Middle-Class Housing in Perspective, Milan 22-23 November 2012, Book of Abstracts

cover photography Š 2012 Stefano Graziani

Book of Abstracts

Middle-Class Housing in Perspective _ Milan 22-23 November 2012 _ Book of Abstracts

Session 1 Changing Homes in Changing Societies Chaired by: Giovanni Semi (UniversitĂ degli Studi di Torino) and Bruno Bonomo (Sapienza UniversitĂ di Roma) Speakers (alphabetical order): Cristina Dreifuss-Serrano Myrto Kiourti Jonathan Massey Stefano Munarin, Maria Chiara Tosi Catherine Rhein Graziella Roccella

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Adaptation Processes in Middle-Class Housing Units.

Interaction with Built Space through Everydayness Cristina Dreifuss-Serrano Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (Lima, Perú) Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Lima, Perú) cristinadreifuss@gmail.com The practices of contemporary everyday life and the apparent unlimited resources the marketplace offers, makes it a common practice the interaction of the inhabitants with their houses.

From choosing the colour of the curtains to the subdivision of spaces or the creation of new ones – often even occupying public areas –, it is a common practice for residents to change both the interior and the exterior of their dwellings in order to adapt them to their specific needs (Allen, 1978 [1972]).

The case-based study, conducted for most of the current academic year, parts from the original design of successful mid-class housing projects of the 60s and 70s and aims to establish a catalogue of the types of changes users have done to the housing units, public spaces, urban features and commercial areas, and the way those have affected both the use of internal spaces and the external image of the building.

Through interviews, photographic registrations and sketches, the study establishes a history of mid-class residential neighbourhoods parting from the changing of the inhabitants’ needs and the new shapes emerging from them.

To what extent did the original project achieved a flexibility that allowed this metamorphosis to happen? In what way could the architect have prevented or encouraged the given interventions them? Does housing projects of the second half of the 20th century adapt to ever-changing uses and patterns of the early 21st century?

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The various cases presented show us a comparison between ways of interaction with a given space, while showing us different possible dialogues of life, everydayness and resources with a given built environment.

Ultimately, the study aims to see pass the physical aspect of those changes and reaches forward to analyse the dynamics behind them and how they constitute a logical response of inhabitants to adequate their environment to everyday life (Alexander, 2002 [1980], p. 352).

References: Ábalos, I. (2009). Il buon abitare. Pensare le case della modernità. Milano: Christian Marinotti Edizioni.

Alexander, C. (2002 [1980]). The Nature of Order. An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Berkeley: The Center for Environmental Structure.

Allen, E. (1978 [1972]). La casa "otra". La autoconstrucción según el M.I.T. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.

Boudon, P. (1972). Lived-in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Friedman, Y. (2009 [2003]). L'architettura di sopravvivenza. Una filosofia della povertà. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

Friedman, Y. (2006). Pro Domo. Andalucía: Actar.

Habraken, N. J. (1962). Soportes: una alternativa al alojamiento de masas.

Madrid: Alberto Corazón Editor.

Habraken, N. J. (1998). The Structure of the Ordinary. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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The Question of Self-Identity in Greek Middle-Class Housing Myrto Kiourti Partner at KiourtiTechniki k_mirto@hotmail.com One of the major issues defining house design is the resident's personal identity and the way this is incorporated in the design process. From the onset of modernity, house design has responded to the inhabitants’ quest for self-identity but it is only after the social and cultural reforms of the 1960s that the need for individualized house design as a process for reflexively constructing a personal lifestyle expanded to include the Middle-Class. According to sociologist Anthony Giddens the reflexivity of modernity has extended into the core of the self and the quest for self-identity has become one of the major issues defining post-traditional societies in the western world.

The paper will focus on part of my PhD thesis, House design: Redefining everyday beliefs and practices. We will examine the question of self-identity in Greek Middle-Class housing of the 70's using architectural tools and methods borrowed from social anthropology. In the case of Greece social dissemination of private housing in the broad Middle-Class enabled residents to play a dominant role in the process of their house design.

Due to social and political reasons, the architects' role in Middle-Class house design has been particularly limited. The architects' diminished role and the consequent, un-reflexive house design process have reproduced modes of everyday practice that impeded the residents' quest for self-identity.

The research focuses on everyday practices detected in the case of the living-room and the kitchen of the 70s. Everyday 7

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language, the way residents talked about their house and everyday life in it, reproduced disciplinary patterns of practices that led to constraints over the body and subsequent restraint of self-identity construction. Thus, despite their dominant role in the house design process the inhabitants were not able to investigate and express their self-identity due to cultural restrictions that transformed social conventions to established routines and firm beliefs of a normative sort.

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Housing Risk: Neoliberal Homeownership in the United States Jonathan Massey School of Architecture, Syracuse University (Syracuse, USA) jmassey@syr.edu Housing is a key biopolitical instrument managing the relationship of citizens to state and market. By examining changes to housing and homeownership in the United States from the oil shock of the early 1970s to the foreclosure crisis that began five years ago, I show how the design, financing, and consumption of single-family houses mediated a broader shift in the constitution of the middle class as neoliberal economic restructuring dismantled the Keynesian welfare state.

It is widely recognized that in the United States after World War II federal supports for mortgage financing expanded the middle class and accelerated the boom in suburban house construction. And since 2008 everyone has understood that by the turn of the millennium U.S. housing finance had become central to the world economy. In recently published research I have situated these episodes within a longer trajectory: over the past century, the intensifying financialization of housing has changed the role that middle-class houses play in mediating between citizens and the state, as well as between the microeconomics of the household and the macroeconomic forces of a globalizing economy.

In this paper I examine the most recent phase of this process, from the mid-1970s to the crisis onset in 2007. During this period marked by income stagnation and widening economic inequality, middle-class houses become essential channels for access to credit, for economic participation, and for speculative investment. Drawing on census data, real estate records, 9

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architectural analysis, and ethnographic research, I show how the liberalization and securitization of mortgage finance made the house an arena for retraining Keynesian citizens to participate in the emerging neoliberal risk society.

After reviewing the restructuring of mortgage finance during this period, I outline three corollary dimensions in the govern mentality of middle-class houses: changes in house design including as the rise of McMansions in Greenfield exurbs and tear-down redevelopments in older inner-ring suburbs; new consumption practices such as the entrepreneurial activity of “flipping� houses via renovation for rapid resale; and new homeownership cultures, reflected in media such as the home improvement and real estate shows that became a staple of reality television.

While the analysis focuses on middle class homeowners, I draw on new sociological and ethnographic scholarship to make comparisons to the parallel history of public housing, showing how federal legislation, the HOPE VI program, and other regulatory changes transformed the lifeworlds and subjectivities of poor and working-class renters during this same period.

By connecting mortgage finance to house design, consumption practices, and homeownership cultures, I show how in the late 20th century the architecture of their houses taught middle-class Americans to accept and even embrace risks and responsibilities previously assumed by the state.

