How a group of Modernists tried to change the world

The rise and fall of the International Congress of Modern Architects and what all they achieved in almost three decades of existence.

In 1933, a ship was traveling across the Mediterranean. Its destination? Athens. On this ship were some of the most powerful architects in Europe, and they had gathered there to change Architecture & Urban Design across the continent. This elite group of architects dictated how design should be practiced in the 20th century. They are the reason we have minimum standards for the design of homes. And they also created the holy grail of urbanism, one that would define the architecture & planning of industrial cities for years to come. So why have you never heard of them? It might be because this group was riddled with politics, power plays and acts of persuasion, and in the end, it became its own undoing. This is the story of how a group of designers came together to change the world, and guess what they did, but was it for the better? Never before had the world seen such a powerful group of architects, and maybe nothing parallels it even to this day. But was it all a facade, maybe one that became evident on that Ship. Today on Blessedarch we are looking at the history of the one of the most powerful groups of designers, this is the story of the International Congresses of Modern Architects.

0:00 – Introduction
01:36 – Chapter 1
06:01 – Chapter 2
10:54 – Chapter 3
14:37 – Chapter 4
18:30 – Chapter 5
22:38 – Chapter 6
27:13 – Chapter 7

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In 1933, a ship was traveling across the Mediterranean. Its destination? Athens. On this ship were some of the most powerful architects in Europe, and they had gathered there to change Architecture & Urban Design across the continent. This elite group of architects dictated how design

Should be practiced in the 20th century. They are the reason we have minimum standards for the design of homes. And they also created the holy grail of urbanism, one that would define the architecture & planning of industrial cities for years to come. So why have you

Never heard of them? It might be because this group was riddled with politics, power plays and acts of persuasion, and in the end, it became its own undoing. This is the story of how a group of designers came together to change the world, and guess what they did,

But was it for the better? Never before had the world seen such a powerful group of architects, and maybe nothing parallels it even to this day. But was it all just a facade, maybe one that became evident on that Ship. Today on Blessedarch we are looking at the history

Of the one of the most powerful groups of designers, this is the story of the International Congresses of Modern Architects. In the 1920s, in the world of architecture, there was a struggle going on. A struggle between the people who clung to the past, who wanted their architecture to be decorated,

Classically beautiful and the modernists who believed in new technologies, and simpler masses, devoid of excessive ornamentation, built to reflect the modern times of industrial efficiency. One of the biggest spokesperson for this was the architect Le Corbusier. Corbusier for those who don’t know was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner

And writer, I wanna stress on the writer part a bit more because it will come in handy later in this video. He was one of the greatest modern architects of the 20th century and His work was inspiration to the likes of B v Doshi, Louis Kahn and Oscar Niemeyer.

Now Corbusier had an ambitious plan. He wanted to bring the whole continent together and create a society of modern architects, one which could debate together and define how architecture should be practiced in the 20th century. And finally in 1928, he formed this

Group. Called the Congrès internationaux I will not try to pronounce the french name in short it was called CIAM.We are gonna stick to the english pronunciation for this which was , the international congress of Modern Architects. this new organization from now

On would be responsible for debating, formulating and spreading the principles of the Modern Movement. There were a lot of incredible names that were a part of this group including of course LE Corbuseir, but also Walter Gropius, Karl Moser, Hendrik Berlage, Victor Bourgeois, and many more. Ofcourse the group kept increasing

Over time and got more members like Minnette de Silva, Alvar Aalto, Louis Herman De Koninck and more. Now the raison d’etre or the reason to be for this organization, was to standardize architecture across the continent, and create uniformity for the betterment of the profession and the society at large. For this purpose,

They worked on three different levels of scales and designs. The unit level, the building level and the city Level. Not all of it was to be resolved in one go, but each time they met, they had the agenda of going one step forward and refining their debates and guidelines.

