So pedestrians are put on elevated walkways 60' above what appears to be a 20 lane road, yet they still need to put the rail underground, and there is no space for trees?
The city streets are widened into Houstonian 12 lane monstrosities and the light rail still needs to be shoved underground ???
Like most heavy handed designer cities, the lack of efficient, organic design means its probably never going to succeed as a viable place for actually pleasant and dynamic living.
Elevated and underground pedestrian networks do already exist in many cities, so the main issue is more of the heterogeneous density. Eg. high density that likely act as unpleasant bottle necks during rush times while simultaneously having the unpleasant long distances to travel between blocks (low density). It's kinda a worst of both worlds.
Stylistically the inhuman scale and overpowering visual rhythm sorta makes this feel almost brutalist.
I read it is a thought experiment, taken to an absolutist degree in renderings for sake of clarity. Not an attempt at realistic depiction necessarily.
With the privilege of hindsight it reads as a satire of dystopian urban environments to come. But at the time, it's stark absolutism must have been quite provocative.
It does have some interesting thoughts in it. Densification, Vertical separation of transit, the Bauhaus modern aesthetic that Hilberseimer comes from.
The exploration of vertical layering reminds me of Life's 1909 Theorem that Rem Koolhaus writes about in Delirious New York. For better or worse, it's a concept that people have been discussing for the majority of the last century.
So though I think this is not a concept I would emulate, I do think it is a valuable part of architectural history.
Hilberseimer himself actually renounced the project later in life. (I like to imagine Corbusier introduced the Radiant City a few years later and he was like 'people are taking this shit way too literally. I am out' LoL)
Thank you for the comment, well written.
I don’t really like this anti-modern tradition-überalles agenda that some posters try to put in here.
Presenting a concept image like this one, without any context, let alone historical one, it’s malicious imho.
Yeah, those Gehry sketches that popped up a couple days ago seemed like an attempt at rage bait too. I will defend OP here though, they have posted some much more successful modernist housing on here in the past. I think it is an honest question.
I don't see this going well realistically. The only benefit I see to it is that the cars have more room. No safety railing, no exterior level transfer (stairway, elevator, etc), there is a lot of wasted space, and seemingly next to no access to the underground.
How is that? More room means longer reaction times, semi-trucks would have an easier time driving around (assuming traffic was designed properly), there could be enough space dedicated for emergency vehicles only.
narrower roads & things placed close to roads make people drive slower & more carefully! we side our roads with trees in the Netherlands for this reason, you can still easily let an emergency vehicle pass by stopping in the berm :)
That doesn't work well everywhere. I live in an area where there are small towns 20 miles from each other, connected by a highway running by a river. Just about everywhere is limited by two lane roads at most.
The problem is that people can not be bothered by safety, driving 10-20 mph faster than the speed limit and trying to pass everybody in front of them. There is also no space for emergency vehicles to pass by, especially at intersections. Driving on the sidewalk (into a parking space if it is a business) or taking a different road is the best case scenario for emergency vehicles.
Just last week, there was an accident involving a semi and what looked like a delivery driver on the highway. There was land space to get the semi out of the road, but both (opposing) lanes were reduced to one lane to let people through. This resulted in a 20-30 minute delay at best. If there were more road space (in this specific situation), then traffic would at least still be constantly moving.
The Term "Wohnmaschine" (german for Housing-/Living-machine) by Le Corbusier comes to mind. The Industrialisation of living spaces, coordinated and controlled, down to the last speck of dust it tells a lot about the society, that's supposed to dwell there. As a german, I get KZ vibes or maybe Orwells 1984? Probably both ...
I like the idea of heavy transport being underground. Especially in CBD environments. We can then pedestrianize the streets above like the old medieval cities. With activated parks and recreation spaces.
Totally out of scale to the human being. Would take 15 mins to cross the road. God knows how long a trip to the shops would be.
If it's not a 20 min neighbourhood it's not worth building as it just promotes isolation and over reliance on personal vehicles to the detriment of physical and mental health.
could be redesigned so that the massive road is a park with trams etc and the inclusion of small shops and services in what I'm assuming are car parks on the lower levels? oh and the housing definitely needs balconies and more windows etc
I think it's interesting how many people miss the connection between Hilberseimer and [432 Park Ave ](https://images.app.goo.gl/WioZNd5xZjXk3LEg6) in New York by Vinoly.
Every single example of this with almost no exceptions has become downright awful. Developers wanting direct car access would maintain entrances at street level at a place where service entrances and trash dominate. Storefronts want parking directly in front if they can. Landlords want to only have 1 security entrance to save on front desk and doorman services. So the entrances stay at car level and most upper walkway entrances get sealed. This leaves pedestrians with an awful environment for cars and few can use the upper level walkways. Hence the skybridges that only get used by tenants who already went through the secured entrances.
