Description

From antiquity, groupings of buildings have defined public spaces. For this essay, the term ‘urban block shapers’ fundamentally involves a conscious reciprocity whereby buildings comprised of an ensemble of units define streets, roads, plazas, and most other public spaces of a district plan and are defined by characteristics of that plan in turn. Further, these buildings are generally of two types. The first are linear or sequential arrangements sometimes referred to as ‘bar buildings’ facing, defining, and being defined by streets, roads, and other aspects of public infrastructure, while the second are ‘perimeter blocks’ comprised of linear arrangements of units defining and being defined by streets and public open spaces on one side and interior courts and garden spaces on the other. Certainly during the early days of the modern era, around the turn into the twentieth century, the plans to which the urban block shapers conformed were influenced by several planning emphases. The first of these involved layout and regulation of light and air requirements for healthy habitation of rooms and other indoor and outdoor spaces in buildings. As much as anything, this was driven by tenement legislation in places like New York City, as well as elsewhere. Somewhat later, prescriptions derived from the likes of Walter Gropius’ study of zeilenbau or bar building organizations in 1928 to 1931, also came into play, focusing on optimal spacing between buildings. There, for example, a 27-meter spacing was recommended between typical walk-up bar buildings on the order of 16 meters tall. Parenthetically, this also corresponded to the desired nominal width of relatively major streets at the time. In addition, concerns for minimal housing space standards were pursued, ranging from CIAM’s 14 square meters per person to slightly less in some American stipulations.
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A second planning emphasis was on rational layout and, in particular, a hierarchical arrangement of streets and other elements of urban vehicular circulation. In addition, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such functional considerations also became embroidered with well-mannered urban place making, incorporating axial arrangements of buildings and public spaces, spacious civic plazas, accommodations of public parks, and the like. This inflection, in turn, generally derived from at least the first modern planned city in the mid-eighteenth century and subsequent neoclassical urban interventions, including the City Beautiful Movement in America. On the other hand, by the early twentieth century, rational aspects of plans were beginning to gain an upper hand even as straightforward gridiron layouts were sometimes seen to be too archaic. In any event, within this planning and building milieu, urban block shapers were low- to mid-rise walk-up assemblages of residential units for the most part, sometimes together with other non-residential uses. Most commonplace in Europe and to some extent the Americas, these housing layouts began largely as expansions of existing urban circumstances around, for instance, Italian, Dutch, and German cities in the throes of dealing with housing production to accommodate pressures of industrialization and modernization, as well as de novo development in countryside sites near urban peripheries. Then, as time and circumstances moved on up into the contemporary era, deployment of urban block shapers was to be found in a variety of redevelopment circumstances, ranging through slum clearance to former brownfield sites.