It all started from the very first CIAM meeting. Organized at the Chateau de la Sarraz, in Switzerland. This meeting was focused on establishing, in writing, the need for the organization and defining certain basics for all architects and designers. These founding statements included things like: • Building is an elementary activity of man

• Architecture should express the spirit of an era • Architecture has an economic and sociological task in the service of people Now These might sound like those regular mundane things that all architects say in different forms. But these statements were important. Specially the second one, Architecture should

Express the spirit of an era. This was the whole reason Corbusier bothered to even start this group. He was sick of the kind of architecture he saw, he wanted away from the neo classical styles, from the excessive decorations. He wanted a new architecture that reflected this

New era of industrialization, of factory workers. He often liked to compare the standardised efficiency of the motor industry with the inefficiency of the building trade. The document that the organization produced in that first meeting was called The La Sarraz Declaration,

And it asserted that architecture could no longer exist in an isolated state separate from governments and politics, but that economic and social conditions would fundamentally affect the buildings of the future. It also emphasized the need for the design and construction industry to rationalise their methods, embrace new technologies, and strive

For greater efficiency. So these statements were not just random regular gibberish that people say, they were consciously chosen, to declare to the world, that its design was about to change. Now before we move to the second meeting of CIAM, we need a bit of historical context

Of what was happening in the world. This was a time just after world war one. Germany had ofcourse lost the war, and its economy had taken a beating. Ofcourse the great depression had also kicked in by this time. Adding to all the other challenges that the country

Was now facing, there emerged a housing crisis. In The year 1919 the Weimar Constitution was drafted for Germany and it guaranteed the right to a “healthy dwelling” for every German. But with limited resources and funds how do you achieve that. And what does a healthy

Dwelling even mean. For a long time, the European countries had seen the emergence of the factories, which meant that people now lived near them for work opportunities. But because of a lack of any sort of standards on built environment, these new dwellings often became dark, dingy

And dirty. People knew how to build fancy big family houses but not many people cared for how people who could not afford them lived. So how do you define a healthy dwelling for every individual, a definition that is not dependent on their economic status?

The answer came With a bit of political motivation behind it. A brand new approach to housing was being studied, and the solution Germany came up with a solution called Existenzminimum. Literally it translates to subsistence dwelling. But what it really meant was a dwelling where

Every user gets a minimum space for all their vital functions and get access to natural resources like water, fresh air and sunlight, and all of these built within the minimum level of income. Btw even though this term originated in Germany,

The philosophy behind it had been in play before this time as well. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, collective housing models such as dom-kommuna were tried out in the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on optimising the domestic space and emphasizing the sense

Of community through a scientific approach towards design. Now the key word here is a scientific approach. For the first time people were thinking to incorporate science and research into determining the best way to house people. And that brings us to the second meeting of

CIAM. Held in Frankfurt in the year 1929, CIAM II had a clear agenda to work on minimum standards for architecture. Now as I told you the organization would work on three different levels, unit level, building level and the city level.

Well at this meeting they mainly focused on the first one, the unit level. For this the Architects who were present in the meeting had been conducting extensive research. This was the first time such a comprehensive study was presented on dwellings. This had

Data from Individual building projects proposed by CIAM members like Wells nCoates’s Isokon Flats in Hampstead, Josep Lluis Sert’s, Casa Bloc in Barcelona, and Sven Markelius’s Collective House in Stockholm. All of these case studies were studied to answer one simple question, how much space

Did people need. Also At the time, mass production was all the rave with the modern architects so they wanted a unit that could be industry produced, easily replicated, fabricated and installed, while maintaining quality standards, and yet provide flexibility in spatial configuration. And when I say they wanted everything mass

Produced, I mean everything from entire structural walls to door handles. So after much deliberation the members of CIAM II created the first comprehensive literature on household standards and created the family housing unit affordable on a minimum wage income. Today whenever we need to design something,

We first take a look at building standards for that particular typology. But before this, such standards did not exist. CIAM II was one of the first to design these standards and adopt them on a big scale. The Existenzminimum may be CIAM’s most significant concept, as this was the bases of everything

That came after. Btw not everyone was on board with these standards and with more time and research a lot of people have criticized the methodologies used and the outputs that were created. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. The unit was just the beginning,

The members of CIAM had much bigger goals in mind. Now after you have defined a dwelling unit, you can then move on to make multiples of those units. This is how buildings and neighbourhoods are created. and that is precisely what CIAM

III focused on. Held in Brussels in Belgium in the year 1930, the agenda for this time was the design of housing settlements composed of the previously defined minimum units. At that time in Europe, the idea of the perimenter block was very popular. What that entailed

Was to have a whole block with buildings along its perimeter and open space in the center. The members of CIAM did not like the perimeter block and they rejected it. Their reasoning was that these did not create equal access to sunlight and good ventilation in every

Unit. So they took another approach. The concepts and philosophies that formed the basis of Existenzminimum, were now being considered from an urban perspective. Just like the dwelling unit, the buildings themselves need to be spaces that have access to fresh air, sunlight

