Pruitt Igoe Now
Spaces of Silence
ASHISH NANGIA
3/16/2012
SPACES OF SILENCE
Visualizing Pruitt-Igoe Now
An amalgam of racial discrimination and heralding the ‘death’ of modernism, the Pruitt Igoe site is hallowed ground of sorts.
Thus it was not possible for this architect to conceive of a project that would be a complete break from the past. Rather a memorial to ending, with two buildings that speak of a possible future. That is why the project ‘SPACES OF SILENCE’ is designed around installations to modernity, a memorial and two buildings. The two buildings that flank this memorial are a vision to a sustainable future, and one to a past that is hopefully behind us.
‘Center for Sustainability Research’
‘Museum of Memory’.
The whole composition is set in a landscaped park that recalls, through the design of its pathways and the way green intermingles with void, the historicity of the site and of St. Louis. Harking back to the city’s French roots, the composition is a Baroque one, with the main axis through the site connecting the ground to the St. Louis Arch. Imprinted on the ground are monuments to modernity, with the footprints of the old Pruitt Igoe housing traced out in pathways, water pools, or planting.
The way this architect is connected to the Pruitt Igoe project is twofold. Firstly, as an enthusiast and committed member of the modern movement, and an historian who has followed the development of Modernism in the last decade. The second is as a scholar, whose doctorate in architecture at the University of Paris, Seine St. Denis was a sustained research into the location and temporal inexactitudes of the discourse of Modernism.
Through the dual axis, ‘Spaces of Silence’ is conceived as a homage to Modernism, as a place of solitude and silence, and as an effort in sustainable design and building.
Spaces of Silence
ASHISH NANGIA
3/16/2012
SPACES OF SILENCE
Visualizing Pruitt-Igoe Now
An amalgam of racial discrimination and heralding the ‘death’ of modernism, the Pruitt Igoe site is hallowed ground of sorts.
Thus it was not possible for this architect to conceive of a project that would be a complete break from the past. Rather a memorial to ending, with two buildings that speak of a possible future. That is why the project ‘SPACES OF SILENCE’ is designed around installations to modernity, a memorial and two buildings. The two buildings that flank this memorial are a vision to a sustainable future, and one to a past that is hopefully behind us.
‘Center for Sustainability Research’
‘Museum of Memory’.
The whole composition is set in a landscaped park that recalls, through the design of its pathways and the way green intermingles with void, the historicity of the site and of St. Louis. Harking back to the city’s French roots, the composition is a Baroque one, with the main axis through the site connecting the ground to the St. Louis Arch. Imprinted on the ground are monuments to modernity, with the footprints of the old Pruitt Igoe housing traced out in pathways, water pools, or planting.
The way this architect is connected to the Pruitt Igoe project is twofold. Firstly, as an enthusiast and committed member of the modern movement, and an historian who has followed the development of Modernism in the last decade. The second is as a scholar, whose doctorate in architecture at the University of Paris, Seine St. Denis was a sustained research into the location and temporal inexactitudes of the discourse of Modernism.
Through the dual axis, ‘Spaces of Silence’ is conceived as a homage to Modernism, as a place of solitude and silence, and as an effort in sustainable design and building.