Precedents: from Plan Zuid to THE Meander

An epitome of early modern usage of urban block shapers occurred in the Netherlands during the early part of the twentieth century. At the time, housing circumstances in Holland were often squalid and poorly serviced. Such conditions were exacerbated further by overcrowding due to rapidly increasing urban labor forces in search of opportunities in major cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In 1900, for instance, fully 25 percent of all housing units had only one room and the demand for new housing was reckoned to be around 90,000 to 100,000 units or near 10 percent.
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One of the most notable urban expansions involving urban block shapers was Amsterdam’s Plan Zuid, the Plan for the South Amsterdam district, first commissioned to Hendrik Berlage around 1901 by the city’s Office of Public Works, also coinciding with the 1901 National Housing Law. His subsequent plan of 1904, replete with wide roads, generous public open space, and a certain strong monumentality was, however, deemed unfeasible. Returning to the drawing board in 1914, the plan that appeared in 1917, with narrower streets, a less grandiose accompaniment of public open space and larger building blocks, was accepted by the city authorities and put into effect. This plan divided the relatively seamless transition of Amsterdam’s existing urban fabric to the south into several components or subdistricts, with an overall aim of accommodating several thousand residents.
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Within these components, a clear hierarchy of wide stately streets down to smaller side streets was envisaged, together with civic plazas, neighborhood squares, public parks including a large one on the southern perimeter, and several other spatial parentheses in the form of canals. As mentioned, the building blocks tended to be long and were seen by Berlage as being predominantly comprised of bar buildings and narrow perimeter blocks inhabited by people of all social classes, departing from price segregation in this regard and in the reliance on small, often single private units. There, housing blocks were taken up, in turn, by the architects of what became known as the Amsterdam School, such as Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer, materializing uncommon flourishes of brickwork across well-composed façades with articulate expressions of fenestration, balconies, and places of vertical access. More often than not, uniform building lines were tightly held, defining street edges, with tower-like and other inflections at corners of prominent street crossings. Overall, the architecture was in the service of urban place and fabric making, but also with a subsidiary or secondary mode of expression for specific blocks in the overall composition. De Klerk also went on to design the Eigen Haard complex in West Amsterdam, among other projects, dating from 1914 to 1921, or thereabouts.
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Elsewhere in Holland and particularly in Rotterdam, priorities also turned towards housing and urban expansion. As a major port and before the era of more complete mechanization of port activities, the city was undergoing significant expansion of its labor force and of its population. Between 1900 and 1920, for instance, the population rose from 312,000 to 500,000 inhabitants. During this time, with the use of its expropriation power, the City of Rotterdam then acquired 29.5 hectares of land in 1918 on the south side of the River Maas in close proximity to expanding port facilities.
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Among other projects and drainage improvements by way of wetering or drainage canals, the Kiefhoek housing estate by Rotterdam’s then city architect – J. J. P. Oud – stands out certainly as an accomplished example of urban block shaping using primarily housing. Completed between 1925 and 1929, the project is modest, providing for 300 units of worker housing in small but well-organized basic two-storey units of 61.5 square meters of floor area on small 7.5-meter-deep by 4.1-meter-wide footprints, alongside of a couple of playgrounds, two shops, a central heating plant, and a church – the Hertsteld Apostolische. Essentially, the bar buildings that make up most of the complex are uniform rows of two-storey units, each with individual gardens on the backsides. Internally, the arrangement of streets and some public open space, with few points of entry or exit, gives the complex an inward orientation, no doubt to foster a strong sense of community. Within each block, there was room for the personalization of dwelling space through further ‘tenant fitout’, even though this was clearly an attempt to establish a strong collective image. In this last regard, unlike the earlier projects mentioned in connection with the Amsterdam School, the urban architectural expression at Kiefhoek was comprised of taut modernist façades reflective of the frugal times and the application of modern materials and techniques of building in a conspicuous version of the Dutch New Objectivity, similar to the Neue Sachlichkeit prevailing elsewhere at much the same time.
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In Germany during the post-World War I Weimar Republic, overcrowded and run-down conditions in cities like Berlin were pushing new developments to the outskirts and into the neighboring countryside in order to lower costs. One such project was the Berlin Britz estate, south of the city proper, constructed between 1925 and 1932. The context of the Britz estate was literally agricultural fields with a few local water bodies and it was a case of making something largely out of nothing, with the prolific use of primarily residential block shaping structures. Under the planning and architectural authorship of Martin Wagner and Bruno Taut, the Berlin Britz estate was large, at some 21,374 dwelling units mainly in the form of three- to four-storey apartments, often conformed to found local features like the well-known ‘horseshoe block’ partially enclosing an extensive green plaza with a lake in its midst.
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Within this area were also 679 single-family units arrayed in linear arrangements of two-storey attached units with private back gardens. Clearly, deformations from a regular east-west linear alignment of units were to imbue the project with its own particular sense of place and also to create a central spine, as it were, of related though different public open spaces. The facilities of the apartment complexes and particularly the one framing the horseshoe-shaped space were punctuated by deep reveals of private balconies, capped above by a single row of maisonette units with little to no window openings, further emphasizing the coherent walled-in definition of the public open space. Elsewhere, the urban-architectural expression, especially in Bruno Taut’s hands, aligns closely with the Neue Sachlichkeit and the new realism and objectivity of the times in Germany with regard to economy, functionality, materials, and construction technique. Another project in Berlin of a similar ilk, though far smaller at the neighborhood scale of 1,286 dwelling units, was the Weisse Stadt by Bruno Ahrends, Otto Salvisberg, and Ludwig Lesser as the landscape architect.
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Built between 1929 and 1931, it was also fabricated largely in the countryside to the northeast of the central city. Again, relatively big apartment buildings rising to four storeys were arranged on site with wide communal courts in between used for allotment gardens and other recreational purposes.

