LARC Unit 3

Baux Arts

Blended Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque traditions with the industrial revolution's technological advancements in glass, iron, and steel. Associated with European nationalism, global imperialism, and perceptions of Western superiority.

City Beautiful

Garden City

Greenhills, Ohio
Greendale, Wisconsin
Greenbelt, Maryland

La Citta Nuova

Eliminate historic precedent and begin anew
• Vision of a highly industrialized and mechanized city of the future
• The city as a “gigantic machine”
• Vertical city with stacked layers of plazas & transportation
• Vast monolithic skyscraper buildings
• Engineering over social concerns

Modernism

Rejection of historical "styles"
• Form follows function – lack of ornamentation
• Simplicity & minimalism
• Embrace new technologies & materials
• Integration of interior & exterior space

Le Corbusier’s planning strategies

high-density vertical building combined with open green spaces, strict functional zoning, and a machine-age approach to traffic management

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

Anti-urban utopia - the antithesis of a city
• Each family gets one acre
• Vision of decentralization as a positive force for improving the human
condition
• Fully embraces the automobile
• Few office and apartment buildings

1939 World’s Fair “The World of Tomorrow”

New York City
Trylon & Perisphere,
accessed by the Helicline

11,000 square mile city for 1.5 million people
• Based on Garden City & Radiant City models
• Industrial, commercial, and housing districts linked by expressways
• 5 satellite suburbs for 250,000 of the “working population”
• “Centerton” – business, educational, and cultural hub for 1 million

Democracity

utopian city model from the 1939 New York World's Fair, or to modern interactive civics and democracy education games
Inside the
Perisphere
Henry Dreyfuss

Futurama

Inside the GM Building
Norman Bel Geddes

First introduction of the American public to the
concept of a network of superhighways connecting
a nation, sponsored by General Motors

Broad context of Japanese/US immigration and discrimination in the late 19th & early 20th centuries

As Japan looks to the West for
inspiration, it quickly modernizes—building cities, factories, and industries. Agricultural
practice in rural Japan starts to decline and many Japanese people leave their homes in
search of new opportunities, especially in the Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States.

Arkansas New Deal Farm Security Administration Communities of Jerome (Chicot Farms, partially developed, 1937-1942) and Rohwer (not developed)

Beginning in 1937, thousands of acres of lowland forest had been allocated by the Farm Security Administration as New Deal farming communities at
Jerome and Rohwer. Some initial progress was made at Chicot Farms, which included the former logging village of Jerome, but frequent flooding and stubborn hardwoods made homesteading extremely difficult. Program participants were allotted 40 acres, a home, a barn and other outbuildings, some livestock, and guidelines for clearing the forest and planting crops.

Reasons why approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in early 1942

Executive Order 9066 was the result of a long
history of anti-Asian policies on America's west coast combined with unsupported fears of a pending Japanese invasion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order that establishes the
War Relocation Authority (WRA) to oversee the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Why were Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas established as 2 of 10 “relocation centers”

Arkansas newspapers announce plans for the Rohwer and Jerome concentration camps. These camps were brought to Arkansas on the promise of creation of more than 20,000 acres of farmland. The federal government used this incentive as a bargaining tool with Arkansas, as fear and racial prejudice initially caused the state to reject the War Relocation Authority’s proposal for two camps.

Summary camp descriptions (+/- 8,500 held in temporary military-style barracks, slightly modified for community life – barbed wire, churches, schools, employment, etc.)

The new camp had to cope with numerous challenges. The flat bare earth, stripped of most vegetation during construction, became extremely muddy during rains. Boardwalks and gravel paths are installed to help alleviate the problems. Barrack apartments were only furnished with beds and a stove, leaving incarcerees to improvise as they sought to improve their living conditions. Scrap lumber piles left over from ongoing construction were rapidly depleted by incarcerees to make shelves, interior partitions, and furniture.

Examples of hardships and opportunities of life in camps

Dislocation, removal, and severe racism
• Loss of property, livelihoods, professional standing,
and legal and financial jeopardy
• Radical change in living conditions
• Disruption of family life and traditions
• Mud, cold, hot, snakes, mosquitoes
• Severe stress of confinement, including social tensions between groups
• Fighting and riots, resulting in some being jailed and
incidents of self-harm
• Still Americans with family fighting a war.

Education: Competition for better pay than
the area’s public schools meant that the WRA was able to recruit some of the best teachers in the region.

Employment: Many incarcerees were put to work clearing the forested, swampy landscape to create
farmland – a task that was promoted by local newspapers as a benefit to future Arkansans.
Cutting trees and digging ditches was taxing and dangerous work and was therefore
generally despised by incarcerees. Jobs relating to agriculture, security, consumer services,
and health and sanitation were much more popular.

Enrichment: led and encouraged cultural enrichment in the form of creative arts and hobbies,
religious organizations, American and Japanese holidays and cultural observances, adult
education programs, youth groups, and sports.