And open and green spaces. The solution they came up with were called Zeilenbau Rows. Zeilenbau Rows were basically rows of housing placed one after another, but adequately spaced to ensure enough lighting and ventilation. These fulfilled all the requirements defined

By the CIAM members and were able to house many more people in given parcel of land. And the members also went a step further do define how a unit will function with these new zelinbau row housing. These were to be organized into walkable ‘neighbourhood units’,

And each unit would have public amenities required by the people within that unit. The main idea was to maximize common amenities in collective housing, which in turn would minimize individual private spaces. So there was widespread agreement, these new Zelenbau rows will become the new standard

For neighbourhood units. However some notable members like Corbusier and Walter Gropius, also had another suggestion. You see around this time High-rise elevator apartment buildings had been constructed in New York since the early 1880s. Auguste Perret and Le Corbusier

In Paris each made design proposals that entire cities could be built in this way. Le Corbusier’s had previously proposed a Contemporary City for Two Million in 1922. Now this is a very famous and complex urban design models, and I will not go into its detail in this video.

But what you can focus on for now are these cruciform towers, there were supposed to be for offices and these surrounding buildings were to housing blocks organized into walkable green superblocks bounded by high-speed traffic routes. At the meeting Walter Gropius and

Le Corbusier both argued that in areas of high land costs, widely spaced housing slabs with elevators were a better housing form than the more economical four story Zeilenbau patterns. Not everyone agreed. There was actually a lot of debate that went on this topic. The

Members who were against it, just didn’t think that high rises would be suitable for workers housing, and also a lot of existing cities would be destroyed by introducing this. In the end the members just couldn’t see eye to eye on high versus low building. But

In any case they had reached a consensus about the Zeilenbau Rows. These will be the new blocks of the city. Speaking of the city, CIAM I to III had laid the perfect ground work for what was to come next, the thing that was the dream of all architects, building

The ideal city. CIAM IV, where this topic was discussed, was the most influential and important of all the CIAMs, the one that laid the foundations of urban design for decades to come. This was the beginning of the greatest achievement

This organization would ever have, but this was also the beginning of the its end. It all started in a ship travelling across the Mediterranean. The year was 1933, this ship was off in the sea, voyaging towards Athens, the birthplace

Of democracy. Aboard this ship were the members of CIAM, discussing the future of architecture. This would become the most important meeting of CIAM and probably the most significant document ever produced by this organization, originated right here. So in this meeting, all the members produced 34 case studies of different cities in the

World. Just as they had done for the dwelling units and building layouts, these elaborate studies enabled the members to have discussions on how cities should be designed. Now the chairman of CIAM at the time was a man named Cornelis van Eesteren. He was a

Prominent Dutch architect and urban planner. He presented his study too which looked to then-new North American industrial cities, which were increasingly being shaped by trucks and automobiles, as a model for what he called “Eine Stunde Städtebau” (One Hour City Building). He argued that the “functional elements”

Of the city, primarily large factories, ports, and collective recreation spaces, could be organized in relation to housing by using the most efficient transportation routes. CIAM based on his approach formulated the “four functions of the city”, these were living, working, recreation and transport. This new city based on these fundamental functions

Was dubbed the Functional city. This divide of four areas, was not just an architectural strategy, but also a social one. You see the existing cities around the world had clusters, rich and poor neighbourhoods, luxurious streets and slums. This new city approach would do

Away with all of that. By grouping the various functions that happen within a city, in these four categories, there would be a reduction in the class divide between the dwellers. The whole report of what it entails and how it was to be adopted was published by Le Corbusier

In a document titled La Charte d’Athenes or the Athens Charter. This detailed piece of writing became the holy grail for urban planners and designers. In the years that followed as the world rebuilt itself after much of the tensions of the 20th

Century, the functionalist city became on of the most popular approach to urban design, and the principles did make those cities better. It tended to improve housing conditions, as workers were often given better multifamily housing environments within larger metropolitan areas. When all three, the unit, the building and the city standards were applied together,

They created city models for the metropolises of the future. Gone were the days of the dark dingy and damp cities of the initial industrial era. This was a new dawn. Cities would now not only be sanitary, they would be filled with happy

People, living their best factory girl era, and singing songs into the sunset. Did I lay the sarcasm on a little too thick? CIAM IV’s legacy was the single most important thing to come out of the whole council, but truth be told it had some deep rooted problems.