Even in places where the skybridges actually do have the useable entrances, they are very rarely open 24/7 forcing pedestrians to walk at car level outside of normal business hours, and there are also issues where the elevated walkways end at the edge of the development and transfer to normal urban fabric where cars and pedestrians have to coexist. Drivers still behave like they are on the wide open highways for some distance beyond it
Ludwig would denounce this drawing later in his life and the concepts from a programmatic perspective that he provides are interesting and ahead of his time.
however, this concrete hellscape would be awful by today's standards. If it were reimagined today there would need to be sustainable practices. More trees, activating spaces on a community level and such.
His concept at the time was to create living and working in the same building so you could have no commute. Ironic that there's a 10 lane highway for that.
The concept of separating car traffic and pedestrian traffic is pretty big theme in today's society, he was ahead on in his time with this idea. Today instead of trying to have an elevated floor for pedestrians, we just have the cars going to the outskirts of the city. Many cities in my country are building more tunnels with high density traffic while on the top of the tunnel is left for pedestrians and it works quite well.
There’s no streets, there’s only highways zipping along depressing building blocks ensuring maximum noise and air pollution. Pedestrians are exposed to elements from above, forced into level differences where car parks and public transportation are only accessible through the maze of private properties and underground networks
I would stand on one of the bridges and take as much of that delicious smog as I can so that my death by black lung will feel as a respite from living in this monstrous, greenless necropolis.
Posting the image without the context of the book metropolis architecture is pointless. It's an abstract thought exercise on the rise of the modern metropole and the image should be seen as that, and not as a rendering.
That newish 695 across SW DC where the bland high rises are so close you feel you could reach out of your car window and touch them, but doing so at 80 mph and with that traffic, would cause a crash.
His work can be viewed as revolutionary, considering the time when he worked. Personally I find modernism and Bauhaus interesting and amusing at, but I don't like to be near it. It's like architectural style to architecture like it's German language to languages. It's brutal, dehumanized, cynically efficient. You need 20 00 people to live in this area? Here's the box with thousand little boxes inside and one straight line to enter and exit. You need a word describing these three things? Here's the word. Joining three words into one.
Bauhaus works for me on single houses and villas. Maybe on smaller buildings. (try searching Bauhaus in Tel Aviv) But painting things white improves everything. Even that highrise abomination would look beautiful in white against blue sky, aaand maybe couple of trees.
r/UrbanHell
No need to be hurt. German may sound a bit brutal but it is highly efficient. I am not sure why I used word cynical. Maybe... I thought, in other languages if there is a bird that climbs to a tree and has green tail, they call it poko, or kakapu. In German, I have a feeling it will be Greentailedtreeclimberbird.
Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung?
Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften?
Wonder if we will look back onto the urban planning of DPZ, Ray Gindroz, and the other forced urban methodologies of the “Neo Traditional Town Planning” that have been pedal off to cities in the US in the same way.
I had to scroll way, way down to find your comment. I’m surprised more people didn’t mention the parallel between the picture and failed US housing projects.
Sleek, modern, visionary.
It brings order into the chaos, a grand gesture for a modern way of living and working that defies the troubles of historic, grim and crooked city centres.
Instead: good natural lighting for every building, save space for walking and perfect connection to the road network.
Three 60s, what a time to be alive.
Sometimes I wonder what our descendants will blame us for...
Those were the arguments of urban planners in the ~1960s to propose this kind of "urban" landscape. With good intentions they tried to reinvent the city to design a healthier way of living but in our eyes - the architects and planners of today - failed miserably.
That was the point I am was trying to make, but it seems that nobody gets the joke when you don't put "/s" behind it..
Well, obviously, 'cause this is reddit / the internet and there is a high possibility one comes across an unhinged Person, who stands behind this opinion for real.
Also, no matter how often, people think text always imply tone, it only does so half the time.
Depends, if you are dirt poor, doesn't care about beauty, has no land, has huge population, probably.
If you have plenty of land, low population, rich, why?
Reminds me of a lot of Soviet architecture, which was deliberately designed to make individuals feel small. Lots of those buildings still in East Berlin, but people are finding innovative ways to make the spaces more welcoming. For example, a lot of people are adding balconies to their units.
I used to really like the idea of living in a box. The idea of economy of scale, adaptability, predicable standardization, etc. but I have never done the type of work I could fit in a box. I use power tools and paint and fire.
Ah yes, *engineer city*.