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Middle Class Housing in Italian Areas of Settlement Dispersion: a Continuous “Anthropological Mutation�

Stefano Munarin, Maria Chiara Tosi IUAV University of Venice (Venice, Italy) munarin@iuav.it, mariachiara.tosi@iuav.it In Italy, the phenomenon of settlement dispersion has had one common leading figure: middle class housing, which is attributed to the craft-industrial entrepreneurial classes that have produced and continue to produce a major share of the wealth in the country. The paper aims to shed light and reason on the following statements.

Housing has been the primary testimony of anthropological mutation throughout areas of dispersed settlements: from poor peasant families to the middle classes of craft-industrial trades.

Housing in area of wide-spread urbanisation has represented the main vehicle by which new middle classes have sought their very self-representation (house on the hill).

Housing in area of wide-spread urbanisation has also been the place in which middle entrepreneurial classes were formed, the places that allowed for family economies to develop (work-shop home).

Middle class housing in areas of wide-spread settlements has hosted the very places and spaces that make up the true substitution of traditional places of urban sociability (inn-houses, small garage workshop spaces and garden areas equipped for free time: vegetable gardens, barbeques, sports & recreation, etc.).

Middle class housing in areas of wide-spread settlements has grown along with those who inhabit them, 11

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incrementally adding pieces and parts in order to adapt to the needs of families in continuous movement (the palimpsest home).

Today such conditions have changed.

Middle class housing in areas of wide-spread settlements must take into account the fact that families are no longer growing, rather they are decreasing in size: henceforth the evermore frequent cases of abandon of a heritage and patrimony that are difficult to evaluate in market value terms.

Middle class housing in areas of wide-spread settlements is excessively large, technologically obsolete and thus costly and inefficiently time-consuming to maintain, to heat during the winter, keep cool during the summer, and render sustainable.

Middle class housing in areas of wide-spread settlements has become an object of appropriation by the new middles classes made up of educated young people, immigrants who have painstakingly obtained better social positions, single-parent families, young and elderly singles and temporary families.

These issues inevitably bring forth the need to rethink this large-scale housing patrimony and heritage, with the object to make it newly adhere to a different society, or to envision more sustainable processes of its abandon, recycling and re-use.

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Middle Strata and Their Housing Positions in Metropolitan Paris (1982-2007) Catherine Rhein CNRS-Universités Paris 1 et Paris Diderot (Paris, France) rhein@msh-paris.fr The communication is dealing with housing and middle classes dynamics over the last 25 years. In 2007, along with London, metropolitan Paris is considered as a global city, with 7 million inhabitants and 3 million households and housing units. In metropolitan Paris, the housing stock has been growing at a high rate over the 1954-1975 period, at a much lower rate since then, while urban growth has mostly been located first, in the suburbs, then at the outskirts.

Simultaneously middle classes had undergone deep restructurings both at the economic as well as at the demographic level. The gap between private and public sectors has been deepening, as did the proportion of female workers in medium and highly skilled jobs in both sectors.

Simultaneously, in 2007 while couples are nowadays, for 85 % of them, composed of two active persons, the proportion of one (active) person households has reached 30 %, 54 % in inner Paris. In other words, middle class household types are far more diversified today, as they used to be, and as are their lifestyles and housing positions.

In France, middle classes are hypothesized to have left, in the 1980s, social housing built in the 1960s and 1970s, inducing strong processes of ghettoïzation in social housing : we will try to grasp more precisely which kind of middle strata have been involved in such processes of a “white flight type”, if any. On the reverse, to which extent are middle strata – and once more:

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which ones? - involved in gentrification processes developing in central-eastern Paris and in close suburbs?

Methodologically, this paper is based upon exploratory data analysis. Statistical sources are constituted by the original census files for 1982 and 2007. Variables are specially designed by the author for household’s description, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for housing conditions.

Household composition and position within its life cycle are two key variables which are used along with cross tabulations of socioeconomic statuses of heads and spouses (if any), since positions in the housing market are supposed to differ according to heads’ generations, gender and revenues. On the other hand, housing conditions are differentiated according to tenure type, age and relative location: tables and maps are produced and analysed at the infra-communal level (called IRIS by the INSEE, the French public statistical system; 4000 IRIS and 400 communes in metropolitan Paris).

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Domestic Space Transformations: a Comparison between Post-War Technological Upgradings and Digital Age Changes Graziella Roccella Dipartimento di Architettura e Design DAD, Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italy) graziella.roccella@polito.it «The Internet has become the fastest growing electronic technology in world history. In the United States, for example, after electricity became publicly available, 46 years passed before 30 percent of American homes were wired; 38 years passed before the telephone reached 30 percent of U.S. households, and 17 years for television. The Internet required only seven years to reach 30 percent of American households » Jeffrey I. Cole, Director, UCLA Center for Communication Policy, 2000).

Starting from the post-war period, the introduction of wired networks, (and their related objects), into middle-class houses brought some changes in the perception and organization of domestic spaces (e.g. the introduction of appliances transformed the kitchen, tv changed sitting-rooms, phones evolution from the wall to table to mobile changed the entrance room).

In the post-millennial society, the unpredictable rapid diffusion of digital IC technologies affects the way people live, interact and enjoy the domestic space and thus the way people dwell. (e.g. the introduction of tablets in S. Jobs “post-pc” era is pushing people far from their desk pc and demonstrating a need for new negotiable spaces in their homes).

This paper proposes a comparison between the changes affecting middle-class domestic spaces due to the introduction 15

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of technological devices in the 50s, and the recent transformations brought by the digital technologies, trying to find common characters and/or radical differences.

Thanks to the Internet network and its applications in everyday life, post-millennial urban society is putting in place new behavioural matrices based on temporary ubiquity (via videocall means), on new forms of community (via social networks). Since the mid ‘90s, some authors (N. Negroponte, W.J. Mitchell, M. Castells) suggested that there can be a new concept: the one of hyper-dwelling, in the sense that ICT tools enable new ways of organizing work, rest and entertainment by changing the concept of time and thus transforming homes. In this perspective, middle-class physiological needs haven’t changed since the ‘50s but instead psychological desires related to the house, are shifting from a standardized model towards a (mass)-customized one. How can domestic spaces respond to this change of paradigm?

This paper is inspired by the ongoing research carried out by the author in the field of “Digital Housing” but the support of the historical analysis might be revealing new research directions towards sustainable housing, combining tradition with innovation and initiating a broad spectrum multidisciplinary debate on such a crucial subject that is how we live/dwell/house in the digital age.

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Session 2 Discourses, Ideologies and Representations Chaired by: M. Auxiliadora Galvez (Universidad PolitĂŠcnica de Madrid, E.T.S.A.M.) and Federico Zanfi (Politecnico di Milano) Speakers (alphabetical order): Hakan Forsell, Celina Kress and Baris Ăœlker Giovanni La Varra Cecilia Mouat Gabriele Neri Susanne Schindler, Juliette Spertus Matthew Soules Marieke Van Rooij

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Urban Landscapes and Middle-Class Housing: Comparing the European Experiences of Postwar Urbanization.