While on the surface everything seemed fine, there was something completely different happening in those meetings. And this holy grail for urban planners, was not even voted on by the council members. You see CIAM IV was the significant of all the meetings but it was also the most

Controversial one. To understand what really hapeened on that ship, we need to go back to the very beginning. The fourth CIAM meeting of1933 was originally not to be held on a ship but rather in Moscow. Now its hard to pinpoint why exactly did this change happen but maybe it had something to

Do with The fact that Le Corbusier’s competition entry for the Palace of the Soviets in USSR was rejected. Now ofocurse this reasoning is just speculation but nevertheless, The organizers of the meeting, of which Le Corbusier was a prominent one, very last minute decided

On the ship as the final venue. Also this decision to not have it in Moscow, came with certain consequences, not only did the delegates from the USSR not participate, but any participants that were refugees in the country were also not able to join. This

Gave Le Corbusier and his friends a very dominant position in the fourth meeting. See we might think of the entire Congress as this one big happy family, but it was not, just as it is in the real world, politics and power plays were a big part of this organization.

You remember the Chairman of CIAM, Cornelis van Eesteren, well he only became that because Walter Gropius helped him get there. The reason I am telling you all this, is so you can understand what actually went on behind the scenes. Coming to the meeting itself. Remember The

34 urban analyses, which were prepared by the CIAM members? Well these were intended to provide an initial basis for common discussion and comparative analysis. This meeting was never to find one definite solution, but rather provide the first step towards that direction.

In the whole meeting, the members even though they discussed at length the concepts of a functional city, and how it would work in that era’s context, they never settled on it being a concrete and rigid conclusion. The Athens Charter, that people celebrated

The world over and became a defining text for CIAM, was never voted or debated on by the members. It was independently published by Le Corbusier. And whats even more fascinating is that this charter is actually his interpretation of the meeting, he is the one who laid out

Guidelines that cities should be rigidly divided into 4 distinct functions, he is the one who somehow single-handedly committed CIAM to rigid functional cities, with citizens to be housed in high, widely-spaced apartment blocs. And as you remember even in the last CIAm, the members had not even agreed on high rise buildings.

The simple fact was that the Athens charter was just one man’s interpretation. And moreover, he actually released it almost a decade after the actual meeting. CIAM IV happened in 1933, and the document came out in 1943. A lot of people called The charter, a publicity seeking

Manifesto. And the reason it got famous was because the people with influence in CIAM, promoted it as much as they could, every chance they got. But the fact is that it got very famous and was closely associated with CIAm, and this

Started to create tensions within the congress. This was not the first time LE Corb’s initiatives and his way of doing things had irked the other members, it had been happening since the very first meeting. But this charter was a little too much. Some members started to

Feel that if they had opinions that differed form those in power like Le Corb and Walter Gropius, they were somehow not just being sidelined, but downright ignored. Forget reaching a unanimous final conclusion, the members of CIAM had even started debating

The methodology behind the case studies. As I said, this was one of the most controversial meetings of the organization. Le Corb’s actions, had made people feel that their voices, their opinions and their approaches might never get the attention they deserved, and maybe this was what finally started the end of CIAM.

After CIAM IV, the next meeting, CIAM V happened in Paris in 1937. The members continued their discussion on the design of a city. The main focus in this one was on dwellings and recovery. By this time Corbusier had not published his document. But Even during this meeting it

Was already becoming clear that he was gradually reinterpreting the fourth congress’s conclusions. So people already had a hint of what he was doing. As for the rest of the world it had only started recover from the results of the great depression. The economies around the

World, were rebuilding themselves, but then we all know what happened next. From 1939, the world war 2, put the whole continent into chaos. Now till this time, the philosophies of CIAM had only been adopted in a few projects around

Europe. During and after the war, a number of redevelopment projects sprouted up in the continent. and the 1940s saw a sudden popularity of the Zeilenbau concept. And Ofcourse after Le Corbusier published the Athens charter in 1943, it was a s if the world of Urban

Design suddenly got a new doctrine, atleast it seemed that way to some people. CIAM was celebrated by some, and being resented by others. But because of the war and other political reasons, the members did not all collect agiain for a whole decade.

