JOSE LUIS SERT architecture city planning urban design

JOSE LUIS SERTarchitecture city planning urban designArchitect/Planner Hari K.G.Nambiar

IntroductionJoseo Luis Sert like Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer(Brazil) and Kunio Mayekawa(Japan) belong to the second generation of contemporary architecture. Serts talents are closely bound up with the organization of the city, with an architecture that has its roots in Mediterranean culture and, inseperable from these, with an intensive relation with art.Sert retained close contact with Le Corbusier from his years in Paris to the creation of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard (1963) .

Jose Luis Sert appeared for the first time at the second congress of CIAM in Frankfurt in 1929, at the same time as Walter Gropius & Alvar Aalto.Serts artistic sensitivity has enabled him to put together simple repititive elements workers houses in the plan for Chimbote or apartments in the Harvard married-student quarters.Mediterranean influencesSert was instrumental in reviving the house that looks inward: the house built around a patio. He re-used it for the first time in 1946 in his modest dwellings for Chimbote, Peru, designed to meet the simple living standards of South American workers.

Town Planning ProjectsJ.L.Sert worked with P.L.Wiener as Town Planning Associates for more than ten years since 1946 on many projects for South American cities, such as the new towns Cidade dos Motores near Rio de Janeiro(1945-46) and Chimbote, Peru(1949), and the Master plan for Bogota, Colombia(1951-53).In his pilot master plan for Havana, Cuba (1955-58) a rapidly growing city of over a million inhabitants, a serious study was made of the whole region of Havana & of the need to promote the extension of the city eastwards.The plan showed how the major road system could be systemized without disturbing the vital life of the city, nor the historic core of Havana with its grid of narrow streets dating from early colonial times, also how the beautiful coastline of the city could be opened up again. The plan demands the careful seperation of pedestrian ways from traffic routes, elimination of slums & the creation of new highways.

Quarters for Married students of Harvard University

The group of quarters for married students of Harvard University shows the closest relations with the organism of the city. They immediately give a new scale to the whole area around , most of which is a near slum today , while at the same time providing the present inhabitants with new public open spaces and new opportunities for pedestrian access to the Charles river.The change in structure of student quarters from a type modeled on the English 18th century country house was started in Cambridge by Alvar Aaltos curving dormitory for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947.This was followed by Harvards Graduate Center built by Walter Gropius in 1949, which expressed the most open planning then known for a student dormitory. Automobile is banned from the interior of the complex, but a two-storey parking garage for 350cars is provided.

Plan of Married-student dormitories

Married-student dormitories seen from across the Charles River

Leisure City near Barcelona,1934The centre of the city is linked to the unspoiled coastland by extending one of the main avenues as an expressway for mass transportation lines. Barcelona is cut off from the waterfront by an industrial belt & the railroad lines feeding industry. This project opens up a large stretch of coast with fine beaches & pine groves for public use, establishing a park for people in the city who do not own cars. The project provides for bathing facilities with a bus terminal, parking & supply facilities capable of handling great masses of people .

Master Plan for Barcelona, 1933-1935Barcelona has three well differentiated zones: the medieval city with the belt of boulevards replacing the old ramparts , the regular gridiron street system of the 19th century, & the incorporated towns & villages of the suburban periphery, irregular in pattern, where industry mixes with residential uses.Sert worked on the Barcelona plan in collaboration with the GATEPAC (local Catalan group) , the main points or requests were:Renewal & rehabilitation projects in the old city (eradication of slums) & improvement of health conditions.Limitation of growth of the 19th-century plan & determination of a new grid system .Zoning of the city into different functions & limiting the growth of suburban communities where there is a mix of these functions.Better links of the city to the waterfront & the new projected Leisure City.Revision of the existing zoning & building codes to conform with health requirements.

1939-1953 Town Planning Associates was established in 1945, Paul Lester Wiener, Jose Luis Sert & Paul Schulz were the three partners in the group. During their initial years of practice ,Town Planning Associates developed methods of work based on those generally proposed by the International Congresses for Modern Architecture. As they progressed the methods changed becoming more adaptable to local conditions.In the case of the early study for a new city in Brazil, Cidade dos Motores which follows these CIAM directives more closely , it is similar in spirit to Brasilia , in its rather loose pattern of leaving large open spaces between buildings.The second project undertaken by TPA was the plan for the City of Chimbote in northern Peru located in fertile jungle land covered with tropical plant growth. The Cidade dos Motores is located in the rainless, desert coastland of Peru, where irrigation is necessary for agriculture, requiring a system of canals making use of the water from the Andean range.The Chimbote plans make use of tight clusters of patio houses one to three storeys high and emphasize the patio or court as a urban module that repeats at different scales from the one-family house patio to the civic center.

