Taverne, E..

Atlas of the Functional City. Het nooit gepubliceerde boek.

Historisch Geografisch Tijdschrift 33 (2015) 100 - 105.

In 1933 vond aan boord van het passagiersschip Patris II, de legendarisch geworden vierde conferentie van de CIAM (Congrès d'Architecture Moderne) plaats. De CIAM was een internationaal platform voor moderne architectuur en stadsplanning. Het vierde congres werd geleid door Cornelis van Eesteren, Le Corbusier en Siegfried Giedion. Aan de hand van comparatieve (kaart)analyses van steden hoopte men te komen tot algemeen toepasbare conclusies over het functioneren van steden. De resultaten van het congres werden echter nooit gepubliceerd - in zekere zin werd het gedachtegoed gekaapt door Le Corbusier die zijn Charte d'Athènes presenteerde als uitkomst van CIAM IV. Pas vorig jaar verscheen de Atlas of the Functional City. Een beschouwing door Ed Taverne*.

Atlas of the Functional City. The book that never has been published.

There are few issues in the history of architecture that have been the subject of so much nonsense as 'the Functional City', the generic name of a research project, an exposition and a conference which were inextricably intertwined with the CIAM, the 'Congrès d'Architecture Moderne'. The legendary fourth conference of the CIAM took place in 1933 on board the steam liner Patris Il. Its results were, in a way, hijacked by the architect Le Corbusier, who presented his 1943 Athens Charter as the outcome of collective thinking about the future of world cities. The actual proceedings of this conference, the Atlas of the Functional City: CIAM 4 and Comparative Urban Analysis, have been published only recently in the Netherlands, as a result of an international research project. This article by Ed Taverne, emeritus professor in the History of Architecture at the University of Groningen, combines an extensive book review with a more general discussion of the topic, concluding that CIAM's radiant project of the Functional City eventually came to nothing, not because of an overdose of modernist faith in progress, but because of a lack of elementary knowledge of the city.