WAI Architecture Think Tank
Les Portes du désert, Collage No. 5 Wall Stalker
The modernist case Ever since modernism (although justified) became infatuated by hyper- hygienic urbanism, dirt has turned into a topic of taboo in the urban sphere. The modernists got rid of dirt from their diagrams, but dirt didn’t disappear from the city. Why then, if the city has proved to be more than the four Le Corbusian values of urbanism ( habiter, travailler, circuler et cultiver le corps et l’esprit ), has dirt remained an elusive topic? Why have the only brushes with the topic of dirt come in very sporadic proposals, such as the diagram by the Team 10 in the fifties ( Bidonville Grid , 1953), or the project by Koolhaas in the seventies ( Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture , 1972)? Why is it easier to flirt with floating cities, and gravity-less architecture, than to face dirt? Has our cleanliness become a Potemkinesque illusion of an unfathomable obsession?
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