Pruitt-Igoe Ideology
Pruitt-Igoe: The Making and Unmaking of Architecture’s Greatest Myth
The Making
In 1949, the United States Housing Act was passed, allowing the US government to introduce several urban rejuvenation projects, one of which was the Pruitt-Igoe public housing, largely created to restrict the growth of slums that were economically degrading the value of real estate in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. A 57 acre site was cleared for the construction of 5800 housing units that would house nearly 15000 residents.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, who was also responsible for the design of the World Trade Centre that went down in the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks, was commissioned by the St Louis Housing Authority for the design of Pruitt-Igoe in 1950. His initial design consisted of a combination of mid-rise …show more content…
Pruitt-Igoe was a toxic amalgamation of bad policy making and the everyday racism of the day. It is true that Yamasaki, like most modern architects, had a utopian outlook. He was designing for people and that alone is where his fault lay. The Authority did not consider the residents of Pruitt-Igoe people, segregation had been abolished but years of the slave regime had hardwired the belief that black and white should never be treated the same. The policy makers of the day conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe as an effort to curb the overgrowth of the slums that would eventually lead to real estate disaster: land prices would plummet, money would be lost. To the policy makers, Pruitt-Igoe was an economic manoeuvre, disguised as an attempt to make lives better. Yamasaki, a Japanese architect, was not biased by American racial inclinations; he genuinely attempted to design a “clean, safe and democratic” environment (Birmingham, P297, 1999). High modernism did not just die at Pruitt-Igoe, high modernism was murdered, and murdered not by the designer but by the policy
The Making
In 1949, the United States Housing Act was passed, allowing the US government to introduce several urban rejuvenation projects, one of which was the Pruitt-Igoe public housing, largely created to restrict the growth of slums that were economically degrading the value of real estate in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. A 57 acre site was cleared for the construction of 5800 housing units that would house nearly 15000 residents.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, who was also responsible for the design of the World Trade Centre that went down in the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks, was commissioned by the St Louis Housing Authority for the design of Pruitt-Igoe in 1950. His initial design consisted of a combination of mid-rise …show more content…
Pruitt-Igoe was a toxic amalgamation of bad policy making and the everyday racism of the day. It is true that Yamasaki, like most modern architects, had a utopian outlook. He was designing for people and that alone is where his fault lay. The Authority did not consider the residents of Pruitt-Igoe people, segregation had been abolished but years of the slave regime had hardwired the belief that black and white should never be treated the same. The policy makers of the day conceptualised Pruitt-Igoe as an effort to curb the overgrowth of the slums that would eventually lead to real estate disaster: land prices would plummet, money would be lost. To the policy makers, Pruitt-Igoe was an economic manoeuvre, disguised as an attempt to make lives better. Yamasaki, a Japanese architect, was not biased by American racial inclinations; he genuinely attempted to design a “clean, safe and democratic” environment (Birmingham, P297, 1999). High modernism did not just die at Pruitt-Igoe, high modernism was murdered, and murdered not by the designer but by the policy