COMMUNAL HOUSING (as a tool)

COMMUNAL HOUSING

By Richard Hagg & Roel van der Zeeuw

For many people the word "communal housing" will spark a utopian or social connotation; living together to improve everybody's living condition. And while it indeed seems an advantage for all the inhabitants, one might ask oneself whose utopia it actually is that has been created? Is it indeed the inhabitants who benefit the most of living together? Or might it be the developer, the state or even the architect of the building who is getting his way? Could one even go so far as saying that more often than not it is at least not the inhabitants' utopia?

In this essay we will look at a few historical examples of communal housing projects. Per example we will try to distil the ideologies that were the incentives behind the project. Not only what the objective was that the housing was supposed to establish but, more importantly, whose it was. Not only built examples will be inspected, but also some better known theoretical or fictional works will be studied. Following we will look more in detail at two well known built communal houses: the Narkomfin in Moscow by Mosei Ginzburg from 1927 and the Unité d’Habitation from 1952 by Le Corbusier.

Although these two projects are often mentioned together, they actually have, besides their apparent aesthetic similarities, little resemblances. The incentives behind them differ tremendously from political and social standpoints. After naming these ideologies we will look more closely at what architectural elements were used in the buildings to instil this ideology on their inhabitants. Often seemingly similar architectural elements are used for differing ends.

ORIGINS OF COMMUNAL HOUSING

When we trace back the origin of communal housing, different starting points can be defined. In the following we will describe different historical forms of communal housing from different eras in different shapes, from theory to realized building.

Plato mentions communal housing, in his book(s) ‘The Republic’, as early as the fourth century B.C. He writes a discussion between Socrates, a fictional character, and other philosophers about justice. According to Socrates human beings cannot be self-sufficient, therefore he describes the formation of a social state, with a Philosopher King as ruler, as a requirement for the existence of justice. Besides, each person has a natural aptitude for a specified task and should therefore concentrate on developing it. This can only be done within a society in which everybody has its own.[1] Socrates also mentions that there must be rules if humans are to coincide in this state and that the Philosopher Kings are the ones that determine and execute these rules. To ensure that the public remains their focal interest, even the Rulers live in community housing, with their wives and children and do not own private property.[2]

Almost nine centuries later, in 1516, Thomas More describes the imaginary island nation of Utopia, in the homonymous novel. A name derived from the Greek words, eu-topos - good place - and ou-topos - no place. This island is intended as the illusive solution for all social problems of sixteenth century England. In Utopia, there was to be no private property; everything is owned by everyone, so there is no need for anyone to want more than another person. As in Plato’s Republic, all work together to supply ample provisions for the whole community[3] in which, as More describes, there will be ‘no household or farm (…) with fewer than forty persons, men and women…’[4].

Continuing to think on communal life is Charles Fourier, who from 1832 on publishes his thoughts on a self-contained community in the journal ‘La Phalanstère’ and in several books. In ‘Social Destiny of man’, he also puts forward a new socialist system of cooperation. These groups would also be living together in an arrangement that was fundamentally different then contemporary because he believed the existing house to be a place of exile and oppressive towards women. His believes toward gender roles were that progress could only occur by shaping them within a community. Therefore dwelling communities of 1600 people were to be built in which people work together for mutual benefit.[5] These Phalanstères, as they were named, were built as tripartite. The first built and most successful ‘social utopia’[6], the Familistère, was based on this tripartite model of Fourier. It was built in Guise in 1859 by the French industrialist Jean-Baptiste André Godin and gave shelter to himself and his workers. There were more social housing projects to be built by companies. A task that was later to be taken over by governments. These subsidized the rent of building, so that low-income families would be able to dwell them.