Hamburg-Istanbul-Stockholm, 1950s-1970s Hakan Forsell, Celina Kress, Baris Ülker Center for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University (Örebro, Sweden) and Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS), Technische Universität Berlin (Berlin, Germany) hakan.forsell@oru.se, celina.kress@metropolitanstudies.de, riza-baris.ulker@metropolitanstudies.de The project deals with the conceptual and physical development of urban expansion, single-family housing and middle-class lifestyles during the post-WWII era. The period was characterized by rapid social change , substantially increasing economic prosperity and growing demands on the welfare systems in the three European cities – Hamburg, Istanbul and Stockholm.

This comparative analysis focuses on three interrelated issues: the activities of private and semi-private construction companies in the new residential areas of single-family housing (ownership structures of land, rationalization and architectural design of detached housing production), the question of a specific European model of urban regionalization, blending international influences in planning and housing with local traditions and circumstances, the value systems and the ways of life that determined the codes of social behaviour and social infrastructure as they pertained to the new residential areas.

To date, research on the middle class and suburbs has predominantly focused on the path of American suburbanization, which created dramatic boundaries between 19

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the inner city and surrounding counties. This perspective, however, ignores different and multifaceted developments in Europe. During the same lucrative era after World War II, during which the American model of suburban building became reputable, many European cities incorporated surrounding municipalities, villages or areas of land and sought to bundle them into city regions. In addition, the physical expansion of European cities relied more heavily on public incorporations, land acquisitions, local government regulations and the existing and extended public transportation systems than their American counterparts. Moreover, middle-class homes, which were supposed to represent the improved and equal prospects for all parts of the society, varied greatly throughout Europe in their approaches to shaping inhabitants individually and socially.

In this context, the research project aims to explore the relations between private and public spaces of middle-class housing, the configuration of the lived environment and the private market-driven housing sector in light of the growing middle-class demands. Hamburg, Istanbul and Stockholm provide a cross section of European development from the 1950s through the 1970s, notable for their differences regarding urban policy, housing productivity, demography and pace of urbanization and yet representative in many aspects of the processes shaping urban landscapes across Europe at the time.

In this paper we will sketch out differences and similarities of middle-class housing models in each of the three harbour cities.

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Learning from Hollywood.

How American Movies Shaped Italian Territories of the Sprawl Giovanni La Varra Department of Architecture and Planning DIAP, Facoltà di Architettura e Società, Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) g.lavarra@barrecaelavarra.it “The Americans have colonized our subconscious” The judgment of Wim Wenders has photographed what has been a constant construction of models of action that American cinema has screened over the city, the society and the value system in Europe after World War II. This settlement is the background of a contribution that wants to compare the construction of the low-density city - in Italy, since the sixties of the twentieth century - with the powerful work of construction of an imaginary city that American cinema has produced and distributed.

This diffusion was initially focused on “exotic” urban landscape and then, gradually, on more and more familiar ones, because they were obtained and put into practice from the actions of a myriad and molecular social body that has oriented itself on the low density as a principle of freedom, social success and staging of an idea of living where the relationship between public and private space, despite of the traditional city, has been completely reshaped.

Till the late seventies, cinema has been the only major media moving instantly worldwide. Of the many strands of influence, this input wants to investigate how the single-family house has been, in different forms, advertised and recruited, through images of film story, from actions and wishes of Italian

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population. And, later, by urban and public policies that have drawn the Italian territory.

With the eighties, the influence of the cinema is reduced compared to the places of production of common imagination.

And in the mean time are both accepted and diffused, in the Italian territory, the low density tissue.

The long wave of persuasion that has seen pass a major paradigm of land use, through disenchanted images of the American comedies of the seventies and the sixties, now has it endogenous strength. The imagery of the “house�, the desire to live alone, independently and with a small open space property, is the scene of the middle class in the eighties that characterized the peninsula.

Today these areas are in crisis. The elements that made up their strength until a few years ago suddenly seem critical. Return to investigate the imagery that has promoted and supported them it is a way to understand what will be their future, within which new imagery we could look at it and rethink.

The material of this contribution will be mainly visible and oriented to select from the immense corpus of American cinema films, from the beginning of the sixties to the end of the seventies, those that have deeply engraved in the collective.

Contemporary, the data of the bibliography on the subject (Indovina, Secchi, ecc) will be reviewed under the light of these fragments of imagery.

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The Discourse of the Middle-Class City in American Films between the 1930s and 1960s Cecilia Mouat College of Design, North Carolina State University (Raleigh, USA) cecilia.mouat@gmail.com Cities on screens are constructed urban and architectonic spaces, and the film medium was one site where urban planning and architectonic ideas were mirrored and given a material reality. My paper suggests that spaces can communicate discourses and explores the relationship between discourses and representations, in order to illuminate: how urban regulations, statements of planning associations, and governmental initiatives create urban discourses; and how films distribute these urban discourses and shape taken-fromgranted assumptions about housing lifestyle of the middle class.

Considering cinema as the main audiovisual medium during the 1930s and 1960s, American films strongly influenced the distribution of dominant discourses, which functioned as models for neighbourhood and middle-class housing aspirations. Through the American case study, this paper discusses how American films during this period represented the metropolis as a dangerous place, linked with poverty, criminality, or at least, with frivolous characters and sexual temptations. American films systematically represented middle-class families in low density communities close to the countryside, portrayed as safe places to raise a family and to maintain moral values. Through the promotion of a model of urban dispersion, spaces of public identity were linked with Main Street of small towns, the church, and communitarian 23

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clubs, showing a strong conservatism. For this reason, American films systematically stigmatized the apartment, which is the distinctive metropolitan housing model. In the same way, poor people were not represented in small towns, neither in suburbs. They were condemned to stay in the metropolis, living in distinctive places, separated with streets and open spaces from the urban pattern of the rest of the city.

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Home Sweet Home?

Gabriele Neri USI Mendrisio (Mendrisio, Switzerland) – Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) gabriele.neri@usi.ch If the means of mass communication played a key role in celebrating the new advertising icons of Post-War Society and their related housing models, they also knew how to distill the contradictions and dangers implied in it, using weapons as satire, caricature and parody. Among the different kind of mass-media, the author chooses that of the cartoon humour. In fact, since the XIX Century, cartoon has been one of the strongest mediums, thanks to its immediacy, in criticizing contemporary society: the difficult task of using a few strokes and a short message implies a synthesis that at best goes well beyond the stop-effect, freezing images and stereotypes of the time at which it relates. This is particularly true in relation with architecture: as a tangible symbol of social and economic changes, it has become a favourite target for cartoonists.

Based on researches and studies conducted over the past five years in Europe and in the U.S., the author analyzes the transformations of middle-class housing models through a consistent collection of caricatures taken from newspapers, architectural magazines and popular magazines, which allows to identify some key issues for their understanding.

The first field of study is related to the promises of prefabrication during and after World War II. Comparing cartoons with images and advertising propaganda spread by designers and manufacturers (Fuller, ProuvÊ, Lustron, Quonset‌) it is possible to read the distrust of the people to leave behind the traditional stereotypes of living.