Community: The design of a typical residential block provided many opportunities for social interaction that fostered a sense of community, but the arrangement also strained family structures.

Transformations: In many instances, incarcerees worked together and blocks became a source of pride for both the residents and the WRA.

Examples of situations incarcerees were permitted to leave camps

The WRA allowed, and even encouraged, incarcerees to leave the camps, but only if specific conditions were met. Incarcerees could gain permission for temporary leave for field trips, work assignments, shopping, short-term employment in other states, and other similar situations. The WRA allowed transfers to one of nine other incarceration camps upon request. The WRA strongly encouraged permanent relocation to other states and granted indefinite leave to incarcerees who found long-term employment or enrolled in a college or university.

What happened to the remaining incarcerees and the camps after the end of the war

The closure of Rohwer and most other remaining camps is announced in the Rohwer Outpost. The closing date is set to January 1, 1946. Relocation efforts increase in Rohwer, with the majority of remaining Japanese Americans wishing to return to California.

US government apologies and reparations in the 1970s and 80s (specifics not needed)

(1976)President Gerald R. Ford acknowledges that the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII should not have occurred and signs a proclamation confirming the termination of Executive Order 9066

(1988) President Ronald Reagan apologizes to Japanese Americans on behalf of the U.S. government for incarceration during WWII and s igns a bill to recompense surviving incarcerees $20,000 each. Reparation payments begin two years later.

Philadelphia

William Penn – 1683
“Let every house be placed, if the person pleases, in the middle of its plat, as to the breach of it, that so there may be ground on each side for gardens or orchards, or fields, that it may be a green country town, which will never be burnt, and always be wholesome”
- William Penn

Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution led to a rise in prominence of the middle class and the much smaller “suburban villa”
• Global exploration and colonization led to boom in horticulture with the discovery of many new and exotic plants around the world
• Technological advances resulted in improved greenhouses, methods of transporting botanical specimens, and the invention of the lawnmower (1827)
• Numerous periodicals and magazines promoted botany and flower and vegetable gardens

the Gardenesque

Gardenesque: term coined by Louden in 1832 to describe an emerging style that showcased plants as artistic specimens.
• Promoted exotic over native plant species
• Used individual specimens and geometric flower beds (‘carpet bedding’ or ‘bedding
out’) rather than massed vegetation
• Better suited for smaller properties than 18th-c. styles
• Results were often eclectic and lacked cohesiveness

Romantic Suburbs

blends the freedom of 18th-century romantic naturalism with the intimate charm of a residential neighborhood.

Garden City Movement, Lecture 14, etc.

1900’s – 1930’s
Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)

Radburn
New Jersey – 1929
Clarence Stein & Henry Wright
Garden City Inspired “A Town for the Motor Age”

Federal Housing Administration – another New Deal agency (concepts, repercussions)

New Deal program created in part by the National Housing Act of 1934
“... a nation of home-owners, of people who own a real share in their own land is unconquerable”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt, November 16, 1942
• regulated home loan interest rates and mortgage terms
• US home ownership increased from 19% in 1934 to 63% in 1972
• only for white Americans until the Civil Rights Act of 1968

G.I. Bill – FDR’s “G.I. Bill of Rights” (concepts, repercussions)

Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 – promised education and home and business loans to veterans

Baby Boom

1946 – 1964

a period of sharp population growth marked by a high surge in birth rates

Interstate Highway System

Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate
and Defense Highways

20th c. agricultural advancements,

Shift from human & animal power to mechanization & other technologies resulted in increased productivity with significantly less labor and accompanying economic and population shifts to urban areas.

Great Migration

two movements of African Americans from the
South to the urban North and West, 1915 – 1970

White Flight

movement of middle-class European Americans from urban areas to suburbs, 1950s – 1970s, as a response to the Great Migration, the G.I. Bill of 1944, the increasing popularity of automobiles, and the racist lending policies of the Federal Housing Administration.

Levittown

Extended infrastructure
• Loss of agricultural land (sprawl)
• Little road hierarchy
• No employment nearby
• Distant schools
• Green space as leftover space

“Bland people in bland houses
leading bland lives.... a multitude
of uniform, unidentifiable houses,
lined up inflexibly, at uniform
distances on uniform roads, in a
treeless command wasteland,
inhabited by people of the same
class, the same incomes, the same
age group, witnessing the same
television performances, eating
the same tasteless prefabricated
foods, from the same freezers” –
Lewis Mumford

the sprawl of American suburbs

a low-density, car-dependent pattern of development that expanded rapidly across the United States after World War II

Suburban institutions

Foothill Community College
Los Altos, California
Sasaki, Walker and Associates, 1960

Deere & Company
Corporate Headquarters
Moline, Illinois
Sasaki, Walker and Associates
Eero Saarinen, Architect
1964

PepsiCo
Corporate Headquarters
Purchase, New York
Edward D. Stone, Architect
EDSA, Landscape Architect
1970

Large, low-density, automobile-dependent complexes designed with expansive green spaces, private parking structures.