One of the things that stood out to me in the readings for this week was Raymond Hood’s idea of the City under on Roof. The idea to “put the worker in a unified scheme and he will hardly put his feet on the sidewalk during the entire day” (Koolhaas174). While I accept that in terms of decongesting the city streets by decreasing the general required horizontal movement of people by replacing it with vertical movement sounds like a rational plan. The application of this would confine people to being in one building for the entire day. As well if your morning commute changed from a short walk, a subway ride, and another walk to moving a number of flights up and down in the same building. That is going to have an effect on how people work. I’ve felt it in the change from having commute up to Mountaintop in the mornings for class compared to waking up logging on to the computer and immediately being in class. On the one hand it could be interpreted as being more efficient, we’re spending less time in transit so we have more “free” time, but on the other the quality of the work done in the morning could decrease because of the limited time easing into the work period.
As well it decreases the physical space between work and life, the two get closer to being one and the same. Because the distance to get from one to the other is decreased it is easier to mentally flip between the two because your surroundings are similar, which either can make you think about work all the time, which isn’t good for you, or think about the rest of your life instead of doing work which also isn’t good. Furthermore, I think thinking about situationists from last week especially that when the necessities for your life are restrained to a single building it overall decreases the variety and chances for new experiences. There are only so many different views from the same building. After a while everything will blend together, moments in a person’s life would become so undistinguishable day to day that just leaving the building could be enough to create a special event in that person’s life.
I’m sure that most of my reading of this is coming from the fact that we are going through a pandemic right now, there are many days where I do not leave the house, I do not step outside, I do not see random people on the streets, I do not have interesting experiences. I think while Hood’s plan of a City under one Roof is a rational solution to the congestion of the city, it does not take into account the human necessity for variety and movement. It was further interesting to read in the Typical Plan that “it has evolved beyond the naive humanist assumption that contact with the exterior – so-called reality – is a necessary condition for human happiness, for survival” (Koolaas 339). Reading something like this, because of the times that we are in, really makes me want to as Koolhaas if he had ever stayed in his home for two weeks straight and never gone outside. I think because I have done that, I do think that contact with the exterior is a necessary condition for human happiness.
References
Koolhaas. 1978. Delirious New York.
Koolhaas. 1985. Typical Plan.
Excellent personal responses Rebecca, and I think your connection between Corporate Architecture with Situationism was both relevant and creative. You’re asking incredibly important questions with regards to problems of ‘efficiency’ and ‘function’ in architecture, and the (possibly) vital roles of inefficiency, distraction, and even obstacle. Further to your own references, it’s worth mentioning this quote by Guy Debord (Situationist): “Commuting time, as Le Corbusier rightly noted, is a surplus labor which correspondingly reduces the amount of “free” time.”” (Situationist Theses on Traffic)