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Another theme is that of mechanization. As also shown in Tati’s Mon Oncle, the entry of technology into our homes has become more and more aggressive from the 50’s, leading to extreme consequences the unstoppable technological revolution begun in the 20’s. Once again, cartoons show the contradictions of this phenomenon, as those of post-war urban planning policies.

The last theme is that of the Glass House, dream and obsession with the American bourgeoisie, from east as to west. With their houses, Mies, Johnson, Neutra and many others sprang a line of glass architecture on which befell the satire of the time, showing the inadequacy of the dogmas of the Modern Movement. This leads also to the deep critic of the "mania" of the architect: a splendid cartoon by Alan Dunn in fact a shows desperate customer in front of his new home, asking the architect: “Do I have to live in a ‘statement’? Can’t I just have a home?’

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Co-op City and Twin Parks: Two 1970s Models for MiddleClass Living in the Bronx Susanne Schindler, Juliette Spertus Independent Researchers, USA susanneschindler@gmail.com, juliette.spertus@gmail.com New York City’s “burning Bronx” of the late 1960s is perhaps the most iconic example of the United States' failure to stabilize its urban middle-class in face of sweeping suburban development. There were efforts to do so, however: Co-op City and Twin Parks were developed at roughly the same time and in the same borough (the Bronx), representing starkly contrasting visions of the middle class, how it should live, and its role within the larger city. We propose to revisit these two early-1970s developments and the discourse surrounding them.

Co-op City, a satellite town of 33 thirty-story towers developed by the labor union-based United Housing Foundation (UHF) and designed by architect Herman Jessor, is the largest cooperative development in the United States. Criticized for its aesthetic and urbanistic banality, Co-op City was seen as a lastcry of the clean-slate, large-scale notion of housing development. In their article “Co-op City: Learning to Like It,” published in 1970 in Progressive Architecture, Denise ScottBrown and Robert Venturi nonetheless argue provocatively that Co-op City might provide more of a model than the economically unproven housing concepts usually published in design magazines.

In contrast, Twin Parks represents a conscious effort, through fifteen mid-to high-rise housing projects built on scattered sites, to revive an existing urban neighbourhood. The project was realized by the New York State Urban Development Corporation in response to a neighbourhood-based initiative. In 27

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contrast to the rather homogenous vision of a family unit underlying Co-op City, Twin Parks aimed at providing housing for a variety of household types and resulted in innovative unit layouts designed by emerging architects including Richard Meier, Giovanni Pasanella, and James Polshek.

Despite the largely positive reception to Twin Parks’ “contextual" approach, for instance in Kenneth Frampton's essay “Twin Parks as Typology” published in 1973 in Architectural Forum, and Co-op City's accomplishment in numbers, if not design, the projects have vanished from both architectural discourse and housing policy debates. This can be explained by the end of broad government funding for low- and middle-income housing (Nixon's 1975 moratorium) and the related rejection of the high-rise housing model (Pruitt-Igoe).

In the context of today's renewed search for effective development models for urban middle-class housing, analyzing these two radically different approaches allows us to reevaluate the current interrelation of architectural innovation and housing policy.

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Deconstructing Livability Matthew Soules School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia (West Vancouver, Canada) msoules@sala.ubc.ca Among North American cities, Vancouver stands alone as being the most successful in attracting middle-class citizens to live in high-density, vertical urban environments during the post-war years. So much so that central Vancouver now has residential densities that rival Manhattan and cities as far flung as Dallas and Dubai seek to emulate its precedent. This unparalleled North American experience is widely considered as the physical embodiment of ‘livability.’ Livability, in its current form, is a relatively new concept that was invented in the post-war years to overcome the ostensibly shortcomings of certain veins of Modernist urbanism and architecture in an effort to attract middle-class residents away from the suburbs.

This paper analyzes the physical evolution of central Vancouver’s residential architecture and urbanism in the postwar years and investigates it in relation to the ideological construct of livability. The paper presents analytical diagrams that succinctly demonstrate the spatial concepts that form the organizational basis of the Vancouver model. In connecting these spatial concepts to the idea of livability, livability is deconstructed by examining its historical development and its relationship to shifting notions of middle-class lifestyles and identity. Particular emphasis is paid to the ecosystem of ideas in which marketing imagery, international livability rankings, legal frameworks, public policy, and architectural concepts, all swirl together to produce novel socio-spatial environments.

Through this analysis it is revealed that, despite the neutrality 29

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implied in the word ‘livability,’ the concept is anything but neutral, instead foregrounding a very specific set of middleclass desires and foregoing others. Finally, the paper speculates on the ways in which livability is an avatar of emerging liberal political ideologies in the post-war years and makes the argument that to understand the future performance of these livable environments, it is advantageous to clearly witness their political dimensions.

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Dutch New Town Almere Haven: a Search for the Accommodation of the Suburban Wishes of the Middle Classes in the Seventies Marieke Van Rooij Department of Built Environment, University of Technology Eindhoven (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) m.m.v.rooy@tue.nl This paper will discuss the relationship between the emancipation of the Dutch middle classes in the seventies and the changes in the design of the living environment in this period by means of the new town Almere Haven.

After the Second World War social housing and the design of the living environment became one of the pivotal elements in the reconstruction of the Dutch welfare state. The design principles of the extension schemes at the border of the cities were based on the international dogmas of modernism, following the manifests of the CIAM meetings. But this functionalist approach came under fire at the end of the sixties when the individual demands of the middle classes became predominate. In this period, the government decided to realize a series of new towns in close distance of the big cities. In an attempt to make a more `human' housing environment in contrast to the modern city, architects and urban planners adapted their housing projects for these new towns to a suburban lifestyle that resulted in a small-scale approach of terrace housing with private gardens. Planners and designers studied ways to implement the new demands for participation and democratization in the living environment; the relationship between the individual and community was altered.

A representative of this new approach is the new town Almere Haven, located within a distance of thirty kilometres of 31

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Amsterdam. Designed and constructed in the seventies by a special department of the Public Works Agency on reclaimed land of the Zuiderzee, it accommodated the middle classes that fled the chaos of the Dutch capital. Almere Haven (that stands for Almere port) consists of a characteristic nostalgic town centre that is inspired by traditional Dutch port towns. The terrace housing of the residential areas is clustered around cosy inner courts with a whimsical urban plan referred to as ‘cauliflower resorts’. The public space in between the housing is set up as a place for encounter and play. The design process was in hands of a unique interdisciplinary team, consisting of a group of young planners, architects, sociologists and economists, which studied extensively new forms for the living environment. Finding ways for participation of future residents was a key element.

The paper will pay attention to the housing policy, actors and design process and the architecture and urban planning of the new town Almere Haven in relation to the socio cultural changes.

