CITIES IN 19TH CENTURY

URBAN DESIGN -V

Group members :
Nihit,
Aryan,
Aditi,
Gautam,
Monika,

In this presentation we will talk about the changes made in two

cities of 19th century that are PARIS and BARCELONA.

Rajat,
Komal.

19TH CENTURY
Europe and America replayed Classical Architecture in churches, universities and
civic buildings.
19th century is said to be known as the COPY CAT ERA. There was less of
originality.
Despite scientific triumphs, industrial revolution, transportation, communication,
building technologies, cast and wrought iron, plate glass, rivets, steel and reinforced
concrete 19th century lacked originality.
London grew from 1 million in 1800 to 3 million in 1900.
New York from 63800 to 2.8 million.

New functions required new building designs for factories, railroad stations,
department stores and office buildings.
Economies boomed and the progress surged.

RENEWAL OF
PARIS

HISTORY WITH PARIS

After the decisive defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Paris
never recaptured La Gloire, the glory of Napoleon, but it would
become the most beautiful city in the world due to the enduring,
mythological vision of one man, Georges Eugne Haussmann.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the city of Paris doubled in
density without increasing its space.

Prior to then the city centre was chaotic, overcrowded, dark, crime
ridden, dangerous and unhealthy.

It was not uncommon to find 23 people, adults and children, living in

a room five meters square, less than eight by seven feet.

Paris was an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery,

pestilence and sickness worked in concert, where sunlight and air
rarely penetrate.

 The widest streets were only five meters wide (16 feet) and the
narrowest were only one meter wide (three feet). Paris was at a
heaving standstill.
Haussmann was not an architect nor a city planner, but he was
audacious, egotistical and smart.
By the time Napolon III became Emperor, Haussmann had worked in
nine cities, and was presently Prefect of the Seine department, which
coincided with the first wave of French industrialization.
While Haussmann had an innate sense of style, neither he nor Napolon
III were actually trained in the arts, but they both shared a similar
aesthetic and knew what they wanted Paris to look like: a cohesive
cream-colored, neoclassical wonder built from Lutetian limestone
quarried outside the city.

NEED FOR RENEWAL

From 1800 to 1850 the population of Paris doubled to become over one million.
This rapid growth put great strain on Pariss infrastructure and resulted in a massive overcrowding
problem.

In 1850 the majority of Paris was still the medieval style of unplanned narrow winding streets.
These streets featured open gutters for carrying sewage that were breeding grounds for disease.
These unplanned streets were narrow, often had confusing layouts and were not efficient for commerce
and traffic.

Napoleon had a great interest in modern technology, architecture and city

planning. He became inspired to remake Paris into a modern city after
seeing London which had been rebuilt in a massive project after the great
fire in 1666. Napoleon was determined to remake Paris into a great modern
capital worthy of the empire.

BEGINNING : THE INITIAL STAGE

Haussmann and Napolon III met every day in Napolons office where he had a huge map of Paris
installed.

With coloured pencils they would mark their priorities.

First they concentrated on boulevards, streets, public works (including sewer, water and gas
lines), train stations to move large concentrations of people, then architecture.

They wanted a well-ordered city, based on a geometric grid with streets running north and south,
east and west.
Since the Seine River served as a natural border, they divided the Medieval neighbourhoods of
Paris into districts, or arrondissements, growing the number from 12 to 20, and began
reconstructing inward from the rivers banks.
Upon completion, Haussmann had constructed 26,294 km of new boulevards, streets and
avenues created 2,000 hectares (4,932 acres) of parks four at the cardinal points of the
city and built 24 new squares totalling 150,000 square meters (over one million square feet),
an endeavour magnificent in its breath and scope.

THE PLAN
Haussmann embarked on a radical project of urban design to rebuild Paris as
a modern city. The project included

A greatly expanded sewer system.

The construction of wide boulevards.

Gas lighting for the streets.

The formulation of public building regulations.

The construction of monuments.

An updated and uniform facade for the citys buildings.

A reorganized and symmetrical road system.

The construction of new parks.

The division of Paris into arrondissements (Districts) and the expansion of the citys
limits.