It also introduces the continuous lineal park spaces, in this particular case following the branch-like pattern of irrigation canals. These green strips (small in area) link the different sector centers & their community buildings and playfields, where parking facilities are available. These parks lead to the main promenade , the Paseo , and the center of the city.The planners gave careful consideration to the preservation of the natural conditions of the sites, such as watersheds, natural drainage of the land, brooks, rivers etc. The plans provided certain kinds of amenities that take advantage of the climatic conditions & can be given at small extra cost: open-air meeting places , a promenade or Paseo, arcades & simple shelters; also accesses to river or waterfronts that people can make free use of.Some of the proposed improvements are modern, others existed in old cities. The Quadras or blocks of the colonial plans , built following the principles of the Laws of the Indies(1570). The TPA plans tried to perpetuate what was good in the old cities & add those elements that contribute to better living .

Cidade dos Motores(Motor City), Brazil, 1945The Cidade dos Motores, or Motor City, was to be built on reclaimed land between Rio de Janiero & Petroplis, 25 miles from Rio is one of great natural beauty.Cidade dos Motores was planned for a population of 25,000 inhabitants near the new airplane & tractor factories.It would also serve the needs of an agricultural area claimed from the unhealthy marshlands of the region.The design fits into the site & is shaped by topographical conditions. Main roads & building groups occupy the flatter areas between the many hills, which are untouched & their wooded character preserved. Climate was an important consideration, being hot-humid orientation to prevailing breezes ventilation & sun protection was important.The main road network ,reduced to a minimum in the first phases, is simple in design. It limits and feeds the neighbourhood & Civic center and links them to the factories to the Rio-Petroplois highway. The Civic center makes use of a continuous concrete parasol providing roofs for shops, restaurants & arcades. The main promenade is covered with awnings.Several low structures ,hotel & movie theater define the main square. The promenade the square to the technical school & stadium. A pedestrian overpass bridges the main road that feeds into the peripheral parking areas , and shops develop around planted courts.

Lines of royal palms accentuate the main pedestrian paths & places of public gathering. Covered pathways link the more important buildings & community services. A small brook runs across the residential areas to one side of the main square.Paths converge toward the Civic center ,or core of the community, where the town square or praca and the promenade or passeio provide meeting places for the pedestrians & visitors. The neighbourhoods in the Cidade dos Motores are shaped around the community services; public spaces are generous. A great of the population is lodged in apartment buildings requiring elevators.

Motor City

The New City of Chimbote, Peru,1948This required the development of a new port city dilapidated town existed on the site where only an old linking the Andean valley in the interior to the Bay of Chimbote on the Pacific Ocean. This is a rainless region, desert-like in character which can be transformed with irrigation. The Pan American highway that runs along the Pacific coast from Central America south to Chile passes through this city.This highway and the road & railways to the Santa valley are the main feeders of this community.The bay, with a very good natural harbor and a beautiful beach, presents ideal waterfront conditions for the new city. The population would work in industry, in the harbor sector and on agriculture due to irrigation. The majority of the population would continue to living near the ground, close to their animals, making use of the patios or courtyards as their roofless living rooms.The result is a compact grouping of low one-two or three story houses with large walled courts larger than the houses. Service streets and pedestrian lanes are defined by these low, practically windowless walls.

Master Plan for Medellin,Columbia,1949 Medellin, Columbias second city with a population of 690,000 is its main center for textile industry, located in a coffee rich region, in the narrow mountain valley of the Medellin river(altitude 4500ft.). The city has grown along this river, and a study of its control by means of upstream dams & artificial lakes, irrigation ditches.In the recent past, the land around the center of the city was bulldozed by developers who paid no attention to the natural drainage to the small streams or to the hilly conditions of some sites. The planners tried ,wherever possible, to re-establish the natural conditions and drainage of the sites. This system & the consequent drainage of the marshlands made large areas of land near the center available for the extension of the city. Each sector is defined by the main expressway system that feeds the commercial business & light-manufacturing areas on its fringes. The playfields, recreational and community facilities are grouped into local sector centers along the lineal parks that follow the main streams. Each sector would have lineal parks with particular kinds of flowering trees different in colour from other parks to identify each sector. The main parks develop the margins of the Medellin river which links the two industrial sectors, North and South and the new Civic center.