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Session 3 Trajectories Chaired by : Monique Eleb (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais) and Filippo De Pieri (Politecnico di Torino) Speakers (alphabetical order): Antonello Alici, Le Ngoc Van Anh Eveline Althaus, Marie Glaser Wouter Bervoets Els De Vos Yankel Fijalkow, Lydie Launay and Stéphanie Vermeersch Sanjeev Vidyarthi

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The Transformation of Khu Tap The - Type of Housing for Middle Class in Hanoi, Vietnam after 1956 Antonello Alici, Le Ngoc Van Anh Department of Construction Civil Engineering and Architecture, Polytechnic University of Marche (Ancona, Italy) a.alici@univpm.it, vananh.kts@gmail.com Since 1954, Vietnam divided into two regions. The independent North was building Socialist while South faced the war against American. In 1975, the war ended with the Vietnam’s victory, the North and South united. During this period, the North carried on economic development, support for the South and planned some big cities. One of the most urgent questions was housing provision for people. The model of Khu Tap The (KTT) was born based on learning architecture and planning theories of Soviet Union and other socialist countries but adapted climate, economy, and culture of Vietnam.

KTT was built from 1956. It is a housing block, includes many apartments, common stair, the height from one to six floors, and constructs with assembled method from precast concrete panels. The long shape is oriented from east to west to avoid direct sun radiation. The simple form of exterior reflects the function. This solution is consistent with socio-economic stage of the subsidy period, largely solved the housing demand of middle class. The largest numbers of KTT concentrate in Ha Noi capitals with forty KTT, built from 1956 to 1990.

The 1990 marked conclusion of this experience but KTT still resolve the demand of residents. However, the initial architecture and planning of KTT has been transformed. This is caused by the population growth, economic fluctuation, habit change, and the city expansion. Firstly, KTT built in the urban 35

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periphery and now has become the centre due to large construction density and expansion planning. The amount of vacant land is not sufficient to adapt the development of city.

Therefore, the function has also changed such as living space move to business space. Secondly, the population-increasing combine with the lack of planning regulation, open space encroachment of residential, and expanding apartments on the top are the reasons why original architecture is altered completely. Thirdly, due to the increasing using demand, the technical infrastructure is overloaded and degraded. For example, water shortages, power outages, flooding. The old KTT become dangerous to the users. Finally, the management and operator lack of logical, there is no maintenance repairs due to limited budget of government.

Currently, the government has signs to recognize the value of KTT by some policies to improve and repair them. Therefore, the research aims to indicate the transformation of KTT and raise the acknowledgement of using value and historical significance of KTT in the development of the Vietnamese culture.

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Legacies of Modernism: House Biographies of Large Post War Residential Complexes in Switzerland Eveline Althaus, Marie Glaser ETH CASE - Centre for Research on Architecture, Society and the Built Environment, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich, Switzerland) althaus@arch.ethz.ch, glaser@arch.ethz.ch The suburban landscapes of Switzerland were predominantly built during the economic boom of the 1950s to 1970s. The construction of modernist dwelling spaces was mainly aimed at broad goals and values of the middle class, such as the ideal of the nuclear family or the separation of functions (working in the city and living in a green environment).

The paper presents preliminary research material on house biographies of large prefabricated residential complexes in German-speaking Switzerland that were - unlike in other countries - deliberately built for the middle classes of the times.

The focus of the research is on the various practices of inhabiting, managing, maintenance and community work carried out by different actors, which formed the socio-spatial transformations of the residential complexes from their construction until today. The permanence and change of the built structures (ageing of material, renovation practices) as well as of the residents’ inhabitation (social mix, neighbourhood relations) are analyzed in the light of changing public discourses and policies. If not previously renovated, these buildings often no longer conform to the standards of today and remain a dated legacy. Over time, their big scale typology and location on the outskirts have become widely criticised. Some of the complexes today are inhabited by marginalized social groups and are stigmatized by the general 37

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public. Others are middle class and/or socially mixed residential areas that also often have to deal with a negative image, although they offer opportunities for affordable housing in close proximity to growing cities. With reference to these dwelling environments, the paper presents insights into ongoing house biographies of two selected housing complexes of the 1960s and 1970s located in the region of Zurich. In our understanding, a house biography is a dense portrait of a house over time in which architectural, ethnographic and historical analyses are brought together to tell the multi-layered material and immaterial story of a housing complex. Various perspectives are taken into account: the practices of the tenants’ inhabiting and appropriation of space; the managers’ strategies for maintenance and care taking; the perspective of the architects, city planners and the general public.

To develop a future acceptance of this built legacy it is necessary to take the social and cultural dimension into account: the stories of usage and appreciation as well as the connectivity of the built structure with everyday experiences, values and memories of people.

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The Future of the Detached Single Family House in Flanders: the Public Support for House and Neighbourhood Transformations Wouter Bervoets Research Group Urbanism and Architecture OSA, Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning ASRO, University of Leuven (Leuven, Belgium) Wouter.Bervoets@asro.kuleuven.be In the post-war era Flanders, the Northern region of Belgium, was confronted with massive suburbanization and a widespread urbanization of the rural landscape. Today, the Flemish housing market is characterized by the combination of a high share of single family houses (76%) and a high share of home owners (70%). Both elements are the result of a long standing anti-urban housing policy of the Belgian government providing fiscal incentives for private home builders, supported by a dense transport network and the availability of cheap land.

Apart from solving the post-war housing problem, the housing policy was meant to promote values of private ownership, individual initiative, and family focus and to use housing production as a lever for economic growth.

The past decades these single family houses have been altered and adapted by the inhabitants in response to the evolved cultural and technological conditions. But these house transformations almost never overcome the typology of the single family house, this specific building typology proves to be very obdurate. The resistance of the single family house and by extension residential neighbourhoods against alternative reuse should be seen as problematic. In fact, some experts argue that because of the unstable property market, ageing populations and growing ecological concerns the hybridization 39

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of post-war residential neighbourhoods is a necessity. In this paper we will analyze the public support and interest for transformations of the existing suburban housing stock. Our analysis is based on the preliminary results of the research project “Large dwellings in Flanders: Development of architectural and users strategies in view of demographic trends and ecological constraints� and builds upon material stemming from 60 interviews and home visits undertaken in 10 residential neighbourhoods in Flanders, supplemented by material stemming from 10 focus groups and interviews with local governments, planning officials and real estate professionals.

Our research shows a tendency towards individualism and a strong NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude among the inhabitants of residential neighbourhoods. Residents defend maximal building freedom on each individual building plot, but at the same time are very reluctant to transformations that might negatively affect the green and quiet character of their neighbourhoods with a potential reduction in property values.

The origins and paradoxes of this specific attitude and the implications for sustainable transformation projects are analyzed in detail. For a sustainable re-use of the existing suburban housing stock, we point to the need for small-scale plot by plot interventions that leave the original neighbourhood character intact and compromise between individual and collective interests.

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Multiple Versions of Modernity.

Architects, Social Housing Companies and Inhabitants on the Post-War, Belgian Middle-Class Housing Settlement Ban Eik Els De Vos Artesis University College of Antwerp (Antwerp, Belgium) Els.devos@artesis.be The social housing settlement Ban Eik in a Brussels suburb is an exemplary case of progressive modernity in postwar Belgium. It was awarded the first prize at the competition of the National Society for Housing NMH in 1959 and it was discussed at length in NMH’s journal Wonen as well as in the architectural magazine La Maison.

