Paola Di Biagi, ed. La Carta d'Atene. Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1998. 497 pp.

Reviewed by Carola Hein (Bryn Mawr College)
Published on H-Urban (April, 2000)

"The Athens Charta is one of the most noted and at the same time less read and most discussed text of the 20th century", states Paola Di Biagi (p. 9) presenting the book she edited on "La Carta d'Atene - Manifesto e frammento dell'urbanistica moderna." The CIAM and the Athens' Charta have been held responsible for many of the negative developments in urban planning and architecture of the twentieth century. Its critics failed to acknowledge, however, the experiences that brought the Charta into existence and the developments that have taken place since. Furthermore, as Bernardo Secchi points out (p. 399), the Athens' Charta was not a manual or a legal text prepared for application, instead it spelled out concepts towards which to converge. Carlo Olmo insists on the same point in the introduction, underlining the character of the document as a charta of principles, designed to go beyond the confinements of urban thought (p. 13).

Even though the Athens' Charta was translated into numerous languages -- including Japanese -- critical lectures of the document are rare. The study of the Athens' Charta has been mainly related to case studies and biographies of some of the protagonists. Furthermore, many of these studies have been published independently and are not part of a larger research project. The present book therefore attempts to discuss the Charta in its own right.

Expanding on a conference in Venice 1997, La Carta d'Atene reunites seventeen authors, mainly Italians, who have contributed extremely well researched articles with important new approaches on four major themes: context, protagonists, lecture and translations. The first part with contributions by di Biagi and Pier Giorgio Gerosa sets the framework for the discussion of the Athens' Charta. The authors discuss the original documents and important issues of the meetings in the context of the CIAM congress, modern urban planning and the critical debate on the documents, and study how the conclusions of the CIAM reached their final form.

The question of whether a 500 page publication on the Athens' Charta is justified today is addressed by Paola di Biagi. She explains this undertaking with the importance of the Athens' Charta in the development of urban planning and the need to resituate this important document in its historical context. The Charta, in fact, has to be seen as a major node between the research of the nineteenth century and the start of modern planning in the second half of the twentieth century (p. 26). Di Biagi further sees the relecture of the Athens' Charta and the concept of the functional city as a means to get a better understanding of the city today and particularly the suburbs -- not only in their built but also in their visionary form (p. 27).

A reassessment is also necessary in order to reposition the different participants. The Athens' Charta in its form published by Le Corbusier, has become a myth of modern planning. Recent publications, particularly by Gerosa, but also by Martin Steinmann have shown however, that the document was a result of an intimate discussion between all participants.[1] Their desire, as has been pertinently analyzed by Carlo Olmo in the preface to the Carta d'Atene, was to control the growing complexity of the city and create a system of general principles (p.14). ). It is a hint in this direction that the CIAM introduced a new dimension to urban planning when it replaced the bird's eye perspective - used even by Le Corbusier for many of his visions - with a synthetic representation from a fixed point of view (p. 14)

The second and largest section of the book, highlights the role of some participants at the IV CIAM meeting, analyzing particular episodes and relationships. The authors analyze a variety of topics, discussing "Le Corbusier and the application of the Athens' Charta, the Grille CIAM d' urbanisme, Chandigarrh" (Giorgio Ciucci), "convergence and divergence: from Le Corbusier to Otto Neurath (Giuliano Gresleri) and the section concludes with reflections on rationalism (Alberto Sartoris). They further discuss the impact of national groups, events and projects such as the days in Athens (Yorgo Simeoforidis), "the role of the Italians: from the Congress to the final declaration" (Francesco Tentori), "Cornelis van Eesteren and the lesson of Amsterdam" (Maristella Casciato) and "the adaptation of the functional city: From Josep Lluis Sert's Can our cities survive? to Latin American projects" (Maria Rubert de Vents).

The third, relatively short, part gives an overview of notions of space in the Athens' Charta (Andre Corboz) of planning techniques (Patrizia Gabellini) and of land ownership (Ugo Ischia). The fourth part adopts a slightly different approach to the topic, consisting of shorter essay-like pieces which take particular interest in the posterity of the Charta. Giancarlo de Carlo captures the atmosphere and events at one of the last CIAM meetings. He vividly describes his participation as a representative of the younger generation at a preparatory meeting in La Sarraz for the 1959 Dubrovnik congress and the emergence of Team X. De Carlo displays the energy and certitude of the CIAM and Team X generations when he states that historical research has to be followed by "the courage of tabula rasa" -- which is also the title of his essay. Questions of architecture (Gianugo Polesello), landscape (Franco Purini), system and models (Bernard Huet) as well as the famous CIAM maps (Bernardo Secchi) are addressed in the three other articles of this section.

The analysis is completed by an anthology of texts and documents of the IV international congress of modern architecture (CIAM) in the Italian translation. This part also includes an Italian version of the Athens' Charta (from the French translation of 1957) and examples of the three maps prepared for each of the 33 cities presented at the IV CIAM meeting in 1933. The Italian contributions for Como, Genova, Roma and Verona are published together with the studies for Athens and the well-known analysis of Amsterdam.

The functional city of the CIAM as sketched out in the 1930s is silenced for many years when the lives of its promoters take different directions. In the publications by Le Corbusier (1943) and Sert (1942) the original message is simplified in order to be used for reconstruction -- particularly in Europe. In the USA, in the Harvard context, two major books are developed out of the CIAM: Sigfried Giedion: Space, Time and Architecture, (1941) -- a big success -- and Sert, Can our cities survive?. Sert's concepts are nonetheless mainly applied in Latin America - a topic studied also by Eric Mumford.[2] In North America these publications do not seem to have had the same impact than in Europe. Further research would be necessary to determine the reasons why. One can only guess that Europe had to grapple with its traditional city centers while the American grid plan allowed for easier transformation. Or think of Martin Wagner's suggestion to his fellow-members from the former Ring-group, that the individual work which dominates in the US makes the famous emigrants like Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Hilberseimer, Mendelsohn, Wagner, so unfruitful in comparison to what they had been able to produce before the war with a we-approach. (comment from Martin Wagner in a letter to Hans and Wassili Luckhart, 1946.[3]

English speaking countries seem to have had and still show less interest in the CIAM and the Athens' Charta and to my knowledge there is only a very restricted number of publications on this topic in English. It is therefore not surprising that this important book is published in Italian. An English language publication would probably have a larger influence on the scientific debate. It can only be hoped, that further research is promoted by this study and that English language publications will follow. This would also allow the inclusion of a larger range of scholars drawn from different geographic regions.

Notes

[1]. Martin Steinmann, CIAM Dokumente 1929-1939, Basel-Stuttgart: Birkhouser, 1979

[2]. Eric Mumford, CIAM and Latin America, in Aavv. Sert Arquitecte a Nova York, Barcelona: Macba, 1997

[3]. Peter Pfankuch, Hans Scharoun, Berlin AdK : Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1974, p.171.

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Citation: Carola Hein. Review of Biagi, Paola Di, ed., La Carta d'Atene. H-Urban, H-Net Reviews. April, 2000.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4038

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