Athens Charter (CIAM)

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The Athens Charter ( La charte d'Athènes in French ) was adopted at the IV Congress of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM, International Congress for New Building) in Athens in 1933 . Under the topic of the functional city , urban planners and architects discussed the tasks of modern settlement development.

The results in the implementation of the charter were above all the changed urban planning and the dissolution of classic urbanism through large open spaces and the functional separation of built-up quarters according to apartments (e.g. large housing estates in satellite towns ), offices, shopping facilities, trade and industry, as well the " car-friendly city ".

history

Originally, Moscow provided as a place of Congress, but the Soviet Union had sent no representatives to the last Congress and made demands regarding the outcome towards a socialist city . This attitude forced alternatives, of which Christian Zervos' proposal with the ship passage to Piraeus was convincing. Originally it was planned that the congress would also take place on the ship, which however did not seem suitable for such purposes, so that the Greek CIAM representative Stamo Papadakis organized alternatives on land. The voyage began on July 29, 1933 in Marseille on board the Greek Line's Patris II , which sailed the route Marseille - Genoa - Piräus - Alexandria - Cyprus - Beirut . The participants were accommodated in the hotels Grande Bretagne in Athens and Cecil in Kifissia , on the program a trip to the Greek islands and a visit to the Acropolis were included . On August 10th the steamer arrived back in Marseille.

Developed under the leadership of Le Corbusier , the Athens Charter, as a result of the congress, stood for the unbundling of urban functional areas and the creation of livable living and working environments in the future. In October 1943, Le Corbusier finally published the “Charter of Athens” in German-occupied Paris - as a manifesto of the avant-garde urban planning of the future and as a concept of a functional city, but it remained of secondary importance during the Second World War .

It was only in the post-war period that it gained great importance as an expression of modern architecture ; and after its publication in German (1962) at the latest, the principles laid down in it were more ideological dogma than model for practice. Nevertheless, it influenced - often misinterpreted - urban planning from the post-war period until today. In particular, the urban development models of the 1950s ( the structured and loosened city ) and the 1960s ( the car-friendly city / area renovation ) are largely developed from the Athens Charter. It was only in the mid-1970s that, in view of the negative consequences of the separation of functions , a departure from the ideals of the Charter began.

content

In the first decades of the 20th century, the living conditions for the people in most large cities had become increasingly unbearable. As a result of industrialization , environmental pollution increased , working conditions were harsh, wages were low, the narrow, mostly medieval town centers were suffering from overpopulation and broad strata of the population lived under inhumane conditions.

The Athens Charter examined the living conditions of the population in many cities and tried to suggest possible solutions and suggestions for improving the situation.

analysis

Economic causes: Industrialization has destroyed the old harmony of the urban fabric and people's working conditions are now determined by machines, as is the arrangement and location of workplaces.

  • Apartments are speculative properties, unfairly distributed and poorly equipped with open spaces.
  • Economic development is improvisation and is subject to speculation by individuals. A coordination of the type, scope and location of industrial companies, offices and apartments is subject to purely economic aspects.
  • The division of cities by function is an important point of the charter. Residential, work and recreational areas for the purpose of segregation should counteract the densification of the big cities. The individual areas were to be separated from one another by green spaces and connected to one another by traffic axes.
  • Economic interests prevail over administrative control and social solidarity, with the result that urban structures are dominated by private interests to the detriment of many residents.

In the urban planning criticism was u. a. Found in 1933:

  • The inner, historical core of the cities is too densely populated. The most densely populated neighborhoods are in the least favored districts.
  • Housing conditions in the crowded neighborhoods are dire.
  • The growth of the cities gradually devours the adjacent green spaces. The distance to nature increases the grievances in the city.

requirements

On the basis of these findings, the Charter of Athens made the following demands:

  • While guaranteeing individual freedom, the city must encourage action in the interests of the general public.
  • The city must be defined as a functional unit and planned within the larger framework of its sphere of influence.
  • The city as a functional unit is subject to the main urban planning functions of living , working , relaxing and moving .
  • The architectural works must be preserved - individually or as a whole.
  • The apartment must be the center of all urban development efforts.
  • The workplace must be minimally removed from the apartment.
  • Open spaces must be allocated to the residential areas and integrated into the city as a whole as leisure facilities.
  • The task of transport is to connect the key urban functions.

The functional zoning of the city plan is one of the main concerns of the charter. The individual functional areas for living, working and recreation are to be structured by extensive green belts and connected by traffic axes.

The ideal cities should have the following zoning:

  • Inner city: administration, trade, banks, shopping, culture
  • Belt around the city center: Separated from one another: industry, trade, residential
  • Periphery: Satellite cities embedded in green belts with a purely residential function

The residential areas that Le Corbusier envisaged were determined by high, widely spaced apart apartment buildings with high residential density.

Criticism and further development

Although the charter was considered an ideal to be striven for in theoretical discussions and urban planning for decades, the disadvantages of the urban planning derived from it soon became clear. Since the 1970s, the urban planning doctrine of the CIAM has been increasingly criticized by advocates of contextual building, who called for a renewal and further development of the historic city of themselves (starting with Team 10 , later e.g. Aldo Rossi , Josef Paul Kleihues , Léon Krier ).

The small-scale structure of individual functions broke through the implementation of the charter, and although the quality of work, living and recreation areas improved significantly, their spatial separation, which was still planned, led to a sharp increase in mechanical traffic and all associated problems. Inner cities became deserted, and with the reconstruction of the cities one gave up much of one's own history, city history and urban liveliness. It was not until 1970 that more attention was paid to the small-scale mix of functions and the vitalization of the historic city centers ( Urban Development Act ).

Some sociological demands of the Charter, such as demands on the location of residential areas, the size of green and leisure areas, the accessibility of the workplace or the avoidance of residential areas next to industrial areas, however, have proven to be worth striving for and are still part of the basics of urban planning today.

The European Council of Urban Planners (ECTP) published the New Athens Charter in 1998 ; a further development was presented in 2003. On the occasion of an informal ministerial meeting on urban development, the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities was signed in May 2007 .

See also

literature

  • Le Corbusier: Entretien avec les étudiants des Ecoles d'Architecture . Paris 1943.
  • Le Corbusier: To the students - The «Charte d'Athènes» . Éditions de Minuit, Paris 1957 and Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag: rowohlts deutsche enzyklopädie Nr 141, Hamburg 1962.
  • Atlas of the Functional City. CIAM 4 and Comparative Urban Analysis , ed. by the EFL Foundation and the gta archive of the ETH Zurich, Bussum, Zurich 2015.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The New Charter of Athens 2003. ( PDF ) Vision for the Cities of the 21st Century. ECTP , 2004, accessed February 27, 2020 .
  2. ^ The Leipzig Charter. In: bmi.bund.de . Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs, 2007, accessed on February 27, 2020 .

Web links

  • Athens Charter. What do people need? Visions of the city of tomorrow. WBM Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Berlin-Mitte, accessed on March 7, 2018 .