The Civic Center (in a crowded older part of the city) will now move to a riverfront site now occupied by railroad yards & a public market. The new Civic center has a main square with a City hall & office buildings as a core. The square itself is defined by low commercial buildings & is tied by low commercial buildings & is linked by a pedestrian promenade to the riverfront park.

Master Plan for Bogota, Colombia, 1951-1953 in collaboration with Le Corbusier & the local planning Office.The capital of the Republic of Colombia is on a high plateau, 7800ft. above sea level , with an agreeable climate.The site is a fertile green valley, the Sabana , which was once the bottom of a mountain lake. The city is limited on the East by a steep high mountain range & the swamplands of the Bogota river halt its growth towards the West, giving it a lineal shape fitting well in the elongated valley.Bogota was founded by Jimenez de Quesada in 1539. It followed the design principles set by the Law of the Indies (Leyes de Indias) drafted in Spain in the sixteenth century. Like all colonial cities in Latin America, its design is based on a grid of squares called quadras; streets are 240 to 300ft. apart. These old streets were planned for pedestrians & horse carriages; today congested with parked automobiles. New avenues have been cut across the old city, and high-rise office buildings stand beside the old one-story patio houses.In 1967 Bogota had a population of 700,000. The City Council established a local Planning Office in 1949, guided by Le Corbusier and Town Planning Associates. The basic diagram was determined by Le Corbusier , Paul Lester Wiener, Jose Luis Sert and Herbert Ritter(Director of the Planning Office) in Roquebrune, Menton, France, in 1949. Le Corbusier was commissioned to develop the pilot plan, which was delivered & approved in August 1950.Town Planning Associates were charged with that development of that Pilot Plan into a Master Plan, done in consultation with Le Corbusier and in collaboration with the local planning Office & consultants.The Master Plan develops a detailed adaptation of the diagrammatic road, land use, and other plans to suit the particular conditions of each sector of the city. The area covered by the replanned city and proposed extensions was divided into thirty-five sectors, with shapes & areas determined by the main expressway network. These sectors vary in population from 25,000 to 75,000.

A Classified Road SystemThe detailed expressway network as proposed by Le Corbusier in the Pilot Plan was designed by Town Planning Associates & the road engineering firm of Seelye, Stevenson, Value and Knecht of New York. Corbusier had applied a similar system in Chandigarh.The plan of Bogota is the first where the principle of urban sectors has been put into practice. The ground is split up into rectangular areas in order to allow a strictly rational circulation system for fast traffic. Here at Bogota for the first time a perfectly harmonious circulation scheme has been put into practice, from the national roads to the regional roads and finally to the house doors. Roads are divided into several types: V1, the larger regional roads linking the city to the region & particular conditions of the site(such as mountain passes,etc); V2, the main traffic ways within the city; V3, linking the V1 & V2 roads, are rather evenly spaced & define the different sectors. These three first categories are limited access roads with service streets running along both sides; V4 are the local main streets, the shopping centers of the sectors. They feed into the expressways but are designed for slow- moving traffic controlled by light systems; V5 branch off the V4, or the service streets of the expressways; V6 are local service streets or loop roads, which lead to parking lots and the main & service entrances of buildings; V7 are park strips or green paths for pedestrian use only. They link schools and playfields. The local sector cores are located near the intersections of V4s & V7s.The consulting engineers gave precise sections to all roads according to their type & capacity. Intersections of different kind of roads were designed to provide for gradual development by phases. All required land in these intersections should be acquired in the first phase , so that these roads may be easily transformed into bridge rotaries when traffic conditions so advise.

SectorsThere are no neighbourhood units, as the planners consider these inadequate in size & tending to encourage segregation. The sectors that are larger in size, as determined by the expressways, can provide for a complete core of community services. Some large sectors will have several cores of varied character. Mixed uses have been encouraged in certain areas, for e.g. light manufacturing, warehouses, offices and shops along the V4, and apartments are provided over these shops in many cases. The majority of the sectors are predominantly residential in character, but they all have mixed-use areas in one or more commercial streets. The classification of these sectors into one-family or multi-family zones has been purposely avoided, but the bulk zoning laws would establish land area ratios so that any high building would have to leave necessary landscaped spaces around it. It would also have to provide for adequate servicing and parking facilities. The combination of low patio buildings (walk-ups) and high-rise structures would result in an interesting skyline avoiding monotonous repitition of long parallel slabs and of vast areas of one-family houses.Many sectors have a particular character such as those containing the main bus terminal, the central market or the large medical or shopping centres.The population figures in these sectors will determine the road sections, parks, the utility network , parking & the size and type of community buildings.