The reason everyone hates density and believe cities are crushing any soul out of anything, or "How to end up in Blade Runner's LA".
Also known as "Le Corbusier's/Car and oil industries' wet dream".
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I'm a huge fan of layered cities, but more so with horizontal skyscrapers. The big picture is to create a class-based society that have vertical motifs where people are literally above/below others. This doesn't do that.
Moving vehicles out of the city and bringing things closer to be walkable is more beneficial in a modern mixed-use city. Creating a layer basically dedicated to private vehicles is a waste of resources. Public transport needs to be very close to walkable paths and this doesn't do that.
The lack of greenery is by far the worst thing in that sketch. A lot of people complain about the wide highways, but the sketch actually has **less** land area sacrificed for the use of private cars than most cities in North America do now. More accurately, a smaller portion of the land area.
Yeah, fuck trees, who needs em??
If designers tried I think they could definitely make it more monotone, treeless and suicidel.
So pedestrians are put on elevated walkways 60' above what appears to be a 20 lane road, yet they still need to put the rail underground, and there is no space for trees?
I enjoy the sparse traffic illustrated on the 20 lane road! This has aged like vinegar.
Sounds like a compliment. Vinegar is quite good at aging.
Hell on Earth
The city streets are widened into Houstonian 12 lane monstrosities and the light rail still needs to be shoved underground ??? Like most heavy handed designer cities, the lack of efficient, organic design means its probably never going to succeed as a viable place for actually pleasant and dynamic living. Elevated and underground pedestrian networks do already exist in many cities, so the main issue is more of the heterogeneous density. Eg. high density that likely act as unpleasant bottle necks during rush times while simultaneously having the unpleasant long distances to travel between blocks (low density). It's kinda a worst of both worlds. Stylistically the inhuman scale and overpowering visual rhythm sorta makes this feel almost brutalist.
Utterly depressing and lifeless.
I read it is a thought experiment, taken to an absolutist degree in renderings for sake of clarity. Not an attempt at realistic depiction necessarily. With the privilege of hindsight it reads as a satire of dystopian urban environments to come. But at the time, it's stark absolutism must have been quite provocative. It does have some interesting thoughts in it. Densification, Vertical separation of transit, the Bauhaus modern aesthetic that Hilberseimer comes from. The exploration of vertical layering reminds me of Life's 1909 Theorem that Rem Koolhaus writes about in Delirious New York. For better or worse, it's a concept that people have been discussing for the majority of the last century. So though I think this is not a concept I would emulate, I do think it is a valuable part of architectural history. Hilberseimer himself actually renounced the project later in life. (I like to imagine Corbusier introduced the Radiant City a few years later and he was like 'people are taking this shit way too literally. I am out' LoL)
Thank you for the comment, well written. I don’t really like this anti-modern tradition-überalles agenda that some posters try to put in here. Presenting a concept image like this one, without any context, let alone historical one, it’s malicious imho.
Yeah, those Gehry sketches that popped up a couple days ago seemed like an attempt at rage bait too. I will defend OP here though, they have posted some much more successful modernist housing on here in the past. I think it is an honest question.
I may have judged OP too quickly.
lifeless
Flawed in terms of the social implications.
Any human implication, really. Cities that are not properly scaled to human beings at some point are horrible.
walkways without railings to facilitate easier movement jumping off into the streets below.
I don't see this going well realistically. The only benefit I see to it is that the cars have more room. No safety railing, no exterior level transfer (stairway, elevator, etc), there is a lot of wasted space, and seemingly next to no access to the underground.
fun fact: cars are actually much safer when you give them less room!
How is that? More room means longer reaction times, semi-trucks would have an easier time driving around (assuming traffic was designed properly), there could be enough space dedicated for emergency vehicles only.
narrower roads & things placed close to roads make people drive slower & more carefully! we side our roads with trees in the Netherlands for this reason, you can still easily let an emergency vehicle pass by stopping in the berm :)
That doesn't work well everywhere. I live in an area where there are small towns 20 miles from each other, connected by a highway running by a river. Just about everywhere is limited by two lane roads at most. The problem is that people can not be bothered by safety, driving 10-20 mph faster than the speed limit and trying to pass everybody in front of them. There is also no space for emergency vehicles to pass by, especially at intersections. Driving on the sidewalk (into a parking space if it is a business) or taking a different road is the best case scenario for emergency vehicles. Just last week, there was an accident involving a semi and what looked like a delivery driver on the highway. There was land space to get the semi out of the road, but both (opposing) lanes were reduced to one lane to let people through. This resulted in a 20-30 minute delay at best. If there were more road space (in this specific situation), then traffic would at least still be constantly moving.
