City and the Factory David RASNER I S2014
“The Pond”, L.S. Lowry (1950) Courtesy: The estate of L.S. Lowry/DACS.
Industrialization: “The factory is where the 20th century was born”
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Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company (1927). Courtesy: Charles Sheeler.
INTRO* Throughout history, the factory has been a marker of: “revolution, technical and social, of innovation, in design and in process, of their moment, politically and economically”. 1 The shift away from early water-powered mills and workshops toward 20th-century machineage dynamos and mass production assembly lines influenced the design and organization of not only the factory itself, but also their surroundings, our cities. This paper was written to explore the relationship between the factory and the city, related to my studio project in which I speculate about what future factories (productive landscapes) could look like. 1. Darley, Gillian: “Factory”, 2003.
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INDUSTRY, THE ORGINAZED FORM OF PRODUCTION
PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPES* During the industrial era, cities grew rapidly and became centers of population growth and production.
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In economics, production is simply an act of: “creating output, a good or service which has value” 1. We plan, we build, we destroy and rebuild. Nothing changed our environment more than the simple act of production, especially the organized form of production, the industry. The period from 1700 to 1900 witnessed a transformation of the European landscape on a scale never seen before, creating scenes of “horrifying grandeur and indescribable squalor which equally enthralled disgusted those who recorded their impressions in verbal or graphic form” 2 With a new typology at the center, the factory.
In the Anchor-Forge at Söderfors. The Smiths Hard at Work, Pehr Hilleström (1782).
The world’s first steam powered factories appeared in the Midlands in the 1770s and with them came a huge demand for resources; More coal, more workers, more raw materials... Factory towns grew and changed beyond all recognition and soon became huge industrial centres with populations measured in the hundreds of thousands, as migrant
workers moved form the countryside. As cities grew, evolved and expanded there was a demand for new buildings to accommodate the new industrial machinery and to house the thousands of workers that they depended on. The Industrial Revolution saw the prototypes of many entirely original building types. New designs were needed for new factories,
If we achieve this industrialization, then the social, economic, technical, and even artistic questions can be resolved easily” 3
mills, power and warehouses that sprang up in every city. 1. Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Brown, L., and Adam, S.: “Marketing”, 2006. 2. Palmer, Marilyn and Neaverson Peter: “Industry in the landscape 1700-1900”, 2004. 3. Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig: “Industrial Building.”, 1924.
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Bird 12th St. Bascule Bridge, Chicago, Ill. (1900-1910). Courtesy: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
In the late 19th century, industry started to invade the cities.
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INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION* Previously, cities served just as commercial centers for rural hinterlands, which is why they were often located on rivers, lakes, or oceans (ease of access). Manufacturing occurred outside the city borders - usually near power sources, fast flowing rivers, or natural resources, like coal, iron, or forests. The invention of modern transportation methods (steam engine, later the automobile) and the “superiority of the factory over preindustrial business organization” 1 made the city and ideal place for industries to settle down. Workers were able to live far from their jobs, and goods could move quickly from point of production to the market.
that raw materials could flow directly onto factory floors and assembled products could be distributed to local markets in an integrated, industrial, urban cycle.” 2 The dramatic over-population and unrestricted urban growth led to slum housing; dirt, disease and a lack of communal green spaces within the city landscape. In response, Modern urban planning arose. City planners began to impose regulatory laws establishing new standards for housing and sanitation.
AS INDUSTRY GREW, CITIES CHANGED
“(...) Factories, those places of making, shaping and assembling things, were our cities, and our cities were factories filled with multi-storied dense spaces for making.” 2
1. Lampard, Edwin: “Industrialization and the modern world”, 2007. 2. Rappaport, Nina: “Vertical Urban Factory”, 2011.
“The proximity of labor, transportation hubs and entrepreneurial energy in dense urban clusters meant
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Model T Assembly Line (1924). Courtesy: The Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company collections.