The magazines praised the urban lay-out (an interpretation of Howard’s garden city model), the rich variety of housing types (from small to big ones, and from low houses to flats in two housing blocks), the low prices and the modern domestic comfort (electricity, a fully equipped kitchen with a stainless sink, a bathroom with a shower and a warm water heater and one or even two water closets), and last but not least, its novel production process (prefabrication by American model). In addition there was nothing but praise for the construction of prototypes, because it brought together the designers, constructor and potential customers. It offered opportunities for the architectural office Group Structures to improve its design and for the constructor to try out the new construction method, while the future inhabitants could imagine how their home would look like.

This paper discusses how some original inhabitants evaluated their dwelling and how the housing estate could contribute to the emancipation of women. It also focuses on processes of 41

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appropriation by the inhabitants, as well as on the different notions of modernity between architects and producers on the one hand and home occupants on the other. Finally, the paper sheds some light on how the estate was renovated in 2004, ranging from a rather “traditional� renovation to a low energy renovation. This paper demonstrates the rich value of oral history as a basis for evaluating houses from an architectural historical perspective of everyday life, and it also contributes to the discussion of how to deal with post-war middle class housing.

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A Definition of Residential Middle Classes in the Metropolis Parisian Context Yankel Fijalkow, Lydie Launay and StĂŠphanie Vermeersch LAVUE Laboratoire Architecture Ville Urbanisme Environnement [UMR CNRS 7218] (Paris, France) launay.lydie@yahoo.fr The purpose of this paper is to show how housing styles, locally and sociologically identified, contribute to the formation of local middle classes marked by a specific sense of residential investment and forms of mobilisation.

During the second half of the 20th century, in connection with the development of the French welfare state, the growth of the middle classes and its diversification led to a widening range of residential. The built, in the 1960s of specific segments of social housing incorporated middle-income households and, in the 1970s, public subsidies helped buyers in condominium apartments, located in the centre but also in the suburb. In the late 1970s, increasing mobility and return to the individual homes led them to suburban communities and built more or less clustered and industrialised fabrication. In the Paris region, far from being reduced to a single search of centrality, the housing choices of the middle classes have pushed them to the renovated former industrial and working-class places, and other to more distant, suburban, in search of green spaces and "tranquillity". The housing stock in Paris region is quite interesting because it shows a great diversity of lifestyles, differing or opposing in judgments on aesthetics and metropolisation.

To show the interest of the panorama we offer, we will suggest to cross homes, lifestyles, forms of mobilisation and aesthetics claims in four types of neighbourhood: a central Parisian 43

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gentrified (the 9th) marked by the arrival of new homeowners belonging to the “service class� that follows a first wave of pioneers cultural (classical phenomena of succession of lowstatus and high cultural endowed inhabitants); a commune of the first suburban ring (Noisy-le-Sec) which its middle classes issued from low-status backgrounds and the public sector integrate new households within the "creative class" (we observe differences in terms of local investment); a third ring municipality (Breuillet) where there has been build in the 70's a major subdivision of single-family houses lived by executives working in the private sector (we note that the middleness of co-ownership coincides with the release of its model), a welloff and isolated municipality in the fringe of urbanisation (Chateaufort), considered at a symbolic level as a gated community (through a process of "clubbisation").

For each locality, we will make the most of interviews conducted between 2010 and 2012 among 150 households asked to explain their choice of location and habitat style and aesthetic preferences, partly from photographs taken in each case study.

Our communication will be structured into three main parts: one clarifying the social forms and housing types of the middle classes in the Paris region, a second articulating aesthetic discourses of housing and location choices, a third showing the shapes of local investments.

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

Long-Term Development of Independent India’s Planned Neighbourhoods Sanjeev Vidyarthi University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, USA) svidy@uic.edu Planners employed the tenets of the ‘neighbourhoods unit’ concept to design about sixty new towns including the famous Chandigarh and numerous city-extensions in the decades immediately following India’s independence in 1947 (Vidyarthi, 2010). Conceptualized by New York planner Clarence Perry in the 1920s, the neighbourhood unit is a simple physical planning typology for designing residential areas that specifies four basic elements: Civic institutions such as school and community centre, parks and playgrounds, convenience stores, and a hierarchal street configuration that allows all public facilities to be within safe pedestrian access. The concept not only became popular in the postwar US but also travelled to many parts of the world (Silver, 1985) including independent India where two key features characterized its application.

First, planners believed that the new neighbourhoods’ disciplined spatiality would buttress the incipient middle class and incubate a ‘modern’ citizenry befitting the recently independent nation (Kalia, 2006). This positioning differed from the US where the concept aimed at creating a hospitable, even if racially segregated, residential environment for the growing middle class by restoring the familial and associational ties that had deteriorated in the face of anomie and squalor of the industrial cities (Banerjee and Baer, 1984).

Second, planners imagined that the mixing of various social 45

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and economic groups in the new neighbourhoods would obliterate ‘traditional’ lifestyles by facilitating a ‘civilizing’ effect upon rural migrants living in proximity with the already urbanized residents.

This paper traces the long-term development of a planned neighbourhood built in the city of Jaipur during the late 1960s.

It highlights the agency of imaginations and the modalities of collaborative changes through which the residents have gradually transformed the built spatiality to the extent that it represents a new form of urbanism. At the plot-level, many residents have quietly encroached upon the open setbacks; converted single-family homes into ostentatious bungalows, multigenerational housing and shops; and added floors beyond legally permissible height increasing the envisaged density and changing the residential-only land use, while the community sponsored extralegal temples in parks and spontaneously developed bazaars have become the ‘heart’ of this planned settlement. The paper also explains the postcolonial state’s apathy and the moral-ethical framework of collaborative changes highlighting how their unanticipated combination has dramatically transformed the original plan generating ‘the best neighbourhood in town’ per many residents even as repositioning the middle class ideals and virtues into a marginal point of view.

References: Banerjee, Tridib and William C. Baer. 1984. Beyond the Neighborhood Unit. New York: Plenum Press.

Kalia, Ravi. 2006. Modernism, Modernization and Postcolonial India: A reflective essay, Planning Perspectives, 21(2): 133-156.

Silver, Christopher. 1985. Neighborhood Planning in Historical Perspective.

Journal of American Planning Association, 51(2): 161-174.

Vidyarthi, Sanjeev. 2010. Inappropriately Appropriated or Innovatively Indigenized: Neighborhood Unit Concept in Post-independence India, Journal of Planning History, 9(4): 260-76.

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Session 4 Building Residential Patterns for the Middle-Class Chaired by: Alessandro De Magistris (Politecnico di Milano) and Gaia Caramellino (Politecnico di Torino) Speakers (alphabetical order): João Cardim, Filipa Fiúza Stéphanie Dadour Bruno De Meulder, Rana Sadat Habibi Lionel Engrand Chiara Ingrosso, Luca Molinari Soline Nivet

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The Alfragide Towers (1968-74) by Atelier Conceição Silva.

