Prize winning BPPA 1997 Creating the Charter of Athens: CIAM and the Functional City, 1933-43

Abstract

This paper provides a historical analysis of a key document in twentieth century Architecture and Planning in Europe. It shows how a widely accepted defining moment in the development and promotion of functionalist modern planning, the CIAM IV and the Athens Charter, was in fact a contested and long drawn out process, in which the persistence of few people, notably Sert and le Corbusier, not only maintained the momentum to produce the Charter, but also ensured it carried a firmly ‘modernist’ stance. The paper is grounded very thoroughly in primary documents and in the conceptual issues at stake, and throws a fascinating light on the different conceptions of urban planning being developed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. It is very well written and structured, and constitutes a valuable contribution to knowledge.