 The photo on the right taken during the construction of the

Avenue de Lopera is an example of the demolition that
accompanied the widening of the boulevards. The buildings in the
foreground will all be removed to make room for a wide boulevard
leading to the Opera seen in the background.
The photo below shows the modern Avenue de Lopera from the
same perspective. Note the buildings on the side are typical of
the neoclassical style employed during the project.

 While both Napoleon III and Haussmann

wanted to modernize Paris at the same
time they were adherents of a more
classical style of architecture.
This led to the projects buildings being
constructed in a neoclassical style.
The neoclassical style was a unifying
theme used in everything from the
facades of apartment buildings to the
construction of major Parisian
landmarks.
One such landmark constructed during
this time was the Palais Garnier.

ROADS
One of the most important aspects of the plan was the renovation of
Pariss main roads.
The new roads were laid out in a grid running east to west, north to
south with diagonal connections radiating out.
The construction of new roads and the widening of streets would
require the expropriation and demolition of many buildings.
The change in the layout of Pariss streets can be observed from the
maps.
In next slide:

The first map is of Pre-Haussmann Paris. While there are some main
streets running more or less straight through the city, for the most part
it is chaotic and unplanned.

The second shows the much more orderly layout of modern Paris, the
streets outlined in red are the main boulevards constructed by
Haussmann.

SEWERS
The Pre-Haussmann sewers had been built by a man named
Bruneseau in 1805. Bruneseaus underground system intermixed
sanitary and unsanitary water.
During the 1800s Germ theory came to replace the earlier
Miasma theory of disease, and brought new ideas about
sanitation and disease prevention.

Haussmann engineered a new underground sewer system that

separated drinking water and waste.
His sewer used iron piping and new digging techniques made
possible by the Industrial Revolution.
By 1878 the sewer system had expanded to 360 miles. The new
sewers also provided a source of tourism.
Almost immediately after their completion tours of the Parisian
sewers became a popular attraction.

An engraving of a tour of the

Parisian sewer in 1867.

FACADE OF BUILDINGS
Haussmann and Napoleon III wanted the buildings of
Paris to share a unifying theme.
The city was rebuilt with a neoclassical facade that has
is still typical of Paris today.
The widening of the streets allowed for extra height to
be added to the buildings increasing living space.
Typically five stories these buildings would feature
elaborate balconies.
The ground floor would usually be reserved for shops or
other businesses.
In many ways these buildings were precursors to the
prefabricated buildings of today. While the outside
facade is fancy,
Haussmann employed cost saving measures beneath the
exterior, since all the buildings were made in the same
style they were able to be built much more cheaply.

A building in the typical neoclassical style

employed by Haussmann

GREEN SPACE
PARKS AND GARDENS
Prior to Haussmann, Paris had only four public parks.
Napoleon III had already begun construction of the Bois de
Boulogne, and wanted to build more new parks and gardens
for the recreation and relaxation of the Parisians, particularly
those in the new neighbourhoods of the expanding city.
Napoleon III's new parks were inspired by his memories of the
parks in London, especially Hyde Park, but he wanted to build
on a much larger scale.
Thousands of workers and gardeners began to dig lakes, build
cascades, plant lawns, flowerbeds and trees. construct
chalets and grottoes.
Haussmann and Alphand created the Bois de Boulogne (1852
1858) to the west of Paris: the Bois de Vincennes (1860
1865) to the east the Parc des ButtesChaumont (1865
1867) to the north, and Parc Montsouris (18651878) to the
south.

BARCELONA

EARLY DEVELOPMENT
By the end of first century, an official colony established by the Romans
in Barcelona.
The new colony was built like a typical Roman city, with a major eastwest and north-south axis surrounded by city walls for protection.