Moving on in time and geography, one notable urban block-shaping project from Latin America was El Silencio in Caracas, Venezuela, of 1942 to 1945 by Carlos Raúl Villanueva.
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As in the Dutch cases, it was to be an integral part of the city’s expansion and was conceptualized as a terminating end to the Avenida Central Plan for Caracas, stretching from its site at the foot of the hillside of El Calvario to Bellas Artes Plaza some kilometers to the east. At the time of construction, the 9.5-hectare site was occupied by slum conditions of a makeshift squatter settlement, prone to damaging flooding by a water course – barrancas – crossing the area from high up on the northern side of the east-west running valley within which the city was constructed. The basic plan of El Silencio enframes part of the Avenida Central axis and the Fuente Las Toninas Plaza, where it terminates against El Calvario, in seven related though distinctive building massings. The number of dwelling units was 845, effectively constituting a distinctive community or neighborhood essentially for a lower-income market. It was not literally constructed to rehouse the squatters displaced by the project although some, under the auspices of the Banco Obrero, the client for the project, did make such a move. Among the seven building massings, four are perimeter blocks with spacious central courts, while the other three are linear blocks, or bar buildings, shaped to the topography and local circumstances of the site. Rising from four to seven storeys in height, the taller apartment buildings, with elevators and shops on the ground floor, terminate the central axis, while the lower buildings comprise the urban block structure of the basic gridiron, laid out in the Avenida Central Plan. There are some 400 shops provided for in the project at the ground level, along with some accommodation of industry and local crafts. The dwelling units, in comparison to the European examples, are larger, ranging from 51 percent at three bedrooms, 30 percent at four bedrooms, and 19 percent at two-bedroom apartments. Ample community open space is also provided in the complex, which is comprised of only 32 percent of building, although the overall density is high, at close to 9,000 dwelling units per square kilometer. Again, the urban-architectural expression is modernist in an orthodox sense, although inflected, even playfully, with ground-level loggias sporting local traditional figural motifs and with both open and closed balconies animating well-composed façades.

Returning to Holland in contemporary times and to positions and debates about place making dating back into the late nineteenth century, there is the Meander in Amsterdam of 1995 by Leon Krier. Comprised of 204 dwelling units, a school, a community library, shops, restaurants, and subsidized space for young entrepreneurs, the project was built on a brownfield site beside a canal, formerly occupied by industry.[10] Within this mix of uses, the dwelling units tend to be on the upper floors of the predominantly five-storey structures. Aptly named, the complex of what are essentially bar buildings and three circular towers in plan, literally winds in through the site and is certainly post-modern in its stylistic inclinations. However, rather than being primarily neoclassical in the manner in which an otherwise rational layout is inflected like in the earlier Dutch plans, formal aspects of the scheme seem to be more rooted in principles espoused by Camillo Sitte around 1889 and his critique of late nineteenth-century urbanism and moving back even to a pre-modern irregularity yet concern for place making.[11] Also present is a return to the lavish brickwork and façade articulation, within the main frame of the bar buildings, found in the earlier Amsterdam School.

