On needing constraints

Yesterday, before we went to the end of the world (and back), we first visited a flat. Big day. Not just any flat, though: it was in effect the model apartment as designed by famed architect and Corbusier mentor Auguste Perret, the man who essentially rebuilt Le Havre from the ground up following World War II. Again, not a pleasant time for anyone, especially for that city, which lost about 90% of its buildings following (Allied) bombings. But that is not the point of this story.

The point of this story is that flat. And what it represents: right on the heels of World War II, as Europe was trying to move forward and Le Havre was hard at work rebuilding itself, Perret devised a method to help accelerate the latter. A pioneer in the use of concrete, he was chosen to design the new Havre, incidentally creating a framework for modern cities that is now a UNESCO landmark. Beyond the sheer innovativeness of removing as many corridors as possible, setting up central heating — and individual sanitation, a new thing in the 1940’s — what is perhaps most interesting about this whole endeavor is the reason it came about, besides war itself.

As it happens, France in 1945, even with help from the US, was obviously very near broke and needed to build quickly — and cheap. Gone were the days of solid stone 2-story buildings: concrete was way faster, way cheaper and provided new opportunities. Indeed, the only solution to housing so many people (dozens of thousands in Le Havre alone) was to create bigger — and higher — structures. Again, Perret’s concrete saved the day…

What is noteworthy about this anecdote is the fact that constraints — the need to build cheap and quick — facilitated the rise of groundbreaking innovation — concrete housing complexes. Such new methods would have likely come sooner or later, but the necessities of post-war reconstruction greatly accelerated their adoption process.

Problems, for lack of a better word, are good…