite
laudable efforts by the social sciences to inject some
sociology into the debate.
Meanwhile, innovation seemed limited to the creation
of small individual works, including private homes,
where the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright could still
be felt (through his disciple Richard Neutra), and small
or large-scale buildings inspired by Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe, Scandinavian architecture and design, and
so on. In Belgium, some young architects (including
those mentioned above) made do with modest com-
missions. This was all a long way from the dreams
of worldwide change and rescue of society through
beauty, with which the nineteenth century was some-
what naively preoccupied. Nevertheless, little by little
regional development techniques were perfected, but
Jean Prouvé
Curtain walls at the Tour Nobel,
Paris, 1967