Their project for PREVI reflects the belief that non-hierarchical, non-dogmatic and infinite structures can form ideal living environments. Their organic continuous carpet of houses has no clear beginning, middle or end. It is organised in such a way that the houses face each other across small private open squares. The structure is repetitive but at the same time it is rich enough to provide diversity and a sense of belonging. The realisation of the houses in PREVI was divided into two phases. First, a prefabricated concrete structure was built to provide a base for the second stage. Then the inhabitants could change or enlarge the second stage themselves using lightweight elements (lighter than concrete) to adjust the dwellings to their own liking. Even though this system seems fairly simple, the devil lies in the details. The architects paid attention to how acoustics, ventilation and storage were woven into the design. They aimed to provide the best design quality and comfort of living that they could without controlling the final result of the design process – this, the tenants would realise themselves. For instance, quiet areas were placed in the centre of the house where the most private spaces were designed and further away from semi-public spaces. The concrete structure provided integrated storage spaces but even more importantly it incorporated a smart system of air cooling and ventilation. The basic concept of Hansen’s plan for PREVI is very similar to the recent work of Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental in Chile, yet PREVI was realised 32 years earlier and has since fallen out of sight.
Hansen spent his most fruitful professional years in the difficult reality of communist Poland of 1950s and 1960’s, playing an important role in the formation of the Polish intellectual elite in the fields of visual arts and architecture. Hansen was one of the very few architects practicing in the Eastern Bloc who took part in CIAM and Team X congresses. 2 He was a dedicated teacher at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1983, and realised a number of built projects that explored the possibilities of creating an architecture of ‘open form’. In the 1950s, exhibition pavilions representing Poland at international fairs became his testing ground for the slowly forming concept of the ‘open form’: Stockholm in 1953, Izmir in 1955 and in São Paulo in 1959. Through his early realisations and teaching experiments Hansen developed a number of theoretical ideas that described the relationship between the built environment, human activity and nature which he formulated in his ‘Open Form Manifesto’ in 1959, arguing for ‘spatial forms which were incomplete; forms which by their incompleteness required the creativity or participation of viewers or users.’ 3 This vision might have been utopian, but architecture as an adaptive evolving environment, respectful of nature, where human needs and values are central and form fades into the background to serve the user and to frame human activity, does not seem too far-fetched. * Open form was strongly related to the idea of adaptation and engagement, what today might be called participatory design. But it also related to the fact that needs and social and economic conditions can change and that architecture must provide people with the possibility to adapt to such change. For Hansen this was a way to rethink all scales of human built environment ranging from from furniture and sculptural objects to large scale urban planning and futuristic visions. Besides his theoretical and didactic projects he had a chance to build a few housing estates among which was his probably greatest built realisation – his contribution to the experimental social housing project PREVI in Lima, Peru, realised with Svein Hatløy.
2 Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel, editors. Team 10 1953-81. Rotterdam: NAI, 2005 3 David Crowley, ‘Paris or Moscow? Warsaw Architects and the Image of the Modern City in the 1950s’. faktografia.com/2012/12/28/ paris-or-moscow-warsaw-architects-and-the-image- of-the-modern-city-in-the-1950s/, Accessed on July 30, 2014
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Proposal for experimental social housing project PREVI in Lima, by Oskar Hansen and Svein Hatløy, 1969
Image courtesy of Igor Hansen (from the archive of Oskar Hansen)
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