Freemans Bay Landscape Heritage Study
In the aftermath of WW1, one of the most pressing social needs was the provision of new housing for millions of displaced citizens. Allied to this concern was the continuing problem of slum housing in all the major European cities. Architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism all responded to these two important social concerns by developing new kinds of practices. Some of the earliest 20th century modernist buildings were demonstration housing projects. Many important modernist architects; Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, built their first projects as a part of housing schemes. The garden city, a late 19th century urban invention developed as a panacea to the travails of the European industrial city was often combined with modernist architecture to produce new housing developments.
In one of the first modernist urban manifestos , “The City of Tomorrow”, the author, Le Corbusier articulates the planning for a new kind of a city- combining the English landscape park with a new building type, the New York skyscraper. Le Corbusier’s hybrid city, illustrated by his lyrical drawings, gave rise to one of the most enduring tropes of 20th Century modernist urban planning- the apartment tower in the park.
The resulting urban model spread throughout the world. It often resulted in the wholesale razing of entire districts of historic buildings and the construction of high rise apartment in open, communal parks. This new ideology of urban renewal entered New Zealand’s consciousness during WW2. New forms of planning, architecture and landscape architecture were tested on the ground in New Zealand urban centres. Freemans Bay was selected to become a laboratory for this new city.
In one of the first modernist urban manifestos , “The City of Tomorrow”, the author, Le Corbusier articulates the planning for a new kind of a city- combining the English landscape park with a new building type, the New York skyscraper. Le Corbusier’s hybrid city, illustrated by his lyrical drawings, gave rise to one of the most enduring tropes of 20th Century modernist urban planning- the apartment tower in the park.
The resulting urban model spread throughout the world. It often resulted in the wholesale razing of entire districts of historic buildings and the construction of high rise apartment in open, communal parks. This new ideology of urban renewal entered New Zealand’s consciousness during WW2. New forms of planning, architecture and landscape architecture were tested on the ground in New Zealand urban centres. Freemans Bay was selected to become a laboratory for this new city.