"Completed in 1954, the 33 11-story buildings of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development was built as an attempt to address the housing crisis the poor faced in St Louis, Missouri. Only twenty years later, at 3pm on the 16th of March, 1972, the buildings were leveled, declared unfit for habitation because of unsafe and unsanitary conditions, coupled with rampant crime. The story of Pruitt-Igoe is a tragic urban fable, a complicated and loaded story of ambition, hubris and failure." (src)
"The Pruitt-Igoe Myth" is a documentary directed by Chad Freidrichs that dives into the complex history of the
famed housing project (YouTube or Vimeo trailer). RustWire has
an interesting interview with the documentary's creator. More information from
Architizer,
Homo Ludens, and
Magical Urbanism. Be sure to check out the collection of pictures from the area and from the documentary in the creators'
Flickr stream.
[via Archinect and Mefi Projects] [more inside]
posted by spiderskull
on Feb 28, 2011 -
29 comments
When he was 32, his life seemed hopeless. He was bankrupt and without a job. He was grief stricken over the death of his first child and he had a wife and a newborn to support. Drinking heavily, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he decided decided that his life was not his to throw away: it belonged to the universe. Buckminster Fuller embarked on "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity." If the architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist
Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller were still alive, he would be 115 years old today. Though he died in 1983, his legacy grows on through
recordings of his ideas and
the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 12, 2010 -
32 comments
The sub-prime mortgage crisis is giving way in some places to crime ridden McMansion ghettos, perhaps the beginning of a
larger long term trend in demographics: "many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay."
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 29, 2008 -
81 comments
Small house, big ambitions. I've always lived in small houses and flats so this would be the perfect little place for me. As people are progressively continuing to stay single for longer into their lives, are homes like these what they'd be looking for to settle into?
posted by feelinglistless
on Sep 28, 2002 -
23 comments
