For the most part, these readings were particularly hard to understand but the gist of Collage City had themes related to previous readings in terms of garden cities, understanding man, and society.
I found it arguably contradicting that during the decline and fall of utopia, modern architecture constituted creating a just society and divert from any political order. The reading states on page 11, “…a world where rational motivation would prevail and where all the more visible institutions of the political order would have been swept into the more irrelevant limbo of the superseded and the forgotten.” While architects attempted to create a just society, there’s still traces of hierarchy and discrimination. One example within the reading is the Noble Savage. The noble savage was subject to testing, stripped of “culture contamination” and “social corrupt”, and placed at point zero. Although as the noble savage became real and a historic figure over time, the architects saw how it became possible to reproduce him. As the development of utopia intensified, so did the structure of the well being of society, only to create a hierarchy in its wake and the noble savage at the bottom. Another example can be found in Citizen Jane Clip 3. In the clip it is said, “The decision to drive the interstates right through the cities and through neighborhoods because of value that the elites wanted to reclaim.” This decision to create a “modern city” tore up vital neighborhoods and ripped through the heart of the bronx creating a wall between the North and South parts, relocating the citizens. I feel like that decision had to come with some sort of political power move because of the relocation of a mass group of people for an expressway that could have been built elsewhere.
- Rowe, Colin., and Koetter, Fred. Collage City. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England. the MIT Press. 1978
- Matt Tyrnauer, “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,” 1:32, September 9, 2016, http://arch210fall2020.luaad.com/assets/lectures/Media3.mp4