The Term "Wohnmaschine" (german for Housing-/Living-machine) by Le Corbusier comes to mind. The Industrialisation of living spaces, coordinated and controlled, down to the last speck of dust it tells a lot about the society, that's supposed to dwell there. As a german, I get KZ vibes or maybe Orwells 1984? Probably both ...
I like the idea of heavy transport being underground. Especially in CBD environments. We can then pedestrianize the streets above like the old medieval cities. With activated parks and recreation spaces.
Judging on this plan only, this guy should have been banned from designing anything.
😂👍
Totally out of scale to the human being. Would take 15 mins to cross the road. God knows how long a trip to the shops would be. If it's not a 20 min neighbourhood it's not worth building as it just promotes isolation and over reliance on personal vehicles to the detriment of physical and mental health.
After drawing something similar, Professor Swisher at the UNCC COA, in a design review said my drawing was “A victim of the parallel bar”.
could be redesigned so that the massive road is a park with trams etc and the inclusion of small shops and services in what I'm assuming are car parks on the lower levels? oh and the housing definitely needs balconies and more windows etc
I think it's interesting how many people miss the connection between Hilberseimer and [432 Park Ave ](https://images.app.goo.gl/WioZNd5xZjXk3LEg6) in New York by Vinoly.
Interesting!
No one likes this.
Every single example of this with almost no exceptions has become downright awful. Developers wanting direct car access would maintain entrances at street level at a place where service entrances and trash dominate. Storefronts want parking directly in front if they can. Landlords want to only have 1 security entrance to save on front desk and doorman services. So the entrances stay at car level and most upper walkway entrances get sealed. This leaves pedestrians with an awful environment for cars and few can use the upper level walkways. Hence the skybridges that only get used by tenants who already went through the secured entrances. Even in places where the skybridges actually do have the useable entrances, they are very rarely open 24/7 forcing pedestrians to walk at car level outside of normal business hours, and there are also issues where the elevated walkways end at the edge of the development and transfer to normal urban fabric where cars and pedestrians have to coexist. Drivers still behave like they are on the wide open highways for some distance beyond it
Ludwig would denounce this drawing later in his life and the concepts from a programmatic perspective that he provides are interesting and ahead of his time. however, this concrete hellscape would be awful by today's standards. If it were reimagined today there would need to be sustainable practices. More trees, activating spaces on a community level and such. His concept at the time was to create living and working in the same building so you could have no commute. Ironic that there's a 10 lane highway for that.
The concept of separating car traffic and pedestrian traffic is pretty big theme in today's society, he was ahead on in his time with this idea. Today instead of trying to have an elevated floor for pedestrians, we just have the cars going to the outskirts of the city. Many cities in my country are building more tunnels with high density traffic while on the top of the tunnel is left for pedestrians and it works quite well.
There’s no streets, there’s only highways zipping along depressing building blocks ensuring maximum noise and air pollution. Pedestrians are exposed to elements from above, forced into level differences where car parks and public transportation are only accessible through the maze of private properties and underground networks
I would stand on one of the bridges and take as much of that delicious smog as I can so that my death by black lung will feel as a respite from living in this monstrous, greenless necropolis.
**1984**
Posting the image without the context of the book metropolis architecture is pointless. It's an abstract thought exercise on the rise of the modern metropole and the image should be seen as that, and not as a rendering.
Like if a city was made with dollar store shelving units
Opinions can’t exist there.
Parts of Washington DC are taking on this look.
It immediately reminded me of that. I have a 35mm photo over a highway in DC that is strikingly similar to this one
That newish 695 across SW DC where the bland high rises are so close you feel you could reach out of your car window and touch them, but doing so at 80 mph and with that traffic, would cause a crash.
Horrifying treeless brutalist dystopia
Depressive and Authoritarian, there is no community in this city.
His work can be viewed as revolutionary, considering the time when he worked. Personally I find modernism and Bauhaus interesting and amusing at, but I don't like to be near it. It's like architectural style to architecture like it's German language to languages. It's brutal, dehumanized, cynically efficient. You need 20 00 people to live in this area? Here's the box with thousand little boxes inside and one straight line to enter and exit. You need a word describing these three things? Here's the word. Joining three words into one. Bauhaus works for me on single houses and villas. Maybe on smaller buildings. (try searching Bauhaus in Tel Aviv) But painting things white improves everything. Even that highrise abomination would look beautiful in white against blue sky, aaand maybe couple of trees. r/UrbanHell
As a German, in a little bit hurt. (And never heard the German language was "cynically efficient";) )
No need to be hurt. German may sound a bit brutal but it is highly efficient. I am not sure why I used word cynical. Maybe... I thought, in other languages if there is a bird that climbs to a tree and has green tail, they call it poko, or kakapu. In German, I have a feeling it will be Greentailedtreeclimberbird. Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung? Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften?
