Pruitt-Igoe Housing


  • Caption
    Pruitt-Igoe Collapses
Date
1972;1956
Location
North and Central America->United States->Missouri->Saint Louis City (independent city)->Saint Louis
Description
"The destruction of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis in 1972 was seen as the moment of the death of Modernism by Charles Jencks. It was symbolic of far more than an abandonment of a style or system of building procurement. In many ways the razing of what had turned out to be a disastrous no-go estate marked a turning moment in the Modern project, with its inbuilt commitment to decency and liberation of the poor. The best efforts of state and municipality in conjunction with new industry and technology (always Modernism's great hope) did not seem to work."
(Davey, P. (1999). Professional Hubris - architects and public housing. The Architectural Review, 206(1233): 26-27.)

Keywords: St. Louis, implosion
Style/Period
1950s (1950 - 1959)
Source
McMorrough, J. (2006). Notes on the Adaptive Re-use of Program. Praxis: Journal of Writing + Building, 1(8): 102-110.