A Middle-Class Housing Case Study in Portugal João Cardim, Filipa Fiúza Departamento de Arquitectura e Urbanismo DAU, School of Architecture and Technology, ISCTE–IUL Lisbon University Institute (Lisbon, Portugal) caardim@gmail.com, filipa.fiuza.arq@gmail.com The recognition and internationalization of Portuguese architecture in the second half of the twentieth century was mainly due to housing programs for the middle-lower classes which had migrated to the fringes of the big cities, in search of better life conditions. After large urban interventions in Lisbon and following the April Revolution of 1974, the housing agenda continued with smaller scale projects that encouraged the participation of future residents in the architectural process: it’s the case of the SAAL operations (Local Support Mobile Service, 1974-76), which marks the moment when foreign critics “discover” Portuguese architecture – especially through the revelation of the work of Álvaro Siza (b. 1933).

However, ever since the 1960s a seemingly uncontrollable process of suburban growth had been unleashed – around the big cities and outside the great public urban master plans. This growth was addressing the housing needs of the majority of the middle-class, significantly augmented with the end of the Colonial War and with the arrival of more than 500 thousand people from the former colonial provinces. Although occurring mostly without architectural professionals, the suburban growth of the biggest cities was punctuated with several high quality projects. The architects who designed them – e.g.

Francisco Conceição Silva (1922-82) and Fernando Silva (1914-83) in Lisbon, or José Carlos Loureiro (b. 1925) and 49

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Agostinho Ricca (1915-2010) in Porto – sought to develop a qualified and contemporary approach to this new reality.

The case study addressed in this paper is the Alfragide Towers housing complex (1968-74), designed by Atelier Conceição Silva. The project will be analysed from different points of view, such as its architectural “affiliation” – that mixes elements of British neo-brutalist architecture with Mediterranean features –; its place in Portuguese architectural context; its urban integration – as a model that somewhat follows English post-war “new towns”; its appropriation over time and its present condition; the profile of the dwellers and their relationship with the building; among others.

Like all other private initiatives, this project aimed its economic profitability. Nonetheless – and unlike the majority of suburban housing complexes of this period – that goal was pursued not by assembling the largest number of apartments in the smallest possible area, but through qualitative differentiation and the promotion of a cosmopolitan and sophisticated lifestyle – simultaneously near and far from the central city –, which ultimately was only attractive and accessible to the upper-middle class.

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Contaminated Architectures: Identity Politics and Middle Class Domestic Space (North America, 1988-2001) Stéphanie Dadour Laboratoire Architecture Culture Société, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (Paris, France) stephanie@dadour.org In the North American’1990s, a young generation of architects and scholars, inspired by the fashionable French poststructuralists notions of decentralization, offered new reading grids and interpretations of architecture. In the vein of the feminists’ approaches of Gwendolyn Wright and Dolores Hayden, as much as the ideas of otherness promoted by their predecessors, the IAUS members, they put in place colloquiums (starting with Sexuality and Space at Princeton), writings (especially collection of articles), exhibitions (House Rules at the Wexner Center in 1994, The Un-private House at the MoMA in 1999), publications (Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, The American Lawn, New Households New Housing) and domestic architecture projects concerning identity politics, processes of social transformations and power issues.

Domestic architecture, particularly the suburban middle class house, is the lens and the apparatus through which theories and projects about identity politics and difference take place.

Indeed, if suburbia and domesticity are forgotten projects for the architectural profession (basically in the hands of developers), they reappear in those discourses and projects as an opportunity to question hegemonic norms and their ongoing reproduction. The domestic space, that of the family, that of identity formation and values is one of reproduction, of inheritance and status, becomes in this sense, an experimental 51

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laboratory for architects. Gender, sexuality and race are the spaces of potentialities that allow them to speak.

This proposal aims in the first place at historicizing the role played by professionals (architects and scholars) in shaping new potentialities for the middle class dwellings. The influence of cultural and postcolonial studies in the field of architecture played a major role. By comparing different domestic architecture projects for the middle class, this proposal also reveals, through specific case studies, various forms of transformations. In this perspective, the relationship between mass culture, domestic habits and new lifestyles is analysed in regard with the social and cultural changes.

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“Iranian Modernist Middle-Class Housing”.

Case of “Narmak-Tehran-1952” and “1000-DastgahTehran-1967” Bruno De Meulder, Rana Sadat Habibi Research Group Urbanism and Architecture OSA, Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning ASRO, University of Leuven (Leuven, Belgium) Bruno.DeMeulder@isro.kuleuven.be, ranasadat.habibi@student.kuleuven.be After World War II middle class housing projects became a fundamental necessity due to increasing population in cities and especially capitals. Tehran likewise other capital cities in the world faced to the same problem and found different solutions in different decades. In 1950s by overpopulation of city centre, professionals suggested new neighbourhoods outside of limited borders. With the approval in 1948 of the first seven- years development planning, the construction of “Low-Income Housing” got a prominent place on the development agenda for Tehran, Iran1, that was suggested by young Iranian architects with European training and fresh and new ideas for the creation of a Modern Tehran and adhering to the credo of modernist urbanism. “Rahni (Mortgage) Bank” got responsibility as investor, designer and executer from Tehran Municipality to develop low-income houses for Middle Classes. 1950s was Parliamentarism period in Iran and begging of progressive shift from family, clan, tribe, sect, ethnic group, and other forms of traditional (horizontal) social organization and solidarity to modern (vertical) forms based on class,

1

Planning Organization, implementation report of second socio-economy development, 1964 53

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occupation, and other secular social stratifications2. The approval in 1952 of the law of “Recording of Waste Lands” opened up large fields (considered as State property) around Tehran beyond the border of the time. Afterwards the new cabinet of Dr. Mosaddeq approved the construction of large low-income residential neighbourhood (called Narmak) in the north-east of Tehran3. Narmak designed by young Iranian architects in “Rahni Bank”. In Narmak design, challenge of modern and tradition life was clearly seen; modern living by combination of traditional concept of public spaces was one of the advantages of this project. In 1960s, after “White Revolution” urban policy changed. In 1964 by establishment of “Housing and Development Ministry” with the approval in 1965 of the law of “Apartment Possession”, middle-class housings from single-houses (like Narmak) convert to apartments. 1000-Dastgah in South of Tehran is the first middle-class housing complex (was made for teachers) constructed in 1968 by “Rahni Bank”. This time instead of private yards, a Green Park made role of common open space; sport stadium and school works as regional facilities. These two new neighbourhoods were prototypes of modern urbanism in Tehran and were repeated in subsequent developments (like Tehran-pars and Shahr-ara). Making independent, modernist neighborhoods as new towns at the border of Tehran was the main strategy for as well canalizing the growth of Tehran as for its fundamental modernization.