The two contemporary urban block shapers case studies each are examined in Villa Olímpica (Can Folch Housing and 138 Villa Olímpica Apartments) and in La Maquinista (H-1 Block and H-2 and H-3 Blocks) both of which are located in Barcelona. The former is located right by the coast and the latter is situated further inland right along the TGV high-speed railway line connecting the city to France. From its early days as a Roman colony, Barcelona has evolved from a walled, medieval fortress town into a major metropolitan center in the Western Mediterranean both economically and politically. The composition of the city’s urban fabric bears witness to its transformations, and one of its hallmarks is the 113.3 meters by 113.3 meters orthogonal grid interdicted by perimeter blocks rising up to six storeys above grade in the Eixample district. A legacy of Ildefons Cerdà’s 1859 Pla d’Eixample, or Expansion Plan, largely imposed upon the Barcelona City Council by the central government in Madrid, the blocks with their distinctive 45 degree chamfered corners were built up over time, and accommodate an intensity and diversity of uses as well as a range of architectural expressions within them while still maintaining a high degree of urban coherence. In the 1980s, Barcelona experienced a second renaixença, or rebirth. Much like the first Catalan cultural revival dating back to the 1830s that saw the city undergo a metamorphosis into one of the most dynamic centers of modernist art and architecture in Europe, this ‘second wind’ of change led to a profusion of urban-architectural projects which rejuvenated the city after it broke free from the chains of dictatorial rule. By the time democratic governance was restored in 1978, Barcelona had deteriorated physically. Living conditions were poor and there was a lack of public services supporting a population then of around 1.75 million.
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Efforts to reclaim the city and to make it more livable materialized through an urban renewal program launched in 1980 with a focus on urban public space projects. Drawing on the General Metropolitan Plan proposed in 1976 that called for the “reconstruction and harmonization of [existing] urban space” and with a view towards projects rather than plans, the program implemented various projects across all the districts with the aim of enhancing the overall quality of the city.
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Against this backdrop of urban regeneration, key sites were identified based on their strategic location and potential to assume a metropolitan significance. These included the industrial sectors of Poblenou and Sant Andreu that were later redeveloped into Villa Olímpica and a part of which became the La Maquinista neighborhood respectively. The impetus to carry out the urban renewal project at Poblenou was further strengthened with Barcelona’s successful bid for the 1992 Olympic Games. Slated to be a new residential neighborhood that would be used to accommodate the athletes during the games, the industrial sector of Poblenou was then in a state of dilapidation and comprised a mixture of abandoned factories and squatter housing, warehouses, car parks, a water treatment plant, the women’s prison, and dumping grounds. With active railroad lines and a highway traversing the entire site, the city was effectively cut off from what had then deteriorated into an undesirable waterfront. The site’s redevelopment was thus of utmost importance as this would allow it to become the first project to re-open the city to the sea, and create a new modern seafront residential neighborhood.

The Villa Olímpica urban design project was entrusted to MBM, a team comprising Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay, and Albert Puigdomènech. This was not unexpected as Bohigas had played a major role in the city’s planning and urban design, having served then as the Director of Public Works. The basic plan proposed by MBM was composed of five strips: first, the stretch of beaches and protective seawall; followed by a 30-meter-wide seafront promenade; a third strip of coastal activities that would be a linear accumulation of activities and higher density programs; a fourth strip of infrastructural linkage comprising the sunken Ronda Litoral as a section of the broader metropolitan system of ring roads and expressways that is crossed by plazas and pedestrian bridges; and finally, a fifth strip closest inland known as the urban nucleus incorporating the mixed-use residential typologies within an extension of the grid-block morphology. The dimensions of the Cerdà grid were maintained in the urban nucleus, with several of the blocks to be approached as variants of Cerdà’s original proposal, while others were agglomerated into multiples of three or four constituting superblocks or maxi-grids that would allow for “a more radical application of new typologies and new urban layouts”.
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In determining the urban design guidelines for the project, MBM emphasized the perimeter in these blocks and established consistent building heights and setbacks that would still facilitate a range of architectural expressions.

