nickkahler reblogged
Edgar Chambless, Roadtown Concept, 1910 (via archimaps)
nickkahler reblogged
Edgar Chambless, Project for Roadtown, 1910 (via structuras)
Source: gizmoweb.org
Moisei Ginzburg + Mikhail Barshch, Disurbanist Scheme for a Linear City, 1930 (via rosswolfe)
Paul Rudolph, Lower Manhattan Expressway, New York, c. 1970 (via cooperunion)
"The Lower Manhattan Expressway (LME) was first conceived in the late 1930s as an innovative multi-use expressway system running across Lower Manhattan. Had it been constructed, this major urban design project would have transformed New York City's topography and infrastructure. Rudolph's proposal for the LME consisted of a Y-shaped highway running from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, using Broome, Delancey, and Chrystie Streets and the Bowery as the main corridors. The LME was one of the last large-scale urban planning initiatives in New York, building on the concept of the "megastructure," which gained prominence throughout the 1950s and 60s. Rudolph envisioned an approach to city planning that would conceive of movement throughout a city as the most common shared experience; multi-use transportation networks would be integrated into one design that would replace plazas as the prevailing urban design element. Plans for the LME therefore included not only an underground highway but also elevators and escalators connecting to the subway system, living spaces, a moving walkway, parking lots, and shared public spaces. Rudolph's remarkably detailed sketches use single-point perspective, cross-sectional diagramming, and collage to illustrate every detail of the plans, from physical elements such as material and finish to more dynamic variables such as furniture, landscaping, and human activity. Using a trademark large-scale presentation technique, he brought hand-rendered two-dimensional sketches to life with a level of accuracy that has been compared to that of Victorian etchings. The exhibition design will integrate Rudolph's innovative interior design sensibilities with his conceptualization of space; a selection of work will be presented in a freestanding modular display system that recalls the framework of his famed Lucite chair, designed in 1968."
nickkahler reblogged
Arturo Soria y Mata, Ciudad Lineal, Madrid, Spain, 1894 (via archiveofaffinities)
"The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation. The city would consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel sectors. Generally, the city would run parallel to a river and be built so that the dominant wind would blow from the residential areas to the industrial strip. The sectors of a linear city would be:
- a purely segregated zone for railway lines,
- a zone of production and communal enterprises, with related scientific, technical and educational institutions,
- a green belt or buffer zone with major highway,
- a residential zone, including a band of social institutions, a band of residential buildings and a "children's band",
- a park zone, and
- an agricultural zone with gardens and state-run farms (sovkhozy in the Soviet Union).
As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so that the city would become ever longer, without growing wider. The linear city design was first developed by Arturo Soria y Mata in Madrid, Spain during the 19th century, but was promoted by the Soviet planner Nikolai Alexander Milyutin in the late 1920s. (Milyutin justified placing production enterprises and schools in the same band with Engels' statement that "education and labour will be united".) Ernst May, a famous German functionalist architect, formulated his initial plan for Magnitogorsk, a new city in the Soviet Union, primarily following the model that he had established with his Frankfurt settlements: identical, equidistant five-story communal apartment buildings and an extensive network of dining halls and other public services."