Catherine Bauer Wursterfrom "Modern Housing"

Elmas Sultan ŞimşekDoğa Öykü Önen

ARCH 222: History of Architecture II

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She was a prominent American public housing advocateand educator of city planners and urban planners. Aleading member of the "housers". She dramaticallychanged the concept of public housing and law in theUnited States.

Her influential book Modern Housing was published in1934 and is regarded as a classic in the field.

Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster

(1905– 1964)

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Housers

Housers were a group ofplanners who advocatedaffordable housing for low-income families. CatherineBauer was a leading memberof a small group of idealistswho called themselveshousers because of theircommitment to improvinghousing for low-incomefamilies.

“Often the only woman at events and meetings, Bauer was once described as a ‘handsome blonde with brunette economic ideas.”

“Housing’s White Knight,” Architectural Forum (March 1946), 1173

Modern Housing

Catherina Bauer’s 1934 book which isModern Housing, and her later workwith the Labor Housing Conference,Bauer played a central role indeveloping and communicating aprogram for a new kind of Americanhousing system. The modem housingprogram suggested a way of designinga unified public policy with regard tohousing issues as opposed to the usualtwotier approach, which generallyisolates and stigmatizes the poor.

While designing the housing methodology, sheplaced women first, emphasizing that the basicrequirements of a good home should bedefined regarding the person who will most usethe internal space: the woman.

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‘’Housing and Planning can be used strategically toachieve social change.’’

-Catherine Bauer

Bauer's thesis in Modern Housing was thatthe real achievement of the postwarEuropean housing programs was not thequantity of dwellings produced. Instead, thesignificant breakthrough was the creationof an entirely new kind of shelter and a newframework for producing it without anyprofit. This kind of housing was built aspart of comprehensively plannedneighborhoods, with parks, schools, andother community facilities nearby.

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Ideal House in Europe

Every housing-reformer believed that the ideal home was a small house with an attached garden.

There should not be extra outside walls, extra land which always lies useless in the shadow of one house orthe other, dead windows (or windows looking directly into other people's rooms), extra feet of pipeline andstreet-pavement, and extra interior heat. The money, that spent for these, should spend for betterconstruction and more and better-lighted space within the house.

It should be a much more economical and very much more livable dwelling type. One of the ways for thatdesigning attached groups of two, four, six, or more houses. It also provide not to use windows on a facadebecause of the attectment.If they were detached houses, one-family houses are usually built in long rowsand at a somewhat higher density.

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Ideal House in America

In her lifetime Bauer changed dramatically theconcept of social housing in the United Statesbased on Europe. Programs in Europeancountries frequently served as models. Before thechange, projects were extremely expensive andtherefore frankly aimed at "the more fortunateclasses’’. She proposed ways to provide betterand cheaper urban housing. It became reachablefor all classes.

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Edith Elmer Wood (1871–1945)

was a US housing reformer. The onlyother female member of RPAA.

1920s as a highly respected and oft-citedauthor of housing criticism.

In one of her research, she discoveredthat one third of the nation was ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Theresearch was affected on Catherine’smodern housing approach.

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William Wurster(1895–1973)

was an American architect andarchitectural teacher at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, and at MIT, bestknown for his residential designs inCalifornia.

Wurster was a husband of CatherineBauer, as well as an influential figure inher own right in the field of publichousing.

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The Gregory FarmhouseThe Gregory Farmhouse is aModernist style house. Itwas an example ofdogmatic InternationalStyle. Wurster developed anunderstated architecturethat relied heavily onregional building historyand indigenous materialshandled, however, withsimplicity, refinement, and aforward-thinking andcreative mind.

The Gregory Farmhouse by William Wurster 10

International Style

● The emphasis of volume over mass

● Regularity in the facade, as opposed tobuilding symmetry

● No applied ornament

Villa Savoye / Le Corbusier

Bauer was immediately drawn to therationalist tendency within architecturalmodernism that would come to be knownas the "international style." Despite itsstrong appeal for her, however, shedoubted that this aesthetic wouldbecome popular in America.