In the beginning of the 20th century Russia, after the death of Lenin and during Stalin's early reign, another concept of communal housing was introduced. The OSA (organization of modern architects) was a constructivist organization that strived for better housing conditions for the workers in Russia. Ginzburg was one of its leading members and theorists. He designed the Narkomfin in 1928, a communal housing project for the Department of Finance. The Narkomfin, and other designs, were to act as social condensers. They were intended to gradually introduce communal housing to the bourgeoisie. The dwellings therefore, were basic but sufficient. The design of the Narkomfin also contained a common dining room and, adjacent to the main building, laundry facilities and a child day-care centre.

Another communal dwelling building in the 20^th century, in the years of rebuilding after the Second World War, is the Unite d’Habitation, also known as Cite Radieuse in Marseille. This communal housing project was a single apartment block for 1600 people, an identical amount to Fourier's Phalanstère. The concrete building of twelve stories was elevated on Pilotis (columns) to separate it from the city. The fifth floor contained the shopping 'street' and the accessible roof housed a child day-care centre and a running track. Seemingly similar to the Narkomfin, the Unite d’Habitation was designed and constructed for very different reasons. These differences will be made clear by first explaining the underlaying ideologies, within the same historical context as used before, and case-studies of the two buildings.

IDEOLOGIES BEHIND THE PROJECTS

While seemingly many of the aforementioned projects and theories build forward on the same thoughts their ideologies differ. Many people, as we have said in the introduction, associate communal housing with a utopian ideology or with social housing. Communal housing is a term with much broader variations though and could even originate from the exact opposite ideologies. In this part we will look at the before mentioned examples and will distil the incentives behind the projects, while also naming whose incentive it was in the first place.

Plato’s society was based on communal living with a Philosopher King as ruler. This was meant as a prerequisite for the existence of justice. The mere fact that he envisaged a Philosopher as head shows there where incentives other than the existence of justice alone behind the project. He believed that only a king that would be at once philosopher (coincidence?) would be able to rule such a society.

On Thomas More's island Utopia almost complete religious toleration is practiced and private property did not exist. It therefore seems a social utopia and especially the abandonment of private property could be read as the forerunner of Marx' communism. In his book though More stresses the need for order and discipline more than liberty as the aim of this society. From our standpoint looking back it can even be described more as a totalitarian state, than as one providing social liberty. Hence it was More's utopia of order instead of the inhabitants’ utopia of freedom.

The Phalanstère as described by Fourier stresses also a utopian community, while he believed the house to be a place of exile. It could be called social as Fourier breaks up the individual families in favour of larger living arrangements. His community also explicitly took into account women's emancipation; feminism was a different aim of these accommodations. It had a double agenda though. As the industrial revolution was developing in France at that time it sparked amongst politicians, writers and journalist a dystopian vocabulary when referring to the result of industrialization on cities. Cities and industry, but also capitalism as a whole, was seen as humiliating and inhuman. At the same time many authors, as Fourier, developed a utopian vision on agrarian communities, with community life and perfect, spontaneous, social control. However these anti-urban, romanticized visions of communal life were, due to the speed with which the industrial cities - especially in scale - developed, already outdated before they could be realized. Fourier's incentive behind his communal housing therefore was not only that of breaking up family life and encouraging feminism, but also his personal vision as anti-urban, anti-industrial and anti-capitalism.

Communal housing can also be provided by companies for its workers or by the government for the lower classes. The Familistère by Godin could be seen as the first example of this. This seems, on first sight, a social thing to do. From a different perspective it could be read though as the opposite. We will show this by referring, although this originated later, to Fordism.

“Fordism is the economic philosophy that widespread prosperity and high corporate profits can be achieved by high wages that allow the workers to purchase the output they produce, such as automobiles.” Henry Ford introduced this with the 5$/8h workday. The working hours per day declined to 8 hours, for which workers were paid 5 dollars, which for that time was a fairly good amount of money. It could be seen as the support of his workers by Ford, but had a different incentive. By reducing the workday to 8 hours, the workers got spare time. With the money they made, they could use this time to consume, preferably American products. The intervention therefore was to boost the economy, raise the overall prosperity and creating a bigger market for their own products. Fordism needs a bigger social and political framework though to exercise enough power on the economy. Therefore the political system supported and fostered mass production and mass consumption; distributing wealth to boost consumption by the lower classes.