After winning the Olympic bid, the Ajuntament de Barcelona organized the work through several public and quasi-public companies, known as Societats Anònimes (SA), including the Villa Olímpica Societat Anònima which had two subsidiaries – the Nova Icària SA (NISA) and the Port Olímpic de Barcelona SA (POBASA) – that had private capital commitments of 60 and 50 percent. These SAs are similar to ‘special district’ authorities that appeared in Barcelona as early as the 1840s and, as public companies, were allowed special technical and managerial teams to be formed for a public work project on a temporary basis.
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The POBASA oversaw the development of the Olympic Port component adjacent to the waterfront, including the axial arrangements of the two 44-storey towers and the square quay with docking and sailing facilities set off to one side. The two skyscrapers anchoring the site are the Torre Mapfre office building by Iñigo Ortiz and Enrique de León, outwardly defined by the horizontal bands, and the Les Arts Hotel sheathed in criss-cross structural bracing by Bruce Graham and SOM, with the commercial complex and iconic ‘fish’ sculpture by Frank Gehry around its base.

The core of the project showcasing the urban-architectural operations of housing in the trope of urban block shapers is the urban nucleus that accommodated the athletes during the games and residential units for the locals after the event. Overseen by the development company NISA, the urban nucleus comprised a total of 1,976 dwelling units, covering an area of 14.9 hectares that also incorporated other uses such as commerce and offices.
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Rising around seven storeys above ground, these residential blocks are a composition of both modern linear apartment buildings and traditional perimeter block types, much akin to the form in the Eixample. Unlike the built-up and infill conditions emblematic of the Eixample, the courtyards of these blocks are much more open, containing a range of gardens and hardscape plazas. Architects who were past recipients of the Barcelona FAD award in recognition of design excellence were commissioned to undertake the design for each and in some instances parts of the housing complexes, resulting in a variety of architectural expressions.[17]

Two exceptional projects that stand out within this rich architectural variety of apartment complexes are MBM’s Cal Folch Housing and Elías Torres and José Antonio Martinez Lapeña’s housing complex 138 Villa Olímpica. The former is located on the western edge of the Bacelona’s urban nucleus. In contrast to the other projects developed in Villa Olímpica that somewhat preserve yet also reinterpret the classical form of the Eixample, this complex as well as the residential complex 138 Villa Olímpica respond creatively to their unique site conditions, allowing the design of the buildings to work in concert with their contexts, as well as enhance the definition of the streetscapes. The Can Folch Housing was redeveloped on the site of the old Folch factory, whose magnificent brick chimney was conserved as a nod to the area’s industrial past. The great 235-meter-long curving building with its concave façade facing the Carles I Park derived its form from the old railway line that used to cut across the streets with a wide sweeping arc. Spanning across the Carrer de Ramon Trias Fargas that leads directly to the waterfront, the building turns into an arcade just above the street, allowing the longer façade to continue virtually uninterrupted. At the same time, this also lends emphasis to the contour of the Carrer de Mouscou, while the north-south orientation of the building provides direct sunlight all day, with views to both the sea and the park. To break the monotony of this continuous façade, the alternate bands of grey bricks and windows are broken regularly by shafts of bay windows.