The Core of the CityThe main core of the city, planned as an extension of the existing one, is divided into three areas or sub-centers:The govermental and religious centerThe commercial and business sectorsThe cultural and entertainment centerThe govermental and religious center develops around the existing nucleus of the Plaza Bolivar. The main square as determined by the founder of the city, Jimenez de Quesada, was extended on two levels as proposed by Le Corbusier in his Pilot Plan. Buildings around this square follow his proposal. The existing Cathedral and Houses of Parliament remain. High-rise buildings would lodge the new ministries; a new Municipal building, a Court of Justice and a Presidential Palace define the square. Some old colonial churches of historic value could be kept. This plan triples the area of the existing Plaza Bolivar. The new expressway (Carrera 10a) opened in the fifties would link this square to other sectors of the city. Surface parking and underground garage facilities are provided between that expressway and the square.The Calle Real, the traditional pedestrian street of the old city, links the political center to the commercial and business sectors to the North. The commercial and business sectors are developed around a series of squares of different sizes & shapes that are linked by pedestrian bridge overpasses. The system is designed on two levels, making use of the sloping site(near the hills to the East). This provides underground parking below the squares and facilitates pedestrian crossings at different levels. The squares are offset or staggered so that there is no axial or monumental view that would discourage pedestrian walking. Shops & Office buildings line these squares. From them, one will get frequent views of the hillside park toward the East. Continuing the half-hour promenade from the political center through the commercial and business sectors, one arrives at the large open park space of the cultural and entertainment center of the city. The existing hillside park has a public library, a museum(old prison), a bull ring and a new hotel. These would be supplemented by other hotels, a National Theater and Concert Hall, a new museum wing, a tourist center and a Congress building with a convention auditorium.

Pilot Plan for Havana, Cuba, 1955-1958Special studies were made to determine the Region of Havana, its limits, proposed land uses and main road system. The same approach applied to the region was used in the study of the Havana Metroplitan area, establishing a division into sectors similar to the Medellin & Bogota plans. Sectors were also determined here by the main land uses & expressway system. Old Havana had historical monuments to preserve , congested narrow streets, large slum areas & a decreasing population.The Pilot Plan included a report on the proposed road system for the Havana Metropolitan area submitted by the planners & consulting engineers. The diagrammatic plan for the Region of Havana proposes to safeguard the natural beauty topography, watersheds, rivers, the shape of the coastline, its bays & harbors and the rich agricultural qualities of the region.The proposed main-road system is influenced by the elongated shape of the Island of Cuba in the east-west direction. The major roads are in the east-west direction, the north-south roads are relatively unimportant. The east-west highway is known as the carretara central or central highway, it passes through the heart of the city causing congestion, hence a by-pass was proposed. A north-south highway too was proposed. A ribbon development existed in old Havana and these roads were useless for quick movement due to multiple accesses.The metroploitan area was proposed for a population of 3 million inhabitants & certain density limits. The diagram shows the main existing commercial streets & the green network retaining their character independent of the expressway system. The city was proposed to have a system of roads one for the rapid through traffic & another for slow moving traffic servicing the shopping & business areas. The sectors were mixed with small industry, commerce & business alongwith residential uses. Industries were located near the harbor & other sectors are located near new expressways for supplies and movement of goods.In the central sectors Old Havana have high population density, slums & congestion. The Government & Civic centers of the Plaza de la Republica, the University of Havana, the Botanical gardens, the square next to the Capitol, the old Paseo del Prado & the historical monuments of Old Havana are areas with character which were developed & needed better access. Older decaying commercial areas were saved by providing access to expressway & parking.

There are five main nuclei in the Havana central cityThe Plaza de la RepublicaThe University city & the Botanical GardensThe waterfront promenadeThe new commercial & business area in Old Havana,&The proposed new Government buildings in East HavanaHavana has a very beautiful coastline which is unencumbered by industry or railroads, this waterfront was to be made accessible to the entire population.Old Havana having a colonial street pattern is unchanged and its streets planned for horse-drawn carriages are congested with automobiles & buses. A new approach was proposed to the grid pattern based on the seperation of pedestrians & vehicles.By widening alternate streets and using the centers of the quadras or blocks for parking and accesses to buildings, the remaining streets were left alone for pedestrian use. This was possible because the new system provided two accesses to each building one opening to the parking lot and widened streets , while the other opened to the traditional small streets of Old Havana to be reserved for pedestrians.