Creating communal housing can be seen from the same perspective. By providing shelter for their workers, different advancements are created for the companies. First they make the worker more dependable on the company, since his own house is at stake. Also the workers are better rested when better housed and therefore their work ethics improves as well. Thirdly, by providing cheaper housing, more money is available to consume on other products again driving the economy up. Within the political framework the governments took over housing from the companies. The incentives – which were never social – did not change though. They were meant to boost consumption, thereby the economy, thereby the profit of their own companies.

The Narkomfin originated from the OSA and Lenin’s five-year plan. The inhabitants of this communal housing project were to use communal the functions that were gradually taken out of the apartments. The incentive for this was to instil a communist byt on the inhabitants. This was the aim of the government. We will go further into detail on this and the architectural methods used in the following. But already we can conclude that again communal housing was not created as a utopia for the inhabitants, but as a utopia of the government by instilling their philosophy of social life upon its civilians.

The Unite d’Habitation was developed as part of the rebuilding of France after the Second World War and was to accommodate many people whose homes were devastated. Its conception is from that viewpoint quite a pragmatic one. Le Corbusier, its architect, however, took this practical opportunity to enforce his own ideas about communal housing upon the future inhabitants. During the war Le Corbusier, who at that time of course had little contracts, used this period to develop - with the influence of CIAM - his personal views on housing and on the city. As with the Narkomfin we will go further into detail in the following.

CASE-STUDY NARKOMFIN AND UNITÉ

In this chapter we will scrutinize the Narkomfin by Ginzburg and the Unite d’Habitation by Le Corbusier in more detail. We will write about how the architectural elements within both buildings represent their ideologies. Because these are most clear within the original designs - before constructional, political and economical constraints forced to alter some of these - we will look at the preliminary designs of the buildings.

NARKOMFIN

A building as a social condenser

After the Russian Revolution in 1905, the ruling of the Tsar (Nicolas II) was diminishing rapidly. When in 1917 peasants, workers and even soldiers came to an uprise during the October Revolution, led by Lenin, the monarchy was overthrown and the Provisional Government was appointed. After years of power struggle the Soviet Union was born, with Socialist Lenin as its first de facto leader. Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin became the dictator of the Soviet Union. Lenin strived for his own Marxist-Socialism, Leninism. His goals were growth of the national production/economy, common land-property and giving political power to the workers through local councils. Stalin introduced a command economy and rapidly industrialized and collectivized Russia.

The OSA (organization of modern architects) was caught in a period of the socialist legacy of Lenin and the industrialization of reigning Stalin. Their main goal was to provide workingman with better housing conditions and restructuring of the city, mainly because of the change from an agricultural to an industrial economy. [7]

The Narkomfin by Ginzburg is one of the finest examples of how the socialist ideas of Lenin and the industrialization of Stalin were together translated into a building design. Ginzburg tried to create a building as a ‘social condenser’. A building that not only changes the way the inhabitants live but also takes the economical changes into account. It was meant to compel the inhabitants to give up their petit-bourgeois lifestyle in favour of a more social byt, by taking away functions that normally belong to the family and making them social activities (cooking, taking care of the children, working out, laundry et cetera). The intension to change the way of living was one of the state and not of the people. The fact that it was meant for the employees of a ministry, and was obligatory, makes it abundantly clear that it wasn’t the people’s choice to live in the Narkomfin. Although the design forced people to live in a certain manner, it was designed, in some ways, to create a ‘utopian’ community for the people. The Narkomfin building is more or less disconnected from the city of Moscow; it is placed within a city garden, inspired by ‘The garden of Eden’, and was originally placed on Pilotis. It stands independent, but it didn’t dominate its surroundings; it floats like a ‘ship in a green sea of nature’ [8] Ginzburg wanted to create a friendly and social commune and by this means restructure the city. It can be argued that this wasn’t consisted with the overcrowded socialist city of the ‘20, but it definitely was coherent with the social ideology.