Overall, the perimeters of the Can Folch Housing block and the surrounding streets are well-defined, interposed with a number of sightlines cutting through into the interior public space and encouraging a higher degree of urban porosity and street-level activity. Along Carrer de la Marina, the six-storey complex is demarcated by a brown brick building perched above a strongly rhythmic arcade with arches that open up to views of the sunken shopping plaza. Intended to be a mixed-use project with parking in the basement, the complex houses 151 units, 90 of which were sold at market rate, and the remaining 60 were social housing.
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The units are composed typically of duplexes and three-bedroom apartments of no more than 13 meters in depth. With a total built area of 34,022 square meters on a site of just 9,923 square meters, the project has one of the highest building intensities among the complexes developed in the urban nucleus with nearly 70 percent given over to residential purposes, 25 percent for parking, and the remaining five percent for commercial use.
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The other project of interest is the 138 Villa Olímpica Apartments by Torres & Lapeña along Carrer de Salvador Espriu are distinguished by their prominent circular plaza created by the housing within this seemingly typical perimeter block. The housing complex was laid out as a break in the façade of the street, providing a termination to the diagonal street, Avenida Bogatell, extending through the project via the two pedestrian ramps leading up to the terraced plaza. By deviating from the original block plan, this complex by Torres & Lapeña not only offers a change to the morphology of the block, but also opens up and literally frames a view to the sea. Occupying a site of 1.03 hectares, the project also has a high building intensity with a total built area of 34,911 square meters. Slightly more than half of the built area is taken up by the 138 dwelling units, while 38 percent is given over to parking, and another eight percent is for commercial use on the ground floor encircling the hardscape plaza dotted with palm trees. Carrer de Joan Oliver itself passes under the block that forms a large gateway, much akin to the arcade in the Can Folch Housing by MBM. Raised above grade, the circular block is seven storeys tall while the solitary, crowning tower in the shape of a prow of a ship marking the terminus of the diagonal rises 10 storeys in height. The dwelling units are generally commodious, composed of three- or four-bedroom types, with two units sharing a common access core. In maintaining the coherence of the scheme, Torres & Lapeña have chosen a warm, brown brick palette for the entire complex that resonates with the rest of the seaward façades of the apartment complexes along Carrer de Salvador Espriu. Within the central court, the building façades are splayed in and out slightly, incorporating sliding screens generating a dynamic surface enhanced by the light at different times of the day. This playful surface variation is reflected similarly in the floor plans, revealing a building depth ranging from 11 to 13 meters.

La Maquinista was completed in 2002, a decade after Villa Olímpica, and is located in the district of Sant Andreu further inland and to the north of Barcelona’s city center. The neighborhood was a former railway and industrial zone for the manufacturing of tractors and wagons, and unlike the regular Cerdà grid that defined Barcelona’s Eixample and an extension of that block-like fabric to the Villa Olímpica waterfront, here there are unevenly shaped lots that resulted from Sant Andreu’s industrial past. From the outset, La Maquinista was conceived of not only as a residential project, but a major urban project as part of the city’s broader initiative to transform the area into a residential and mixed-use development for lower-middle income groups after the Olympic Games. Located near the La Sagrera high-speed rail station slated for completion in 2016, the project will be one of several neighborhoods connected by a 4.5-kilometer-long park covering the rail yard.
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The project was developed by the Inmobiliaria Colonial, one of the leading real estate companies in Spain, and BAU-Barcelona led by Joan Busquets was commissioned to design the urban project.

The overall urban scheme is composed of four blocks with different shapes and non-orthogonal intersection angles, resulting in a path of irregular shape with intermediate residential densities. In coming up with the comprehensive plan, including the architectural guidelines and open space planning, BAU-Barcelona took into consideration variables such as the relationship to the broader Sant Andreu neighborhood, connections to public transport, sun exposure, and the access to the sprawling, open-air La Maquinista Shopping Mall located across Carrer Sao Paulo. Urban parameters such as a height limit of 26.85 meters were imposed by the Barcelona Metropolitan Master Plan, and conventional materials were stipulated to reinforce the coherence of the plan as a holistic urban project while still providing adequate freedom to diversify the architectural form. The layout of the buildings is shaped by the geometry of the blocks and the definition of the civic axes, and the decision was made to design open blocks with adequate open spaces dedicated to private and/or collective gardens. Of the four residential blocks, the focus of the following examination will be on Block H-1 designed by BAU-Barcelona and Blocks H-2 and H-3 by MAP Arquitectos under Josep Lluís Mateo.