The next CIAM meeting happened almost 10 years later in 1947 in Bridgwater. And then they kept happening every two years. 1949 in Italy, 1951 in England and 1953 in France. CIAM VII , the one in Italy had a main agenda of even debating how the Athens Charter could be established

In practice. By this time more and more members had started to grow away from what was being officially concluded in these meetings, specially because of the leanings of those in power. Meeting after meeting, there was a rift that just kept increasing. People had already started

To break way from this organization. And guess what, even Le Corbusier left in 1955. I know plot twist, but this was not because he differed with the members ideologically, clearly he was winning on that front. But his objection was to the increasing use of

English during meetings. He wanted continue in his native language, French. Since the memebers did not budge, Corbusier offcially left CIAM in 1955. And since he was one of the power players in the organization, as soon as he left, things started to change.

Obviously the ideas put forth by CIAM were being challeneged not only by people around the world but by the members themselves. This was specially true for the young members. They saw the world different from their aging peers, and so they formed a group inside CIAM

Itself. They named themselves TEAM X. They demanded that CIAM return to using the more traditional urban categories of house, street, district, and city, and at the same time offered a different kind of master planned urbanism. When CIAM IX happened in Yugoslvia

In 1956, the topic of discussion was Habitat. But It was in this meeting, that team X made it clear that they did not stand for the conclusions that were being drawn and solutions that were proposed by CIAM. With rising tensions, ongoing criticisms and the departure of Le Corbusier,

This was the final nail in the coffin. 3 years later, in 1959, one final meeting was called, CIAM X in Netherlands. This meeting was specially called by members of Team X and a total of 43 people attended this meeting. And the agenda was simple, the dissolution

Of CIAM. The vote was taken, and the motion passed. And just like that, almost 3 decades after it was started, this congress of modern architects came to an end. NOW CIAM’s legacy is as contovercial as the organization itself. It did bring changes

To the fields of architecture and Urban Design. From setting minimal standards to adopting a scientific approach to design to even attempting to create a doctrine for urban design, this organization no doubt had noble intensions and it was able to achieve a lot in its short

Run. The history of Architecture has rarely seen such a forward-minded, enthusiastic group of people who came together despite the odds to frame and discuss how architecture is, how it should be. Speacially ralking about the field of Urban Design, the organization did revolautionarize ir. Two cities were actually made on these

Functionalist principles, Chandigarh in India and Brazilia in Brazil. Both have their drawback, but both are celebrated case studies in Urban Design. And lets not forget what this congress really was. They were think tanks and places for exchanging and spreading ideas of the

Modern Movement in archictecture and urban planning. And they did just that, atleast at the beginning. The 1960s saw more of an adoption of these principles worldwide. Also As CIAM members travelled after the war, many of its ideas spread outside Europe, notably to the USA, India and Japan.

One of the reasons CIAM broke apart, was because Moderism itself was now just being taken to new and opposite directs. By the 1950s Modernism had become one of the most popular movements around the world. But people who followed it took such different approaches, often completely

Opposite to each other. And A lot of criticism about CIAM is ofocurse about the whole modernism movement in general. Take for example the Zelennbao rows. To a lot of people these look like the boring, uninspired, factory made architecture we see all around us today with

Just rows of buildings one after another.. As I told you before, yes CIAM had given us new standards, but lets not forget the motivation behind these new standards, politics, capitalism and economics. There projects were funded and approved because the architects promised

The politicians and the government much more housing in the same piece of land. Housing was now a Product and the dweller was not a consumer. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad one, I will leave it upto you. But I will say this, In the following decades,

The minimum dwelling unit—small, cheap, easy to build—became the gold mine of the capitalist housing market. Ofcourse you cant just blame CIAM for what the world ended up doing with its ideas, specially because after the world wars, people continued using Existenzminimum design principles, although without considering its intrinsic initial components, such as

Urban integration or collective living. The complex concept was simplified to a mere reduction of domestic space and to a low-cost-full-speed production. Finally coming to Team X, it did actually go on for quite a few years. In 1960, the

First formal Team 10 meeting was held in Bagnols-sur-ceze. However, Team 10 also dissolved slowly into two movements New Brutalism and Structuralism. While the group lacked the popularity of CIAM, they were well known in the academic world for their published works and their take on

Functionalism. The last formal Team 10 meeting held in Lisbon in the year 1981 and it had just four attendees. Now personally I am not that big a fan of modernism, and specially when it was applied to Urban design, but I think it was na I,mportant

Movement, it grew architects, it raised the professional practice and its tandards and I do think somethime in the future it will come back. All the architectureal styles do. But I don’t know if we might ever have an organization like CIAM again one with that

Kind of an influence, but maybe that s not a bad thing. But I will leave that up to you to decide.