I DREAM OF*
THE MACHINE
A factory that could run like a great machine...
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merican and European culture in the 1920s and early 1930s became increasingly “machine-driven”. Art and design reflected “the proliferation and primacy of the machine” 2. Coupled with an influx of European avant-garde styles, the machine challenged the established design principles and the period was one of experimentation and invention.
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Electricity powered machines in the home, automobiles changed the shapes of cities and homes, radio redefined leisure, and telephones closed the distances between people. Driven by this “mechanistic philosophy of the enlightenment” 1 , 20th-century engineers and architects developed factory processes and design ideas based on principles of time-motion studies. The layouts became increasingly efficiency
driven, defined by the flow of materials and transport logistics. In overseeing the building of factories, industrial engineers promoted the adoption of reinforced concrete walls and floors, traveling cranes, conveyor systems, internal railways, and electrification. 1. Biggs, Lindy: “The Rational Factory: Architecture, Technology and Work in America’s Age of Mass Production”, 2002. 2. Lisle, Ben: “Modern design and the machine aesthetics”, 2010.
CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY ORIGINS OF A MODERN FORM Albert Kahn and his associates developed a new style of construction where reinforced concrete replaced wood in factory walls, roofs, and supports. This gave better fire protection and allowed large volumes of unobstructed interior. This made it possible to install larger window openings for natural day lighting and ventilation. Another benefit of the steel-reinforced concrete structure was that these
pieces could be prefabricated and assembled at the factory site much faster than wood, concrete, or brick structures. This is similar to Ford’s assembly-line principles of making universal parts to allow for faster assembly of vehicles. Kahn’s pre-fabricated
concrete introduced the idea of a “ready-made plant” which allowed the manufacturers to start production sooner and recoup their investment faster. Fig 6 Top Left: Ford Motor Company Highland Park Plant, Michigan (1909). Fig 7. Top Right: Method of Laying the Kahn Trussed Bars (1910). Fig 8. Bottom: Method of Laying the Kahn Trussed Bars (1910).
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“Power house mechanic working on steam pump”, Lewis Hine (1920) Courtesy: US National Archives and Records Administration.
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Fig 10: A clothed man digging with a pickaxe, Eadweard Muybridge (1887).
Fig 11, top left: Darby cast iron cooking pot, Abraham Darby (1707). Fig 12, top right: Sheep shear design, Wolseley sheep shearing machine company (1887). Fig 13 left: R. Dale Huchingson, New Horizons for Human Factors in Design (McGraw-Hill series in industrial engineering and management science), 1981. Fig 14, right: Frankfurter Kücher, No. No. 2577, a model kitchen Margarete SchütteLihotzky designed to save the modern homemaker time and wasted motion (1929).
Fig 15, left: WW1, German A7V tank, interior section (1916). Fig 16, right: Unité d’habitation, Marseille. Le Corbusier (1947).
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Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant (1956). Courtesy: Folder “Ford Motor Co.” Box 8, Michigan Bell Telephone Company photograph collection.
FACTORY AS A CITY* A NEW ORGANIZATION OF WORKFORCE
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he Industrial Revolution radically changed the organization of work. In the new factories, a large number of workers gathered together six or seven days a week to engage in tightly coordinated tasks paced by machinery. This new organization of work implied a sharp dinstinction between work and home. In earlier types of work, such as farming, trades, and cottage industries, work and home were not necessarily separate. Workers found themselves packed into slums and subjected to harsh labor conditions. For the middle class, women retreated from the labor force to take up duties in the domestic household. Attitudes toward children involved greater concern for education and a sense of childhood. A source of social instability was the dramatic population increase that set in after 1730, a result of improved nutrition and a lower rate of infant mortality. However unlike previous epochs, the population increase of the eighteenth century produced more positive responses. Upper- class families attempted to secure their positions, and the social hierarchy became more rigid. Business families attempted to increase their margins of profit, sometimes by the addition of more technology.