The plan by MAP Arquitectos for the H-2 and H-3 Blocks was to have taller, continuous perimeter blocks surrounding low-rise bars in the center, as predetermined in the urban design guidelines. The perimeter buildings are fairly conventional, and are double-layered on the west and east sides of the block separated by a void of nearly eight meters. These ‘sandwich’ buildings have a depth of approximately 10 meters, while the singular bar continuations that wrap around the north and south sides of the block range from around 12 to 13 meters. Passages are created along the major streets providing access into the courts, while a sense of intimacy is still maintained by the enclosure of apartment buildings containing 120 dwelling units. The central void with the garden/pool facilities constitutes the structuring device of the scheme, continuing underneath the inner band of the perimeter block that has been raised on the pilotis, and into the eight-meter-wide void rising upwards forming a vertical patio of sorts. By creating this vertical patio wedged between the double-layered perimeter buildings, the project not only increases its building intensity, but also benefits from the cross-ventilation and improved daylight levels. At the upper levels, bridges linked by stairs cross the void at every floor and connect the units and corridors to each lift tower. The number of dwelling units sharing access landings is kept to a minimum, reinforcing the level of privacy, and typically, a lift lobby leads to just two apartments.

In the nine-storey-tall parallel perimeter buildings, the floor plans are mirrored on each side, and each unit efficiently accommodates three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and built-in storage. Apart from these three-bedroom units, the complex also offers a range of smaller one- and two-bedroom units, as well as duplexes in the low-rise bars fronting the pedestrianized Passatge Posoltega bisecting the H-2 and H-3 Blocks. Access to the perimeter ‘sandwich’ buildings is marked by colorful island-like lobby entrances on the ground floors, interspersed with lightly vegetated patches extending the lawn into the vertical patio. The brown brick façades are kept relatively simple, punctuated by sheltered terraces as well as open-air balconies that add a touch of lightness to the project’s compact mass. Given its immediate adjacency to Barcelona’s largest open-air shopping mall designed by Manuel de Solà-Morales, the need for commercial and retail programs on site, as was the case of the Villa Olímpica blocks or the mixed-use fabric of the Eixample, was completely eliminated.

Located across the street from the H-2 and H-3 Blocks is the H-1 Block by BAU-Barcelona. Occupying a relatively narrow wedge, this narrow eight to nine-storey brick building is right next to the Parc de La Maquinista. With 146 dwellings and 10 retail units, Block H-1 has a built area of 16,300 m² and a floor area ratio (FAR) of 3.13. The site plan opted for an open block typology, so as to provide access to the internal collective garden. The depth of each block is approximately 12 meters, and again is ideal for improving cross-ventilation within each unit that is open on one or two façades. The whole perimeter of each block is elevated on a plinth which is made possible by allowing the underground car park to rise up to one meter above street level, upon which ground floor shops, some collective garden terraces, and some special dwellings are located. Besides creating more defined garden spaces through this elevation, this spatial operation also allows for greater privacy for the domestic spaces above. The layouts of the residential units vary in size from two- to four-bedroom units, including dwellings such as duplex units or units with large terraces on the top of the elevated podium. This diversity in unit types corresponded in large part to BAU-Barcelona’s objective of providing “typological diversity despite [this] being a residential sector with rather homogeneous demands”.
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Access to the apartment units is provided through distinctive lobby entrances located along the inner court, typically with two units sharing a single lift landing. Unlike the manicured lawns in the MAP project, the internal collective garden here is in the vein of a Mediterranean hardscape court with planters lining the lobby entrances. Again, the use of bricks in earthen colors engenders a sense of coherence with the other three blocks designed by two different architectural firms.

Moving away from the European context where urban block shapers commonly occur, instances of this approach towards housing and urban design can also be found in North America albeit in the form of individual row houses that collectively line the edges of blocks in cities like New York City, Boston, and San Francisco. A notable project that is inserted into a subdivided block, giving shape to both the block as well as its own lot, is the Harold Way Apartments in Hollywood, California, completed in 2003. Designed by Koning Eizenberg Architecture for the Hollywood Community Housing Corporation, this affordable housing project sits on the corner of a block, occupying a site area of 0.24 hectares. Given the demand for economy due to the limited funding, as well as other code requirements such as the allocation of 25 percent open space area and setbacks, the architects achieved their desired density by fitting in 51 units within a configuration of two parallel bars sandwiching a thin zigzag building in the center. The longer edges of the four-storey-tall parallel bars define both the major artery of North Western Avenue and the boundary with the adjacent lot, while the shorter edges facing Harold Way reveal the tripartite arrangement interspersed with two pedestrian courtyards. While the two parallel stucco-clad bars frame the site, the central block clad in cement board and wood battens steps down in elevation towards the back, opening up views to Hollywood Hills to the north.