The original design for the Narkomfin included, besides the main apartment building, an adjacent building for cooking, dining and meeting, connected through the hallways. Although the dwelling still had a small kitchen, it was intended to remove them completely in the future. This would be the next step towards communal behaviour. Also the other two buildings in the garden, a child day-care centre and a facility building (laundry), are derived from the same ideology: to force the inhabitants to give up their individual freedom and in favour of a state policy, and to make way for communism.

The communal space continues into the hallways. The hallways do not only lead to the dwelling units, but connects the inhabitants with social life. They’re designed in such a manner that it can contain social activities itself; they are located directly behind the open façade which lets in light and they’re wide enough for three individuals to exercise alongside of each other. The adjacent dwelling units are the private domain of the inhabitants. In the ideology of the OSA, the ultimate communist unit consisted of a bedroom and a study room, respectively procreation and resting and personal development. All other activities were to be done within the community. The design of Narkomfin though contained several units-types. They do have a kitchen, bathroom and dining room, for they’re to act as a gradual transition to communal living. As a result of this transitional character all these facilities were small and no more than sufficient. The units didn’t gradually introduce the inhabitants to a communal way of living but rather forced them to live in a limited space. Instead of providing for a social structure, the structure of life is dictated by a state of power.

UNITE D’HABITATION

A building as an ocean-going liner

In August 1945 Le Corbusier received the commission for the Unite d’Habitation from Raoul Dautry, France’s first post-war Minister of Reconstruction and Urbanism. A commission actually granted to steer Le Corbusier away from other, larger, rebuilding plans. It was not until September 1947, two years and four different sites later, that building began on a site west of Boulevard Michelet. A site which at that time was still a rough terrain populated by cypresses and olive trees.

Le Corbusier developed his ideas on communal dwellings during wartime. Spring 1941 he was already appointed to head a committee in Vichy charged with preparing a plan for revitalizing the French Housing industry. But after many obstructions from more conservative planners and architects he was dismissed in July. While no other commissions followed and frustrated by the previous event, he started to develop ideas on reconstruction on his own. In July 1942 he set about his own research group: ASCORAL, which besides urbanism also dealt with a wide range of other concerns and was joined by many former CIAM members.

The design for the Unite d’Habitation can be seen as the result of Le Corbusier’s experiments in housing prototypes during the 1920s, the findings of ASCORAL concerning collective housing and his own long oeuvre. But he also drew a lot of inspiration from the Narkomfin. One the main concept in the work of Le Corbusier was “standardization applied to mass production” to provide dwellings that “can be standardized to meet the needs of men whose lives are standardized”.[9]

From the early 1920s on, Le Corbusier investigated in collectivizing individual dwellings into high-rise, well-serviced apartment blocks. He knew that the bourgeois family household with servants would soon become obsolete and therefore intended these households to be remade and located within a collective mechanism that would allow it to be systematized and sustained. He envisaged large collectivized apartments with added communal functions in the manner of a grand hotel or ocean-liner. Initially he even thought of adding a crew of servants in these buildings to replace the private servant, but later he began shifting his attention from these middle class proposals to more austere dwelling types.