2

For an analysis of traditional and modern forms of social organization in the Middle East, see Hisham Sharabi, New Patriarchy in the Arab World (London: Oxford University Press, 1989) 3 Habibi, Mohsen and Ahari, Zahra and Emami, Rashid. From Demolishing Fortifications to Thoughts of Highways: History of Urban Design in Tehran From 1930 till 1966, Sofeh Magazine, No.50, 2011 54

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The Middle-Class Housing Unit.

Architectural Theory, Lifestyle and Marketing (France, 1945-1965) Lionel Engrand Laboratoire Architecture Culture Société, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (Paris, France) lionel.engrand@wanadoo.fr After World War II, French authorities announced the country would have to build more than 300,000 apartments a year, for at least 20 years, in order to solve the housing shortage.

Between 1948 and 1958, the annual volume of construction rose from 48,000 to 280,000 units especially through interventionist public policies. This gigantic collective housing enterprise, based on a national approach and a radical transformation of the frame of production, was clearly an answer to the emergency. However, it was not devoid of qualitative considerations: rational urban design instead of pavilion anarchy; social mixing in an ambitious form of housing instead of the routine single house and its supposed individualism; healthy buildings and comfortable apartments surrounded by green spaces instead of downtowns substandard housing… This project led by modernizer technocrats was also an opportunity to teach the French the rudimentary knowledge of the urban living and to bring them into the “modern life”.

My contribution will focus on the middle-class housing unit and its representations in the French imagery between 1945 and 1965, this last date marking the beginning of a general criticism of “Les grands ensembles”.

I will provide an overview of this issue through discourses and achievements in architectural press and general media.

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Theoretical reflections essentially came from architects who endeavour to define what the ideal middle-class housing unit should be - in terms of size, partition, distribution and equipment - given the supposed new lifestyle of the modern family as well as financial and technical constraints. Is there any connection with early Moderns’ research about an exclusive functional approach to housing as part of Minimal Wohnung?

The other side of these speculations is linked to the introduction of housing in the field of marketing and consumption. After 1948, the Salon des arts ménagers became a not-to-miss event which embodied the democratization of well being. Its folklore should not overshadow its official educational assignment, amplified through mainstream media which are not short on recommendations and injunctions in the matter of good taste, as well as morality and family life. Both of these two viewpoints may help to understand the specificity of this “emergency production” and in what way it may have influenced collective housing units design until today.

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The Residential "Parks" in Naples as a New Model for the Emerging Middle Class. The Comola Ricci and Grifeo Parks (1952-1955) by Michele Capobianco Chiara Ingrosso, Luca Molinari Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Architecture "L.Vanvitelli", Second University of Naples (Aversa, Italy) lmolinari.arch@gmail.com By the early decades of the twentieth century in Naples we are witnessing a phenomenon similar to other large European port city that sees a gradual "leakage" of the mid-upper middle class from the city centre to the surrounding hills.

This condition involves the definition of new urban and residential models able to accommodate the aspirations of the urban class ever emerging both economically and socially.

In the first half of the 900' the hills surrounding the city of Naples had begun to be populated by new villas and residential complexes showing clearly the "escape" of the upper middleclass from the lower city.

One of the most challenging result of this urban phenomenon was the increasing of interesting design experiments (from the late Liberty to Mediterranean villas of Luigi Cosenza and Bernard Rudofsky) carried on by the most progressive modern, local designers.

So, after the Second WW, the situation evolves massively and, since 1948, we begin to witness the establishment or enlargement of a series of "parks" for the average residential high-bourgeoisie, in which gradually consolidates a living model based on building a 4/5 floors surrounded by greenery.

Between the late Forties and the early Seventies the model of the "residential park" spreads between the Vomero and Posillipo leaning on large estates that are progressively 57

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parcelled unit, and taking advantage of the weakness of the masterplan Piccinato as well as a strong administrative deregulation.

The Grifeo, Comola Ricci, Rivalta, Immobiliare and Ameno “parks” are some of the most sensational and interesting built during this period and some of these projects involved some of the best "modern" architects based in Naples.

The model of "residential park" introduces the logic of the typical "gated community" with fence and gate input, as well as the application of an urban model typical of the "garden city" with the separation of pedestrian flows from automobile and the creation of sports areas.

But it is on a residential and typological model that our research will try to dwell with the definition of the model of the “palazzina” which will become a typical, housing model widespread all over the Campania region.

The “dreamed” model of the Mediterranean house becomes an opportunity to multiply endlessly offer a balcony with views of the Gulf of Naples, and, at the same time, it offers a range of home comforts of the upper middle class Italian of the Italian economic boom.

The aim of our research is on the one hand, to offer a critical reading of the phenomenon of residential parks in Naples in the aftermath of WWII, focusing on some specific case studies represented by residential buildings designed by Michele Capobianco during the Fifties for the Grifeo and the ComolaRicci “parks” (1952-1956).

The analysis does not stop at the simple architecture housing typology, but also looks to the cultural and symbolic model which were introduced with these projects in a definite historical moment, and then we’ll see how this social and physical model has evolved over time to reach the today.

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“Villas Suspendues®” by Apollonia Soline Nivet Laboratoire Architecture Culture Société, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (Paris, France) contact@soline-nivet.fr As an architect and researcher, I work on identifying interactions between marketing and architecture in the design process of real estate programs for the middle class in French suburban areas.

French architectural research focused for a long time only on the social housing sector and ignored achievements of private property developers until a very recent period.

Nevertheless, studying them is really interesting, especially because of the additional parameters required to understand their typologies and architecture.

Given that the dwellings have to be sold before being built, advertising and marketing strategies may interfere with programs, typologies and architectural forms; they also influence tastes, judgments, and finally reshape expectations.

For the Middle-class Housing Symposium, I propose to recount the genealogy of Apollonia’s products. Apollonia is now a branch of Nexity, the principal real estate company of France.

In the 1990s, while the French property market went through a serious economic crisis, Apollonia developed a strategy that differed from the competition. The company reversed some of its dominant principles, both in terms of scale (large neighbourhoods rather than small) and location (far from downtowns), typologies and architecture (exuberant vs classic) as well as marketing and branding.

Since its brand “Villas suspendues®” (Suspended Villas®) was registered in 1997, Apollonia has commercialized hundreds of 59

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atypical duplex apartments, mono-oriented and organized around large loggias.

These “products” were purchased by customers mostly unaccustomed to these alternative typologies, during successful retail promotion featured in a special exhibition.

Using marketing techniques inspired by hard discounts, Apollonia relied on sales days utilizing artificial shortages and festive ambiance.

Between 1997 and 2007, the “Villas suspendues®” became Apollonia’s leader product. While the plan didn’t change, facades were renewed. At the same time, two options were launched: a first edition, rather kitsch, literally illustrated the idea of superimposed villas; a second one, rather “modern”, was entrusted to renowned French architects.

My presentation will detail the 1990s economic and urban context in France and explain the specificities of Apollonia’s strategy. By focusing on the discursive strategy acting behind its promotional adverts, I will highlight the role and the signification of discursive devices and how they migrated among the marketing language, housing typologies and architectural forms.

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