Industrial City by Tony Garnier Aparna Singh B. Arch. 4th Yr.B Roll No.13 Vastu Kala Academy During his student years, Tony Garnier proved to be very different from other students. He was not very disciplined, and did not carry out the projects requested by the French Academy, which concerned the study of isolated antique monuments. He preferred to work on an entire city “Tusculum”. In four years at “Villa Médicis”, he spent only six months working on antique monuments. Most of his time was dedicated to a project for the creation of a new city, a modern one, called An Industrial City, published for the first time in 1917. Whereas the designs for garden cities and "Usonia" took root in the country, the French architect and socialist Tony Garnier made detailed plans for a model of a modern industrial city. Garnier did the conceptual preparatory work for the Modernist town‐planners. Both his architectonic details and planning ideas became their basic principles. Tony Garnier’s new industrial city is a utopian planned industrial city with separated residential and factory zones, green belts with structures built of reinforced concrete. This project is a significant milestone in modern town planning, as Le Corbusier said: “The first example of urban land defined as public space and organized to accommodate amenities for the common benefit of the inhabitants [...] integrating housing, work and contact between citizens.” Tony Garnier located it in a place that can be identified as being in Saint‐Etienne area (near by Saint‐Chamont / Rive‐de‐Gier), which was heavily industrialized at the beginning of the 20th century. The city is located on a rocky headland, the industrial area being clearly separated from it and located down the headland, at the confluence of a river.
In what many consider to be the first act of Modern master planning, Garnier designed a self‐sufficient settlement for 35,000 based on industry, with various functions zoned in discreet areas, connected by multiple infrastructural systems; a railway, a canal, roads, and an airport. The industrial city embraces new concepts in city planning: long, narrow lots running east– west, buildings separated by wide open spaces, separate levels provided for pedestrians, and houses with roof gardens. The renderings of Garnier’s project foreshadowed a new, sprawling urban scale defined by the practical zoning requirements of the latest industrial and transportation technologies. Another title for the project was indeed “City of Labor”. So it is very clear, that modern city planning had as source the idea of labor and production, on the basis of the industrial revolution. Only three main functions have therefore been conceived by Garnier: production, housing and health facilities. The dictatorship of production turned housing and health in the service of production. Workers had to be healthy and therefore housed well to stay stable and reliable in the production process. Therefore we can say, the center of the conception of the modern city is production.
The classical conception of a city from where the urbanists started was the city as a place of production. In the wake of the industrial revolution the city was conceived as a sequence of phases conditioned by industrial labor. You start with an assembly line. Around the assembly line you build a factory. Around the factory you build the homes of the workers. Around the homes you build shops, restaurants and other services. Precisely in that sense we can perceive the publication of Une Cité Industrielle. Going against urban conceptions of his time, the architect developed the zoning concept, dividing the city into four main functions: work, housing, health, leisure. The traffic system had separate roads for vehicles and pedestrians, through‐roads, and access‐roads. Green spaces took up more than half of the city area. Set in the midst of these were loose groupings of simple free‐standing apartment blocks, built of reinforced concrete using industrial techniques, and affording plenty of air and light. Four main principles emerge: functionalism, space, greenery, and high sunshine exposure. In France, Tony Garnier caught the modern currents in materials, structure, and composition using which he evolved his masterful plan for a Cité industrielle. In the industrial city, reinforced concrete was to be used to create a modern city of modern buildings. The plan called for the extensive use of reinforced concrete. RESIDENTIAL UNITS RAILWAY STATION
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ART SCHOOL PLAN OF EDUCATION ZONE
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VISIONS OF TONY GARNIER’S HOUSING
INDUSTRIAL CITY
