Pruitt-Igoe
We must rebuild, open up and clean up the hearts of our cities. The fact that slums were created with all the intrinsic evils was everybody’s fault. Now it is everybody’s responsibility to repair the damage.
Joseph Darst, 1951
Pruitt-Igoe like other modernist housing projects at the time met the goal of vertically integrating life. However, social life is not meant to be vertical - it is meant to be diverse, segmented, and unique. Modernist architecture and planning was brutal, rigid, and inhuman because it failed to understand the difference between living and existing.
Pruitt-Igoe was built in St. Louis for two reasons: to provide housing to the lower- and middle-class and to unify the necessities into a tightly knit ecosystem with amenities such as a school and church. Designed on the principles of modernist architect Le Corbusier, Pruitt-Igoe was composed of 33 buildings largely out of mass-manufactured glass and concrete.
Instead of becoming the template for the future of urban planning, Pruitt-Igoe with poor construction and materials became dilapidated and inhospitable. It was demolished in 1972, only 16 years after it’s completion.
