"Tower in the Park" Originated in the Ivory Tower

How much can architecture dictate the culture of a place? The whole idea behind the "Tower in the Park" model that Pruitt-Igoe followed originated from French architects and city planners in the 1920's who envisioned a "radiant city" that would reunite humans with a well ordered environment. The very placement of buildings was supposed to dictate orderly, "civilized" interactions between their residents. Yet the people who design these projects rarely live in them (the architect for Pruitt-Igoe also designed the World Trade Center towers in New York... grim comparison) and experience the consequences of their design on a personal basis.

Radiant City Design

Design features like tall, skinny towers with just one easily controlled entry point and easily surveillance of police arrival have been repeatedly blamed (along with their architects) for the failure of 'Tower in the Park" public housing projects. But this seems like a disastrously oversimplified explanation, especially because similar projects in thriving cities, where the towers have been integrated into the fabric of the public transportation system, have flourished. 

I guess the question I'm trying to ask in this blog post is, "who should have the authority to design homes (and prisons) with the goal of improving peoples' material realities, and how is this knowledge generated?." It seems like a huge problem that architects who dream up these plans will never have to live in them. The license to design also seems to be predicated on some super natural (institutionally-controlled) ability to assess "trends" in crime and housing and labor markets, and design to fit those needs. With Pruitt-Igoe, as with many other projects and prisons, we saw an obvious and grave miscalculation of population growth. 

On the other hand, the idea that nobody knows better how to design their home than the home-dweller themselves is still far fetched in the public imagination.  Lawmakers and voters (if we are to imagine that they and not the real-estate developers have the real power) are reluctant to trust anybody, really, with the care and decision making regarding their own dwelling. This is the very premise of public housing. There are a small sect of urban planners using "participatory planning" methods and *gasp* asking the community members what they'd like before embarking on a design project. But this idea is still fringe. 

So I went fishing about the internet for an compromise, and came up with a young Harvard architect who is proposing a new design for prison, not a housing project, that while firmly reformist, is pretty radical for what it is. 

http://www.archdaily.com/464371/a-radical-new-approach-to-prison-design/

This architect, bread in one of the US's finest institutions, once again believes that design can dictate cultural outcome, and if this project ever comes to fruition (which seems unlikely, honestly) I wonder if we should keep out hopes in check for the transformative potential of design.