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Fig 15. Top: Biggs, Lindy: “The Rational Factory: Architecture, Technology and Work in America’s Age of Mass Production”, 2002. Fig 16. Bottom: Lisle, Ben: “Modern design and the machine aesthetics”, 2010.
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Over London–by Rail from London: A Pilgrimage, Gustave DorÊ (1872).
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t the lowest level, the poor were driven to seek new means of employment and the higher demand for work decreased the wages to a mere subsistence level.
Push factors from the rural areas (poverty, disease, changes in agriculture, displacement of peasant farmers) and pull factors from the cities (industrialisation and the growth of Empire) led to huge urban growth. Rapidly expanding industrial cities could be quite deadly, and were often full of contaminated water and air, and communicable diseases. Living conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied from the splendor of the homes of the wealthy to the squalor of the
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workers. Poor people lived in very small houses in cramped streets. These homes often shared toilet facilities, had open sewers, and were prone to epidemics exacerbated by persistent dampness. Disease often spread through contaminated water supplies. In the 19th century, health conditions improved with better sanitation, but urban people, especially small children, continued to die from diseases spreading through the cramped living conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in congested dwellings), lung diseases from mines, cholera from polluted water, and typhoid were all common. The greatest killer in the cities was tuberculosis (TB). Archival health records show that as many as 40% of working class deaths
in cities were caused by tuberculosis.
PUBLIC* HOUSING THE CASE OF THE FRENCH ENTREPRENEUR GODIN Familistère in Guise, France (1859) In the first half of the 19th century, the industrial Revolution saw the emergence of a new kind of population that squeezed into cities where nothing was planned to accomodate them. JeanBaptiste André Godin, designer, builder and architect was not a manager like others, but a follower of Fourier’s theories (concern and cooperation are the secrets of social success). To him, collective accomodation was the cornerstone of this new society, where he offered accomodation and services to the workers of his factory, whose condition prevented them from enjoying such privileges.
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Fig 18, left: Tenement Yard, How the Other Half Lives, Riis, Jacob A. (1890). Fig 19 top right: “Five Cent a Spot” Unauthorized Lodgings in a Bayard Street Tenement, Riis, Jacob A. (1890). Fig 20, bottom right: In Poverty Gap, an English Coal-Heaver`s Home, Riis, Jacob A. (1890). 16 •
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The Strike in the region of Charleroi, Robert Koehler (1886).
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...some of the propertied classes had come to believe that the Chartists intended revolution...
A DEMAND FOR CHANGE* A STANDARD OF LIVING FIT FOR A HUMAN For the industrial capitalists, there was the economic need for a fit, healthy and orderly workforce, located near to the factories. Disease led to epidemics and was not discriminate: the rich were themselves very much at risk. For the workers, the need was simply for a standard of living fit for human beings. Friedrich Engels’s: “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, published in 1845, was seminal in smashing the silence on the conditions of life and work. Furthermore, the Chartist movement and the formation of the first workers’ and socialist parties meant that the working class was becoming organised and making its demands politically, while ever since the Paris Commune, the threat of revolution existed.
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ALBERT KAHN’S
DAYLIGHT FACTORY* THE PLACE WHERE
THE 20TH CENTURY WAS BORN
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he architect of modern Detroit began his career in 1907, when he was commissioned to design a new plant for luxury automobile producer Packard Motors. Henry Ford soon noticed these architectural qualities, and engaged Kahn for an innovative project. Ford wanted to put everything under one roof, and Kahn pulled off something revolutionary: a four-story factory flooded with natural light which could accommodate up to 70,000 workers. Highland Park became the place where “the 20th century was born,” as historian Bob Casey puts it. When the factory became too small, Kahn designed new premises for Ford just south of Detroit -- the River Rouge Complex, which opened in 1927 and held 90,000 workers. It was the biggest industrial plant in the world at the time. The Ford plants were the result of a perfect symbiosis: The auto manufacturer had found his
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perfect builder in Kahn. His talent for erecting factories faster than anyone else grew from a clever combination of engineering knowledge and tight business organization. Kahn carried the principles of mass production into the art of architecture. His Detroit office became a factory-planning factory. As soon as he signed a new job, the team swung into motion, not just drawing up building plans but simultaneously sourcing contractors and gathering estimates for materials. Kahn built factories like they were coming off an assembly line. Many of the mentioned ideas later influenced the likes of Le Corbusier, or Mies van der Rohe who went on and radicaly chanched the way we construct, use and perceive the city landscape. Fig1. Detroit (Highland Park), Michigan, circa 1916. “Four o’clock shift, Ford Motor Company.” Courtesy: Detroit Publishing Company.
