The civic center constituted a comprehensive design strategy that related the urban scale and the architecture. During the first decades of the 20th century, a reading of the metropolitan condition and center of the city was configured in urban planning in relation o the spatial organization that administrative functions could have to represent public power. This idea grew from the advantages proposed by Central European urban planning to improve urban aesthetics to Werner Hegemann’s readings on the possible formal configurations of public facilities.
In the revision of the main ideas of modern architecture produced since the postwar period, the civic center idea was vital in the humanist theories of organic architecture, with the own revisions of the APAO. It had a central place in the debate on the heart of cities until it was conceived as a specific urban design strategy. His theoretical elaborations dominated the discussion and the practice of the urban scale of architecture and assumed the urban scale of the programmatic conditions of public buildings. Its postulates were debated at the CIAM and accompanied the theorizations and applications of Rogers, Sert, Doxiadis, Tyrwhitt, among others.
In tune with the ideas of the new monumentality, civic centers associated program, form, and space with the democratic culture of the city. The association with politics was fundamental in its expansion. His strategy reached large and small cities, renovating decaying areas or promoting urban extensions. It was postulated as a spatial argument in the experiences of the New Towns. It was in the new administrative capitals that emerged from decolonization, where it consisted of a hope design for integrating architecture with society. It had Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Arab world as its testing ground. The civic center became an international urban design paradigm built or projected in Guatemala City, Islamabad, Boston, Skopje, Bogotá, Agadir, Addis Ababa, La Pampa, and Bagdad. Its application in countless cases showed its scope and limitations.
This session promotes the consideration of the historical experience of civic centers in relation to architecture, politics, and society; its temporary validity and decline as a monumental argument in the complexity of the history of architecture and urban design.
We will accept papers proposing case studies beyond a substantial base presenting original archival information in relation to urban planning scales and architectural works. We aim to receive studies daringly exploring profound interpretations in relation to political issues, architectural practice, and social concerns on urban design and civic centers, preferably favoring alternative, interdisciplinary, and intersectional cultural paths.