The unusual composition of this central zigzag building not only injects some rhythm and sequence to the project from the interior, defining the outdoor external access balconies with bridges linking the residents directly to the paired entrances of their apartments, it also carves out the big courtyard for the children’s play area and the barbecue hubs for the community, thereby activating the site and lending an urban feel to the project. Together with the landscaping at the end of the vista, as well as other amenities like the provision of a community room and a laundry area, the architects pay much attention to these “little things” that help to “make life sweeter”.[22] Each building is no more than 10 meters deep, creating this courtyard space where all apartments receive adequate light and cross-ventilation, effectively eliminating the need for air-conditioning. In total, the scheme offers a variety of unit types, including 17 one-bedroom units, 19 two-bedroom units, and 15 three-bedroom maisonettes.

Convergences and Contexts

Urban block shapers of the kind under discussion consist either of linear housing blocks of bar buildings and row houses, or perimeter block organizations of similar forms with courts or private yards in between. The planar shapes of the linear blocks are malleable either to local topographic or other existing circumstances and to roadway conditions and adjacent urban structures. Overall, a reciprocal relationship with a setting obtains, including with willful re-shaping of urban spaces to form ‘urban rooms’. The horizontal serial arrangement of units within blocks is largely repetitive, although often not entirely and especially at corner conditions. Vertical variation can be apparent, also early on in the use of the type, with double-storeyed maisonette units on the top floors, reducing the length of stairways serving units. As with other housing types, accommodation of a diversity of living conditions became more apparent into the contemporary period, away from the exigencies of the sheer production of dwelling units. Despecialization of ground floors into shops has been fostered, including through the use of loggias, arcades, and other sidewalk circumstances. Again, this is more evident nowadays for urban redevelopment than earlier on during times simply of urban expansion.

Dimensionally, urban block shapers are usually from three to seven storeys in height, or nominally five-storey walk-up structures, nowadays often also with elevator service. Early on, nominal depths of units were on the order of nine meters with widths of six meters, although sometimes reaching as low as 7.5 meters by 4.1 meters in pursuit of minimum space standards. Later on, more contemporary dimensions range from 10 to 16 meters in depth and five to 10 meters in width, although nominal dimensions of 12 meters in depth by seven meters in width also seem to prevail. Most projects are not radical with respect to the manner in which flexibility within a unit is provided, although allowance for tenant fit-out and an absence of partitioned spaces can also be present. Spacing between blocks for roadways and communal open spaces varies, but are usually on the order of 25 or so meters. Exceptions include conjunction of parallel blocks through open patio and walkway devices. Common courtyard spaces, especially landscaped gardens, often proved to be problematic in the absence of strong communal management, in many cases resulting in privatization of courtyards by adjacent units. Indeed, provision of private outdoor spaces at the level of the court, sometimes raised in height to accommodate parking and services below as well as balconies and terraces within buildings, has become commonplace and almost de rigueur, along with rooftop accommodation of space for non-residential, leisure-time activities.

Urban architectural expression varies both in the manner of the times and in the degrees of variation. Nevertheless, within the basic, overall oblong format of apartments, a more localized pattern of building articulation and surface openings, as well as patterning, is often deployed. This, in turn, serves to individuate units and other spatial components like entrances and stairways, as well as giving particular visual identity to particular blocks within a larger ensemble. Finally, urban block shapers of the kind under discussion can serve the need for diversity in unit types reasonably well, in addition to despecialization away from residential use, particularly in ground floor circumstances, as well as elsewhere if loft-like, flexible, and convertible spaces are provided. Dwelling diversities vary, typically by building height as depths are relatively constant. Local densities of around 150 dwelling units per hectare are certainly obtainable, or more generally on the order of 10,000 to 12,000 people per square kilometer.

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Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.