General Motors auto assembly line in action. (1933). Courtesy: Albert Kahn Family of Companies
MOTOR CITY* Detroit, as so many American cities in the late nineteenth century, became a center for the production of newly welded, molded, and assembled products, ones primarily made with interchangeable parts for bicycle manufacturing, carriage making, stoves and ultimately, automobiles. Many were housed in traditional multistoried masonry buildings with small windows, wood floors, beams and window sashes, often expanding incrementally across adjacent blocks as their need for
additional space grew. They were mixed with other uses in the city center, gradually developing out with the railroads lines. In the early twentieth century, over forty auto manufacturers made Detroit home, harnessing the expertise of machinists and inventors such as Ford, Oldsmobile, Studebaker, Dodge, Packard, and Fisher. The companies eventually consolidated into what came to be known as the Big Three窶認ord, Chrysler and GM.
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Model T Assembly Line (1924). Courtesy: The Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company collections.
Model T, exploded view. 3D Model: https://grabcad.com/library/paddy-chassis
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Packard Assembly Line, page from the Packard Magazine, Issue 1 (June, 1910).
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HOUSING FOR THE MASSES* “THE PURSUIT OF EMPIRE-BUILDING FURTHER REQUIERED A HEALHY WORKING CLASS
“The issue of housing posed itself as a sharp necessity at that time, which the owners of capital needed to act upon, lest the workers themselves would.” 1 First this was taken up in the form of philanthropy, later by certain factory owners, some of whom built quite extensive housing for their workers, most notably the villages of Saltaire in 1853, Port Sunlight in 1888 and Bourneville in 1893. Nevertheless, it was only after the entire period of the Industrial Revolution that the state first became involved, resulting in various housing acts, initiated all across Europe. Local authorities were being encouraged to improve housing, including giving them the power to close unsanitary residences. As a consequence, the newly-formed housing councils began building public housing estates (first in London, 1890, which started a whole wave of council (public housing) building projects.
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It was no coincidence that this happened at the turn of the 20th century as capitalism matured into the global, monopoly-dominated imperialist system. The pursuit of empire-building further required a healthy working class, not least to serve in increasingly sophisticated and largescale wars. The poor condition of the workers became particularly evident during the First World War. As an example, the UK Housing Act of 1919 required councils to provide housing, assisted by government funding, resulting in council house building on a mass scale. Later, with the onset of the Great Depression, the 1930 Housing Act required councils to prepare slum clearance plans. The Second World War changed the situation again, primarily out of the necessity to rebuild the bombed cities; But also, because of the working class and the people (inspired by the victory over fascism), demanding change.
Saltaire Village. Courtesy: Michael De Greasley@flickr.com (2014).
There was a shortage of housing in Europe after WW2. Many houses had been destroyed by bombing.
homes. Sections of houses were made in factories and were reassembled on building sites.
Large numbers of slums remained a problem. The birth rate had risen after the war had ended and families required
These houses were quick to erect and provided good facilities such as bathrooms and gardens. These houses were meant to be a temporary solution to the problem of housing shortages but many remained after 40 years.
“The pursuit of empire-building further required a healthy working class, not least to serve in increasingly sophisticated and large-scale wars. ” • 27