marcus miller
e nter Habitat’67 with its extremely earth-bound program. An alterna- tive to both the claustrophobia and monotony of the high-rise apart- ment blocks and low-density, single-dwelling sprawl, Habitat deployed new industrial techniques to produce high-density, humane housing for ‘the masses’. A closed system of heavy, standardised, load-bearing units were prefabricated from concrete and assembled on site like building blocks. The result is an airy conglomeration of cubic clusters that could be infinitely expanded. Each unit has its own garden and in spite of the density, enjoys a high degree of privacy. Where the geodesic dome’s open-system of small, off-the-shelf modular components would make it relatively easy to fabricate in a wide variety of circumstances, Safdie’s closed-system modules required large-scale and highly specialized facilities. This did not allow for the production of smaller projects since the cost per unit would carry too high a proportion of the tooling costs, and be prohibitive 12 . Ironically, Safdie’s heavy, closed-system modules allowed for a more open, mutable and anarchistic structure, while Fuller’s open-system of geodesic components produced forms that were far more limited, and not nearly as amenable to modification. The audacity of Modernists like Fuller and Safdie to trash the past and start fresh seems almost immoral today. On the other hand, Expo’67, the American Pavilion, and Habitat’67 are striking emblems of a license to speculate that ever since seems to have withered and become increasingly irrelevant. Here is a speculation — what if the two architects had pooled their resources and collaborated? Even as is, Habitat already makes more sense as an interior structure to the geodesic dome than the original structure, because it is modular. Consider the possibilities for Habitat if it were built in a super-strong, climate-controlled environment. In the best-case scenario, Safdie might have been encouraged to adopt an open-system of construction and a structure more integrated with that of the dome. His heavy, load- bearing units might have given way to suspended components, and helped to articulate a more dynamic relationship to the exterior dome. On the other hand, Safdie’s attention to the challenges and details of everyday life might have given Fuller the practical social (and formal) content his project lacked.
llustrations in Moshe Safdie, Beyond Habitat, (photos appearing in this book: Jerry Spearman of Media Extensions, N.Y.C.,The Montreal Star – Canada Wide, Keith Oliver, Kero, Official Expo Photogra - phers, Moshe Safdie),The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1973, p. 23.
12 After several public-financing schemes fell through, the Expo Cor- poration itself took on the production costs of Habitat, and was forced to reduce the scheme to about 10% of its original 1300 units (the mini- mum size, according to Safdie, for a viable, self-contained community).The result was that the cost-per-unit was so high that future, potential develop- ers stayed away in droves. In a sense, Expo’67 killed Habitat.
After traveling more than 3600 km to visit the world’s fair in 1967, Marcus Miller missed both the American Pavilion and Habitat ’67.
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