Though the design shows similarities to the Narkomfin and might indeed share some ideologies, it has in no way the same communist ideologies behind it. Unlike the Narkomfin, which was to break up the single-family dwelling, Le Corbusier just remade it. Other than taking former individual functions out of the dwellings and making these communal, Le Corbusier sustained all the functions within each dwelling and added communal functions. The individuality of each dwelling also shows in the ‘bottle-and-the-wine-bin’ principle he used for the structure of the building and is even carried through in the construction itself. Le Corbusier compared the individual dwelling with a bottle. He saw the bottle and dwelling as containers, while as the bottle can contain different drinks the dwelling - as container - can contain different families. These ‘bottles’ can be placed everywhere, but in this case they are placed in a wine-bin which is the structure of the Unite. This allegory clearly shows the individuality of the dwellings, which is also adopted in the construction: each dwelling is made with a sub-frame of steel joists (the bottles) resting on lead pads within an armature of reinforced concrete (the wine-bin).[10]

Unlike the Narkomfin, where the kitchen was eventually to be removed from each apartment, in the dwellings of the Unité they form the symbolic ‘hearth’ in the plan. The living room of each apartment, bathing in light through the double height, was meant as the main location of family life. Though the apartments are narrow and long, they are very bright especially in contrast with the dark, dismal hallways. This shows the architects incentive of encouraging people to go into their apartments instead of using the hallway as in the Narkomfin. There the hallway is the connection to communal life, in the Unité the hallway is more a passage towards individuality.

While the floors in the Narkomfin were contrived as floating platforms surrounded by green, the Unité closes the apartments more by use of closed banisters and brise-soleil, intended to block the view towards the city while still opening the views on the ocean and surrounding mountains. Here the anti-urban ideology of Le Corbusier becomes clear. This is also the reason for the use of the rooftop as a playground and workout space, as people do not need to enter the city for these activities. Le Corbusier never intended though for them to fully replace the stores and public places outside of the Unité. He only wanted to supply the first needs.

From experience Le Corbusier knew that not everybody would be ready to live in his dwellings. Hence he requested to “get ready a social group which is fit to live in the Unite d’Habitation.”[11] This sentence shows at once the incentives behind the project. It was the inhabitants who needed to be ready for Le Corbusier; for his ideas on communal housing; for his ideas on the individual dwelling; for his anti-urban ideas; for his utopia.

CONCLUSION

The main question raised in the introduction asked what the incentives are behind communal housing projects. Could we even speak of the same incentives as the starting point of every communal housing project? For many this type of housing seems to be the reification of the social way of life; living together to improve everybody’s living condition. Then one is tempted to say that it is the inhabitants who are the benefiting subject. Indeed this seems like a logical conclusion; why else would they live there? Or it must be that they have no other choice. Who are it then that are creating their utopia though these projects?

To find out, we looked at some historical examples. First describing what they were about, after which we distilled the possible answers to the aforementioned questions. These answers told us a different story than ones first assumption might tell. In none of the cases it was actually the inhabitants who were getting their way. With this we are not suggesting the opposite; that the inhabitants were the victims in each project. We do not even exclude the possibility that they might have lived in comfort. But we are just pointing to the fact that their comfort was not the main focus of each project.

In More’s theoretical project for example it was his fetishism for order and discipline that was being pleased through the creation of a social utopian island. In the social housing provided by companies for their workers we could see that it served their own interest of income and the increase of overall consumption and not so much the well being of the inhabitants. The Unité d’Habitation primarily satisfied Le Corbusier’s own authoritarian vision on architecture and the communal house.

Scrutinizing the Unité also made clear other incentives and thoughts about communal life and dwellings in general that Le Corbusier developed throughout his oeuvre. The building shows on the aesthetical surface many similarities with the Narkomfin, while on the deeper level of incentives but a few. It did not advocate a political, socio-economic structure like the latter supposed to and it did not take the communal areas as the hearth of the building, but the individual dwellings.

In this essay we have shown that not every communal housing project is about the comfort of the inhabitants. Our examples even showed none in which this was the case. We do not suggest here that these housing projects are never built for the well being of the inhabitants, nor, as we have said before, that these two incentives cannot coexist. Merely we wanted to smash the opposite, more obvious assumption, that the communal housing is about the communal dwellers.