Helix-House: 2. Conditions

 To solve a task, you check the requirements. Looking back to the history of the Chart of Athens, we realise it is more valuable to regard the trends than to list actual tasks. We are living in a rapidly changing world: Digitalisation, Clima Crisis, Covid-19, just to name some recent fundamental experiences. Therefore, trends instead of requiremnts is my first conclusion for my conditions for the Helix-House. Panta rei.

Concerning the construction of an expensive builiding the term Life-Time -Cycle-Cost became a dominant ranking. Even if we don't intend it, we should be able to give back nature what we got. We must be prepared, to give back our playground, renaturalize it. Settle elsewhere.

The Helix-House is a construction utilizing technology. Keeping in mind one of the most impressive changes in the last decades by the Smartphone for Anything, not only communication, we must acknowledge its origine of the trial&error-principle of his pioneer Steve Jobs who had experienced more errors in his works than winners. We must try much more experiments in building, the Helix-House is just one example. Get rid of the to big burden of rules, overvome the small-square thinking.

Back to the Charta of Athens, we find some trials for updates or claims for updates, the Leipzig-Charta https://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/themen/bauen-wohnen/stadt-wohnen/stadtentwicklung/leipzig-charta/leipzig-charta-artikel.html is a recent one, compiled from several hundred contributions for the EU under the preassure of having 75% of its population living in cities. Summarizing the core findings, first of all, the charta aims at an european solution, including a renaissance and revitalisation of the existing cities. This reminds, by the way, that quite different approaches are required in specific for the globally fast growing megacities https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity. Even each of the megacities closest to Europe in equatorial Africa and Egypt need specific means. The next finding in the Leipzig-Charta concerns the clima crisis requiring a bundle of different measures from cities. Involvement of the citicen is required more than ever as social concience and movement, fed by social media, plays a rapidly growing role. This is in strong interaction with governance required for cities. And, last not least, it must be agreable to live in the cities which means much more than a few beautiful cites and buildings and includes communication by walking, bicycle and public transportation as main components.

Let us use this picture of four chipboard srews with their helix structure on a table of old wood as a symbol in this chapter on the general conditions and framework from nature to technology for the Helix-House. 

Helix-House: Introduction

The intention of this essay Helix-House is simple to deliver a new proposal for a huge appartment house. Since the first Charte d'Athene in 1933 by  Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) huge appartment houses have been the key components for future urban living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Charter

"CIAM demanded that housing districts should occupy the best sites, and a minimum amount of solar exposure should be required in all dwellings. For hygienic reasons, buildings should not be built along transportation routes, and modern techniques should be used to construct high apartment building spaces widely apart, to free the soil for large green parks.

-Mumford, 2000, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, The MIT Press, p85"

Le Corbusier , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier , probably the main writer and promotor of the Athens Charter, got his first chance to construct such an apartment building after the second world war, more than a decade later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d%27habitation, the Unité d'habitation. It was the break through of Le Corbusier and gave him the oportunity to replicate his idea several times. the following pictures from Wikipedia show the builing on pilars and an internal passage.

Le Corbusier's utopian city living design was repeated in four more buildings with this name and a very similar design:

• Unité d'Habitation of Nantes-Rezé in 1955,
• Unité d'Habitation of Berlin in 1957,
• Unité d'Habitation of Briey [fr] in 1963,
• Unité d'Habitation of Firminy-Vert [fr] in 1965.

All of them were oriented with the building's long axis running north–south, so the units face east-and-west.

The whole concept was very rigid, starting from the main building material, rought-cast concrete béton brut , massive due to lack of enforcing steel in the after-war market. " The building contained 337 duplex apartment modules to house a total of 1,600 people. Each module was three stories high, and contained two apartments, combined so each had two levels (see diagram above). The modules ran from one side of the building to the other, and each apartment had a small terrace at each end. They were ingeniously fitted together like pieces of a Chinese puzzle, with a corridor slotted through the space between the two apartments in each module. Residents had a choice of twenty-three different configurations for the units. Le Corbusier designed furniture, carpets and lamps to go with the building, all purely functional; the only decoration was a choice of interior colors that Le Corbusier gave to residents." 

In 1966 Gustav Hassenpflug  https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hassenpflug and Paulhans Peters published a critical review of the apartment hous architecture after the war: Neue Wohnhochhäuser (new apartment builings) in three types of construction: Scheibe, Punkt and Hügel ( cuboid, tower and terrace), proposing to overcome the limits of the cuboid, favorized by le Corbusier.

The ideas of the Athens Charter have been developped nearly one century ago with oher premises. There was no idea of the coming Climate Crisis caused by the Greenhouse Gases and CO². The global communication, economy and politics have been quite different. Therefore I take the challenge to develop a kind of complementary, contempuary concept for a huge apartment builing by the Helix-House.

Work in progress.