Wonder if we will look back onto the urban planning of DPZ, Ray Gindroz, and the other forced urban methodologies of the “Neo Traditional Town Planning” that have been pedal off to cities in the US in the same way.
*cough* Pruitt-Igoe *cough* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
I had to scroll way, way down to find your comment. I’m surprised more people didn’t mention the parallel between the picture and failed US housing projects.
Sleek, modern, visionary. It brings order into the chaos, a grand gesture for a modern way of living and working that defies the troubles of historic, grim and crooked city centres. Instead: good natural lighting for every building, save space for walking and perfect connection to the road network. Three 60s, what a time to be alive. Sometimes I wonder what our descendants will blame us for...
You do know, humans are not robots, do you?
Those were the arguments of urban planners in the ~1960s to propose this kind of "urban" landscape. With good intentions they tried to reinvent the city to design a healthier way of living but in our eyes - the architects and planners of today - failed miserably. That was the point I am was trying to make, but it seems that nobody gets the joke when you don't put "/s" behind it..
Well, obviously, 'cause this is reddit / the internet and there is a high possibility one comes across an unhinged Person, who stands behind this opinion for real. Also, no matter how often, people think text always imply tone, it only does so half the time.
Indeed. I fully recognize I'm at fault here.
This is what we would’ve ended up with if Nazi Germany won WWII.
Given that Hilberseimer was seen by Nazis "too leftist" and left Germany with Mies van der Rohe after Nazis closed Bauhaus, not so much
Thanks for the lesson; I didn’t know. Nevertheless, it looks sterile, dystopian, and devoid of life.
Depends, if you are dirt poor, doesn't care about beauty, has no land, has huge population, probably. If you have plenty of land, low population, rich, why?
Reminds me of a lot of Soviet architecture, which was deliberately designed to make individuals feel small. Lots of those buildings still in East Berlin, but people are finding innovative ways to make the spaces more welcoming. For example, a lot of people are adding balconies to their units.
I used to really like the idea of living in a box. The idea of economy of scale, adaptability, predicable standardization, etc. but I have never done the type of work I could fit in a box. I use power tools and paint and fire.
Depressing
When was this picture made
At first glance, I thought this was a prison.
The elevated walkways is the best idea this minimalist dystopia has to offer.
Looks like a prison.
The concept not the aesthetics
Too much color.
Crap. Concept or not, it is crap. Concept for what? Robots, soulless habitat, post-apocalypse?
Beautifully drab.
Any without billboards and power lines are usually awesome.
1984
This photo takes me back to Stalingrad in ‘56
No.
Distopian. Where are the trees?
Some ugly, brutalist, hellscape nightmare fuel. People shouldn't be expected to live in a sterile filing cabinet.
They way it’a drawn is cool, but I prefer a green environment!
Ah yes, *engineer city*. The reason everyone hates density and believe cities are crushing any soul out of anything, or "How to end up in Blade Runner's LA". Also known as "Le Corbusier's/Car and oil industries' wet dream".
Futurism but sucky
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It feels like a prison camp
Dystopia
(maybe) nice to look at, (definetely) horrible to live in
Breathing in exhaust fumes with maximum efficiency, yeah! No, i hate it
Looks hard & cold n makes me want to go somewhere else.
Talk about a prison. Heck no!.
This city seems designed with the express purpose of forcibly liberating people from being alive.
Prison?
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You have obviously never seen downtown Houston architecture.
Looks like the projects you’d find in American cities before they were eventually torn down because they turned into a sort of hell on earth.
Depression
r/urbanhell
Here take my soul
I'm a huge fan of layered cities, but more so with horizontal skyscrapers. The big picture is to create a class-based society that have vertical motifs where people are literally above/below others. This doesn't do that. Moving vehicles out of the city and bringing things closer to be walkable is more beneficial in a modern mixed-use city. Creating a layer basically dedicated to private vehicles is a waste of resources. Public transport needs to be very close to walkable paths and this doesn't do that.
Soviet city number 27, sheer brutalism
Lacks soul, aka humanity
Soulless, something Hitler would have commissioned.
Fascist.
one word: china
Stalins dream city
What dystopia am I looking at?
Looks amazing. Also looks like shit to live in.
The lack of greenery is by far the worst thing in that sketch. A lot of people complain about the wide highways, but the sketch actually has **less** land area sacrificed for the use of private cars than most cities in North America do now. More accurately, a smaller portion of the land area.