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Regional Planning

Association of America

It is America’s most distinguished urban research and advocacyorganization. Clarence Stein, Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford,Alexander Bing, and Henry Wright were the essential backbone ofthe RPAA. Allied with Mumford and the Regional PlanningAssociation of America was Catherine Bauer.

Members of the group were particularly concerned with creatinghigher quality neighborhoods than either cities or suburbs typicallyprovided Americans.

RPA works to improve the prosperity, infrastructure, sustainabilityand quality of life of the metropolitan region. Some of the region’smost significant public works, economic development and openspace projects have their roots in RPA ideas and initiative.

One of the five leading memberscontributed to the goal of theassociation that Bauer was alsoactive on the issue of housing.

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Lewis Mumford(1895 –1990)

Clarence Stein (1882 - 1975)

Benton Mackaye(1879 - 1975)

Henry Wright(1878 - 1975)

Alexander Bing(1879 - 1959)

He was RPAA’stheorist,philosopher, urbancritic, and author.He believed thatsociety chould beimproved throughrational andeconomically soundplanning.

He was anAmerican urbanplanner, architect,and writer, one ofthe proponent ofthe Garden Citymovement in theUnited States.

He was an Americanforester, plannerand conservationist.He was a centralfigure in thedevelopment ofRPAA’s ‘’regional city’’concept.

was a planner,architect, andmajor proponent ofthe garden city, anidea characterizedby green belts andcreated by SirEbenezer Howard.

He was a firstpresident of theRPAA.Developed deepconcern for needs,less privileged.

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Ernst May

Ernst May (27 July 1886 – 11 September 1970)was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban designtechniques to the city of Frankfurt during theWeimar Republic period.

Catherine Bauer became a strong proponentof European solutions like low rise housingestates of Ernst May.

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Garden Cities of To-morrow

Bauher’s ideal solution, is the self-contained regionallyplanned new town, a more centralized modification of theGarden City, such as Letchworth in the UK.

Ebenezer Howard had worked on the garden city and thismovement started in 1898 in United Kingdom. Thismovement is related with city planning. The aim was keepingnature and the city together. It can be evaluated within thecontent of the ecotopia approach. Howard’s garden cityidea has the concentric (other shapes that share the samecenter) pattern with open spaces, public parks, and sixradial boulevards.

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LETCHWORTH

Architectural Style/qualities:

● ‘Letchworth Look’ housing inspired byArts & Crafts movement, consisting of:

● Roughcast render cladding overbricks

● Street layout is in an axial layout withroads radiating out from a centralsquare.

● Tree-lined streets, each with adifferent variety of tree.

● Zoning of different types of building -industrial, commercial, middle-classand worker’s housing.

● Surrounded by a rural belt.Letchworth was the world’s first Garden City, founded by EbenezerHoward in 1903.

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Contributions of the Catherina Bauer

● Successful format of modern housingcomparison between "disciplineddemocracy" and "colonial feudalism."

● "Against the Tide: Movement Popularand Otherwise", focus on conservation

● "Framework for the Future"● "A Platform for Physical

Reconstruction"

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Today’s

Example

Housing affordability is a perennial problem in Australia and has worsened significantly overthe past three decades.Economic and social factors were the major drivers of the interest intiny houses. Economic factors included affordability, the desire to own (detached) propertywithout a high mortgage and to reduce expenses and debt.

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CatherineBauerWurster

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References

www.cui-zy.com/Recommended/Landissue/Modern_Housing_for_America__Policy_Struggles_in_the_New_Deal_Era__.pdf

The (Still) Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing

Who We Are | Regional Plan Association

momowo_torin_2018-compressed-copy.pdf

Regional Planning Association of America | Model House

Ebenezer Howard'ın Bahçe Şehri - Arkitektuel

The_Interior_of_Modernism_Catherine_Baue.pdf

https://porch.com/resource/ideal-home-america-europe

https://www.academia.edu/7697086/The_Interior_of_Modernism_Catherine_Bauer_and_the_American_Housing_Movement

https://placesjournal.org/article/catherine-bauer-and-the-need-for-public-housing/

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