As the city developed through the 4th and 5th centuries, expansion of
development was necessary outside of the original city walls. A second
wall was constructed in 1230 AD to protect these new developments.
A third set of city walls were built in 1359 to enclose the suburbs to the
west of the city, known as El Raval, which was comprised mainly of
monasteries, convents, and manufacturing uses.
Remnants of City Walls

MODERN DEVELOPMENT
During the 19th century Barcelona experienced the
explosion of growth which accompanies an industrial
revolution, the growth of the city was being
suffocated by the third set of city walls.
As the Industrial Revolutions influence began to
rise within Spain, newly constructed factories and
the subsequent increasing labour demands drew
rural citizens to the urban centres of both Madrid
and Barcelona like never before.
Due to poor living conditions, overcrowding, a rising
cholera epidemic and a population density as high as
1500 inhabitants per hectare, the Madrid
government authorized in 1854 the destruction of
Barcelonas medieval walls and called for a
competition for the design of a new expansion of
the city.
Cerdas original Eixample Master Plan for
Barcelona

 In 1859, the walls were demolished and Barcelona was free

to expand.
In order to control the expansion of the city, a Catalan
engineer, Ildefons Cerda, was hired to form a plan for the
new development. His plan, the Eixample Garden City, used
a grid pattern to impose rational order on the city, while
accommodating open space, and public transportation.
During the 20th century the Cerda plan continued to develop
and extended to 522 city blocks.
The extensive growth of unplanned developments affected
the outskirts of the entire city, and was amplified by the
huge influx of immigrant workers.
Between 1920 and 1930 the city grew by 25,000 immigrants
every year.
The city entered a period of decay following the Civil War,
with unplanned developments continuing outward. Between
1940 and 1975 there were 26 new districts added to the
city, many of which lacked necessary infrastructure, including
paved roads.

THE EIXAMPLE
At the core of Cerdas master plan was the creation of the manzana a city block
structure.

Originally, each manzana was to be built up on only 2 or 3 sides, with a depth of 20

metres and a height of 16 metres.
The length of each side would measure 113.3 metres with a precise area of 12,370 m2.

In between the 2 or 3 built-up sides a recreational green space would allow for a
maximum amount of sunlight and ventilation to penetrate every unit in the manzana while
simultaneously providing a green belt for the entire city in all cardinal directions.
Unique to Cerdas manzana was the 45 degree chamfer of each corner of the city block.
Cerda believed that the steam tram would come to dominate the future of transport in
Barcelona, and as such the 45 degree chamfer was designed to accommodate for the
trams turning radius.

Different types of manzanas

proposed by Cerda.

Three-sided manzanas with a central

public green space as originally drawn
by Cerda.

 At an urban scale Cerdas plan divided up the Eixample into

different districts, zones and sectors with North-South and
East-West running, regularly spaced streets.
The streets would be built to a width of 20 metres with 5
meters dedicated on each side for pedestrians (with the
exception of Gran Via which was to be 50 metres wide and
Passeig de Gracia which was to be 60 metres wide), while a
district would be defined as a 20-block self-sustaining unit with
direct access to shops, services, markets and schools.
Larger institutions such as hospitals, cemeteries, parks, plazas
and industrial buildings would be spaced at calculated, even
distances within each zone providing an overall utilitarian radius
of access for Eixample inhabitants.
Cerdas plan had optimized street layout and grid plan to
accommodate the mobility of not just the pedestrian, horse
drawn carriage and stream tram, but infrastructural works such
as gas supply lines, large capacity rain sewers and effective
waste disposal lines.

TRANSFORMATION OF
MANZANA
Cerdas theoretically planned, two or three sided, 20
metre high manzana lacked profitability and with no
strict government controls in place, the majority of
the blocks were soon built up on all four sides while
far exceeding their originally planned height.

Manzana blocks which were planned as public

facilities (such as schools, markets and social
centres) were instead developed without regard to
the plan, they were further built up in complete
contrast to Cerdas original vision, the central
courtyards were often closed off and are now
commonly used as a car park.

Development of the Manzana Block from public to private

An aerial view of a portion of the Manzana

COURTYARD
Pro Eixample sought to transform Eixample so that 1 in
every 9 manzanas would have a public courtyard and that all
residents of the Eixample would have a publicly accessible
green space within a 200m radius of their home.
A visit to the manzana courtyards provides an offbeat
tourist or local itinerary to a little seen side of Barcelona.
However, even if the courtyard reclamations are meant to
be small-scale, local interventions for the enjoyment of the
nearby manzana residents rather than the broader public,
many of the conversions seem to do very little in terms of
providing actual shaded green areas.
Instead, many reclaimed courtyards appear as normative,
dusty, hardscaped open plazas with few users.