[HOUSING] Lecture 1 - Historical Overview and Background of Housing

Prehistoric - Nomadic

Temporary encampments, terrain, water supply, wind and sun orientation, safety, fire, granary

Prehistoric - Egyptians 400 BC

City of Babylon

Bronze Age

Valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, Indus and Hwang Ho

Egypt

Memphis and Thebes

Mesopotamia (Bronze Age)

Ur, Nineveh, and Babylon (Bronze Age)

Huts and Traditional Houses

Bronze Age dwelling

Mohenjo Daro

35,000 residents Grid pattern Water closets Sewerage systems Paved streets and windows (Bronze Age)

Iron Age

Earliest building codes specifying structural integrity (2000 BC)
Code of Hammurabi

Defense and Water Supply

City planning for Greek and Roman empires centered urban housing for - (Iron Age)

Medieval Period

Growth of towns around a monastery or castle, Radiocentric pattern
Irregular street patterns, Church Influence

13th Century AD - Medieval Period

Towns with less than 10 000 residents

14th Century AD - Medieval Period

Florence with 10 000 inhabitants
Venice became trading center of Byzantine empire

16th Century

Rise of centralized monarchies and transatlantic trade
Capital cities and ports: Amsterdam, Rome, Lisbon, Antwerp, Seville, Palermo, Milan, Naples, Paris and London

15th-16th Century - Renaissance Period

Aesthetics as basic form of planning (Beauty, Form, Function)
Square patterns of plans

15th-16th Century - Renaissance Period

Small apartments for masses with atrium for rich

Leon Battista Alberti

Ideal City: Star shaped plans with street radiating from central point for church, palace, or castle
Conform to topography

Pierre Charles L’enfant

French-American engineer who prepared plan for Washington D.C.

17th Century

Formal placement of palace, church, or civic building (Dominant structure)

18th and 19th Century

Washington D.C - Baroque pattern of radiating avenues on gridiron plan

18th and 19th Century

English Towns - Grouped in terrace, crescent, circus, and square

19th Century Industrial Revolution

Migration of workers without sanitation and water

Laborers’ Dwelling Act

Late 19th Century - Britain embarked on public housing development

Post Industrial 20th Century

1970s - Approx. 30% of Britain’s housing was publicly subsidized

Canada’s Federal funds for people with lower incomes

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

IBRD

Slum Demolition

Post Industrial 20th Century (1950s)

New town development (Brasilia)

Post Industrial 20th Century (1960s)

Self-help housing

Post Industrial 20th Century (1970s)

Siheyuan

Courtyard

Chinese Hutong

Typical Street

Theoretical diagram of Garden city (The Neighborhood Unit)

Howard dividing towns into wards of 5000 people each (Accessible central place within walking distance)

Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker’s Letchworth Garden City

First Garden City (1920)

Hampstead Garden Suburb

Dormitory Suburb, Socially Mixed Community (Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker)

Barry Parker’s Wythenshawe

3rd Garden city with surrounding greenbelt

Raymond Unwin

“Nothing gained by overcrowding!“ 1912
Need for public open space
Green belts around new communities

Clarence Perry’s The New York Regional Plan

Multi-volume plan, neighborhood unit idea, sense of identity with the community

Cristopher Alexander’s “A City is not a tree”

Varied needs for different people
Principle of Choice

Clarence Stein

Architect Planner in NY who developed the Neighborhood Unit further

Superblock

Stein’s version of the garden city

Cul-de-sac

specialized roadways and separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Neighborhood with elementary school at its center (Stein or Perry)

Patrick Geddes

‘‘Human Ecology” - Man and Environment

Conurbation

by Patrick Geddes, which describes a region with number of cities and with growing towns and suburbs

Le Play’s Triad

Place Work Folk

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

Single Family homes, each surrounded by an acre of land for own consumption
Gas station is focus of shopping

Arturo Mata’s Linear City

Tony Garnier’s Industrial City

Le Corbusier’s Radiant City

Chandigarh

planned city in India designed by Le Corbusier, based on sector planning, zoning, and modernist planning principles.

Jane Jacobs

“The Death and Life of Great American Cities“
Nothing wrong with high urban densities
Mixed Functions
Yuppificaiton

Philippine Pre-Colonial Period

Up to 1600s

Colonial Period

1600s-Americal Occupation

Post Colonial Period

1946 up to Present

Nipa huts and Indigenous Materials

Philippine Context of Housing

Spanish Colonization Period

“sitio-barrio-poblacion-cabecera system”

Law of the Indies

Plaza Complex

Intramuros

The Walled City

Mestizos and Filipino Principalia

Living in Binondo, Ermita, Quiapo, and Trazo

Filipino Lower Class

Living in Tondo

Chinese Mestizo

Dominance in commerce/indigenous elite

Urbanization in American Colonization Period

Manila at center with pockets of economic, political and cultural center in the countryside

Underdeveloped rural areas

Poor in Nipa huts